Rockhampton to Bundaberg

We managed to navigate safely out of the Fitzroy River and anchored the night at the start of The Narrows.  The Narrows are a sandy stretch of water between the mainland and Curtis Island just north of Gladstone.  At low tide it is impassable… I think you’d even have problems in a hovercraft, but at high tide is the quick way to Gladstone. 

 

When travelling north we went around the outside of Curtis Island, adding approximately 20 nm to the trip, as we didn’t think we could possibly make it through The Narrows.  Keith and Pauline assured us we could make it though so we took the short cut down to Gladstone.  It was easily navigated at high tide and was a quick and pleasant trip… until we reached Gladstone.  As far as I’m concerned Gladstone is the scariest place in the world.  All those huge container and cargo ships, I feel sort of like I’m riding a tricycle amongst B-Doubles on a Sydney Highway.  It really is quite terrifying.

 

As we were approaching Gladstone Harbour we came to a “fork in the road”.  Looking at the charts, both sides are passable but the right is a little deeper and a lot wider so we decided to take that channel.  I radioed in to Gladstone Harbour Control and let them know of my intentions.  They did not mention dogs, tutus or jellybeans and just told me to keep an ear on the radio for cargo ship movement.

 

 About 1 nm in, we were being pushed right up against the sandbar we were trying to avoid as a great deal of the channel we were travelling in was cordoned off for the laying of gas pipes.  A boat within the cordoned off area came over to us and yelled to us that this channel was closed, we would have to turn around and go down the left channel. Shit, fuck and damn!  Why didn’t the Harbour Control tell me this when I told them where I was going?  I guess I’m not their concern, the container ships are.

 

 

Our track is the yellow line

 

We turned and retraced our path back and just as we hit the point where we needed to turn around, Michael said “we’re heating up… look at the motor”.  I opened the hatch to the motor and was hit with the forceful spray of water.  Our raw water intake pipe had snapped clean off.  Michael stopped the motor and running repairs were required.  The pipe snapped right near the end where it joins to the pump.  As the pipe is copper, not rubber, the pipe was now too short to reach the pump.  Thankfully we had connectors on board so Michael cut a piece of pipe off about two inches long and reattached it with connectors. This bought us about 1 inch and lengthened the pipe enough for it to reach the water pump again.  All of this took about an hour and we were back on our way down the correct channel. 

 

Besides the markers all over Gladstone Harbour being confusing and seemingly making no sense, we managed to get through the Harbour without further incident and made it down to Rodd’s Harbour.  It was getting dark and a storm was approaching so we didn’t push our chances to try to make it to Pancake Creek. 

 

We awoke after the first night to find our anchor had slipped and we’d drifted about 300 metres closer to shore.  We had to move the boat. We didn’t have enough water under us and in a low tide we would’ve been beached.  We decided that despite the weather we would try to make it to Pancake Creek.  We started the motor and hauled the anchor.  I was motoring towards the heads when I noticed we were overheating.   We were in deeper water, Michael dropped the anchor, I turned off the motor and we went to investigate.  Thankfully it was only an airlock in the raw water from the previous day’s repair but the storm had increased in intensity so we decided to stay put for the moment.

 

We got stuck at Rodd’s Harbour for 3 nights. 

 

Rodd’s Harbour to Pancake Creek was a quick, uneventful trip where nothing needed to be patched, fixed or replaced.  We stayed at Pancake Creek for one night and then headed further south to Bundaberg.

 

Pancake Creek to Bundaberg is 66nm but again, they were reasonably uneventful miles.  We saw a whale and had a duck hitch a ride but that was about it. 

 

We spent 3 nights in Bundy, caught up with family and friends and had a carefree time.