Meryl Grandy

It was the perfect place to sit and give Karen time to get over the dreaded flu. It’s extremely well protected from all wind directions and has very good holding. The reasonably wide expanse of water between the two islands narrows dramatically at low tide as the extensive sand/mud banks appear but there was more than ample room for the five or six boats present to spread well out.

 

Rob put the crab pots out and we were rewarded with a nice feed of sand crab. We also caught three massive mud crabs in the pots but unfortunately all were female and had to be released back into the water. One with only a right claw was so keen on our bait she came back for seconds and was back in one of the pots when we pulled them next morning.

On the second morning at the anchorage, Rob fired the engine up to charge the batteries and discovered no cooling water coming out of the exhaust. A quick check of the sea water intake strainer found only a small amount of weed. It was not enough to restrict the flow much but we cleaned it out and began digging deeper. The brand new sea water pump impeller had disintegrated after only seventeen hours running. We can only guess that we’d sucked a jelly fish or something similar into the water intake when the engine was run the night before and the pump had run dry for a while. Three hours work later, almost all the pieces of impeller vanes had been recovered from throughout the cooling system, a new one installed and all good again with the engine. The rest of Rob’s afternoon was then spent unblocking the forward head (toilet) which had chosen this moment to stop flushing. After all, the popular definition of cruising is “Fixing things on your boat in exotic locations.”

We stayed three peaceful nights at Gary’s Anchorage by which time Karen was on the mend and we could resume our travels through the Great Sandy Straights on the Wednesday morning. Next stop was Kingfisher Bay Resort further up the western shore of Fraser Island. To get there we had to back track a little out of Gary’s and then wind our way up through some narrow and, in places, very shallow channels. The charts showed two spots we had to cross with depths of less than a metre at lowest tide. As we draw 1.5 metres we timed our run so as to be crossing these about ninety minutes before the high when there should be at least 2.5 to 3.0 metres of water under us. If we did happen to get it wrong and touch bottom, at least the tide would still be rising so hopefully we would be able to get back off OK.

It all worked to plan and we found we never had less than three metres under us, however, at one of the shallowest spots, we did find the route recommended by our Navionics chart went the wrong side of a marker and would have had us aground if we had followed it.

After clearing the narrow bits under motor, we enjoyed getting some canvas out and sailing along the Fraser coast the rest of the way. Four hours and twenty minutes was all it took for the run up to our new anchorage off Kingfisher Bay Resort. It’s quite a pretty spot but the shore does shelve quickly so a bit of care is needed anchoring. We dropped in 8 metres and held fine with plenty of swing room to the sandbanks.

Rob enjoyed a peaceful afternoon in the sunshine but Karen was obviously well on the mend as she got industrious whipping up a batch of fresh pumpkin scones for snacks and a fantasticRack of Lamb crusted in Pistachio, Parmesan and Scarborough fair Balsamic Vinegar for dinner. After a few days of Rob’s cooking it was a very welcome reappearance of the Queen of the Galley.

It was tempting to stay a while at Kingfisher but after being stationary in Gary’s Anchorage we kept moving on Thursday morning across to the mainland for a visit with our former neighbour in East Coast Marina at Manly, Barry Poole on his fly bridge cruiser Marking Time. He now has his boat in the marina at Hervey Bay. The trip saw us having a great downwind sail north west through the channel between Little and Big Woody Islands before needing to round the sandbanks and head back south to Hervey Bay. It was painful to have to roll the sails away and motor directly into what had blown up to a 25 knot headwind. The wind and waves also caused some pretty slow going with the boat down to just two knots over the ground at times.

The same wind also made things a little exciting manoeuvring into our berth in the marina. Our heart rates were certainly up as we approached the dock with more speed than normal to overcome the gusting breeze but with Barry on hand to take our lines we made it with no damage done.

A great catch up followed with cool drinks, plenty of tall tales and frivolity followed by a boaties progressive dinner.  Karen laid on an entrée of fresh pumpkin soup, followed by prawn mornay pasta on Our Dreamtime before we moved onto Marking Time where Barry had prepared his signature self saucing hot pudding with fresh cream. The evening was rounded off nicely with a Port or two. All very civilised for cruisers.

The next day Barry was good enough to run us into a nearby discount service station where we were able to refill our jerry cans with diesel at $1.08 per litre. Quite a saving compared to $1.45 at the fuel dock in the marina. We also made a stop at a chandlery before driving up to nearby Burrum Heads for some sightseeing and having a nice lunch by the water at Toogum. Thanks Barry. It was a fantastic visit.