Safe and Sound in Brisbane

After a fantastic run down the coast from Mooloolaba, averaging over 7 knots, we're safe and sound back in Brisbane after more than 6 months and 3,100 nautical miles. We're living aboard for a few days as we get house keys back from our tenant and wait for our removal next Tuesday. Can you believe I have to do a removal on my birthday?? I can't! At least Shane's parents have been kind enough to take the squids for a few days and Shane is taking me out to dinner.

Haydee was doing intermittent little dances as we approached Brisbane; she is really excited to be back. While she has loved the trip and living on a boat, she is looking forward to catching up with all her big Year 7 friends. Cam is also keen to see friends and, a little surprisingly, to move back into our house. He was a little disappointed when we told him it would be about a week before he is back in his own bed. Shane is beside himself with excitement about getting back to work in a couple of weeks and particularly looking forward to shaving every day again. We also thoroughly enjoyed going through 6 months of mail today - we love it when utility companies don't do what they say they will then get shirty at you. Love your work, Elgas and AGL.

Hopefully the rest of our re-acquaintance with reality will be gentle, not harsh! Sponsors willing to back us to continue living this lifestyle are most welcome to contact us!!! Please!! Anyone??

40 Miles From Home

Lake Mackenzie, Fraser Island

After restocking the boat once again in Urangan, we did a day tour of Fraser Island. Overall it was a good day although the craziness of our driver, the constant rush we seemed to be in and lunch we were given detracted a wee bit. Highlights included Lake Mackenzie, Eli Creek, 75 Mile Beach and the very cooperative dingo we saw. Cam thinks a 1000-year-old tree we saw was pretty impressive and Haydee loved the "roller coaster", a steep and bumpy downhill stretch our driver took at speed.

Haydee's scooter floatation
device, developed after Cam
took the plunge at Urangan

From Urangan, we sailed down through the Great Sandy Straits, the first leg by day and the second leg by night. I recall kissing the bottom on the way up but we had ample water and no issues on the way back, despite a lack of daylight. It took us a wee while to find an anchorage in the northerly weather we were experiencing and ended up tucked in behind Inskip Point on the mainland opposite the southern end of Fraser. Strong winds early on Thursday prompted us to head further into Pelican Bay behind Inskip Point rather than cross the Wide Bay Bar on Thursday as we had planned. We ended up crossing the bar and sailing into Mooloolaba on Friday. This was the fourth time we've crossed the Wide Bay Bar - one of the most dangerous on the Queensland coast - and it was quite a good crossing, if a bit choppy. Once we cleared the swell caused by the shallows at the bar, our sail to Mooloolaba was beautiful and we made good time.

Haydee and Fid at Mooloolaba Beach

Mooloolaba has a nice marina; people are very friendly and, as you'd hope after 6 months, we got a few comments on how good our shorter crew members are at berthing. We made it across to the surf beach and took the kids boogie boarding this afternoon. While everyone ended up getting dumped at least once (four times in Haydee's case) we all had fun. We're now just 40 miles from home and will be in Brisbane tomorrow afternoon. We all seem to be agreed that we're sad that the trip is over but happy to be home to see friends and family and happy because this 'bashing south' business will be over! It has been absolutely fantastic - strongly recommended, especially for families with kids approaching their teens. Both Haydee and Cameron have benefited immensely from the time we've spent with them, the things they've seen, done and learned, and the responsibilities they've had to take on - from washing up through to keeping the family safe on night passages. Shane has had a ball - he is the least willing to return home and is already planning the next trip - and I've loved spending so much time with Shane and the kids, especially seeing the kids learn, grow and mature. Sadly, Shane is still immature. I wonder what our next big adventure will be?

Back in Civilisation

The kids with a nesting Green turtle

Haydee with a newly-laid
Green Turtle egg

Cam snorkelling at Lady Musgrave Reef

The tasty lobster

We've had no reliable phone or internet coverage for a few days but are now back in civilisation (we're at Urangan at the southern end of Hervey Bay after an overnight sail on Saturday/Sunday) so Happy New Year!! to everyone. We hope everyone had a great new year's eve and will have a happy and safe 2012.

December saw us cover the most ground of any month so far. We're now where we were just one week after leaving Brisbane back in July and expect to be back home within a week. Three-quarters of us are both happy and sad to be nearly home - I think Shane would just keep sailing forever if we could fund this lifestyle and in no way wants to get back to either home or work.

In the 250 nautical miles we've covered since Christmas, we've been back to Great Keppel, once again traversed the Narrows between Curtis Island and the mainland, revisited Pancake Creek (which wasn't as good the second time around in my view) and - the absolute highlight of recent weeks - made it out to beautiful Lady Musgrave Island. Lady Musgrave Island is on the edge of a beautiful coral reef lagoon. We all loved the few days we spent there and had even more special and memorable firsts - we were privileged to see a number of turtles nesting and Shane had his first (but not, I suspect, last) go at spear fishing with a new friend he made. He brought back three sweetlips and a rather tasty lobster. We also visited Lady Elliot where, sadly, we felt more unwelcome than anywhere else; while the island itself is stunning the resort is quite B grade and the staff are surly. Enough said about Lady Elliot.

We're letting someone else worry about tides, cooking, driving, entertaining the kids and what-not tomorrow and have taken the opportunity to book ourselves onto a day-tour of Fraser Island before we continue our run home through the Great Sandy Strait, back across the Wide Bay Bar for the fourth time and down the coast to Brisbane via Mooloolaba.

Before I sign off, I would like to share a little bit about the absolutely horrendous afternoon poor Cam had today - he plans to blog about it soon. You may have seen on Facebook that he somehow ended up in the water at the marina earlier this afternoon. The poor thing was by himself at the time but somehow managed to haul himself out of the water and back to the boat. After a shower, he dropped his clothes in the wash but managed to leave his marina access key locked in laundry. Some idiot in apartments overlooking the marina told him to shut up when he attempted to yell out to us to let him in, making his afternoon just that much worse - good one, winner. From there, he moved onto a minor panic attack about his scooter which was not in its normal storage spot when he went out to get it this afternoon but was, most fortunately, still in the laundry after we transferred his marina clothes to the dryer. And everything was topped off by our top-opening fridge lid dropping on his head after dinner. I'm happy to report that some sympathy and cuddles, an ice block and teddy made everything okay again. What a day; poor buoy, I mean boy!

Our Swirling Vortex of Christmas Death!

Fake lips and plastic moustaches.
God bless cheap Christmas crackers!

The trip from Curlew to the Duke Islands was great in comparison to some of our recent legs back south. We got an early start on Christmas Eve, raising our anchor a little before 5am. The wind had lots of south in it and the tide was strong enough to help us keep our south-east course. We had decent wind (20-25 knots) and waves (to 3m) for the first couple of hours but then the wind and waves dropped off and we had quite a pleasant sail for the next few hours.

Before the carnage.

We were at the Dukes during spring tides, when there is a big difference between tide heights at high and low tides. On top of this, the tides around Shoalwater Bay are renowned for their insanity and I can't recall noticing springs as much as we did at the Dukes. It took us a few tries to find an anchorage and we ended up in a nice deep bay on the south end of Hunter Island. We spent the afternoon there preparing for Santa's arrival and noticed nothing unusual. Shortly after bedtime however the wind picked up and with it the waves. We were rolling like a crazy rolly thing, and sleep for me at least was impossible, although Shane was fine. It calmed down after an hour or so and I nodded off eventually. After pressie-opening the next day, the rocking kicked in again and we went upstairs to discover that we were in a swirling vortex of Christmas death!! Shane calls it "tidal disturbance" but he is very good at minimising. The vortex was small, only 30m or so across. One side of the bay was an island that at low tide was joined to Hunter Island, but at high tide the water coming over the causeway was quite wild - it was the craziest bit of water in the whole massive bay and we were in it. We paused Christmas lunch prep and relocated (because we can!) to a delightfully turtle-infested bay near the cattle station on the west side of Marble Island. It was calm and lovely and we had a fantastic afternoon that involved lots of eating, drinking, reading, card-playing and snoozing. Santa was very kind to everyone - the kids did particularly well although Santa was perhaps a little mean giving them each a Wii game that they can't use until we're home.

Under spinnaker, me at the helm.

From the Dukes, we continued south and on the way managed to do another all-nighter by accident. The wind swung north and we had a fantastic run to Island Head Creek - so good that we decided to chuck the spinnaker up and keep going to Port Clinton. Shortly before arriving at Port Clinton, Haydee and I evicted Shane and Cam into the dinghy and they took some photos and videos of the boat sailing under spinnaker - something that is hard to get.

Port Clinton is barred and Ex-TC Fina kicked up a wicked 3m south-east swell creating massive breakers over the shallows that meant crossing the bar could have been potentially catastrophic, so we didn't. After another family vote (do we night-sail or anchor overnight and head off again in the morning?), we anchored behind a big rock that mostly-protected us from the swell, had dinner, got ready for a night sail and waited for the incoming tide to turn. We set off again just after 10pm and got to Keppel Bay marina a little after 5.30am.

From here, we have less-than-ideal weather to sail south-east but good weather to sail east and so will head to Herron Island via Great Keppel Island then down to Lady Musgrave via Fitzroy Reef to see some turtles nesting and hatching, we hope!!!

All clear

TC Fina didn't have a very long life. We spent yesterday and today sheltered at Curlew Island, about 45nm SE of Mackay. It has provided us good protection from the SE winds and while we have had a little bit of swell, it has not been too uncomfortable. We have managed to keep ourselves very busy doing absolutely nothing!

The winds are forecast to weaken to 15-20kts tomorrow, so despite them still being SE, we will make the move from here SE to the Duke Islands. We will spend Christmas day on the west side of Hunter Island, and get back on schedule by sailing to Island Head Creek on Boxing Day. The low that was Fina will be well south by Monday and the trough should bring a few days of North-ish winds to help us on our three day run south to Rosslyn Bay. Fingers crosssed ...

Bugger - A Cyclone

We've been watching a low way up north for a few days and have experienced it's effects in the form of 20+ knot south-easterly winds - not good when you want to sail south-east. The low defied early predictions and has come south and strengthened into Tropical Cyclone Fina, sitting 800km northeast of Mackay and heading south-west as at 11.00 this morning. We have decided to stay at Curlew Island for one, possibly two, days rather than continue south primarily because Curlew offers excellent protection from south-easterly winds, seas and swell and our next safe haven is 40 miles away in the direction the wind is coming from.

We will continue to have strong winds but we're outside the BoM's affected areas forecast. I would have preferred that any cyclones held off until we were south of Bundaberg but it seems we may be in for some excitement - and a windy Christmas. Here's hoping it is all a big non-event and Fina eases and heads back out to sea as predicted later today!

Christmas Prep

Can you see our dinky Xmas Tree?

As we were packing our house into boxes all those months ago, I came across the Christmas decorations and briefly pondered grabbing some to bring with us. I had more urgent things to think about at the time so they all got packed in boxes in Brisbane. Nonetheless, we've managed to convert the boat into a floating Christmas bauble with tinsel, balloons, a Christmas tree (secured in its place with blue tack) and lights, e-advent calendars (thanks Nanna and Grandad!!) and more kiddy Christmas craft than you could poke a stick at (thank you Aunty Karyn!!). All our Christmas Shopping, both pressies and food, is done - this is possibly the most organised I've ever been, mainly because proximity to shops means we had to be - and I for one am looking forward to pavlovas for dessert on Christmas day!

We plan on being back in the beautiful Duke Islands on Christmas and hope our mobile broadband antenna will let us skype with family and friends.

In any event, merry Christmas to everyone and best wishes for 2012 from all of us!! Take care and we hope to catch up with everyone soon.