28 March onwards
We ended the last blog the day before the Easter holidays while anchored at Pancake Creek. The weather was stunning and we watched the keen local fishermen who have invaded the Creek for the Easter long weekend arrive to unpack their tinnies and set up camps along the beach. There are now several groups camping on the beach and quite a few tinnies whizzing around. Amazing how these single outboard motored boats had launched from somewhere near Tannum Sands and negotiated the seas around the head of the Rodd Peninsular, then into Pancake Creek, bringing all they needed, including fresh water, some staying for ten days. We counted at least five camps. One was set up on an island towards well within Pancake Creek. Another couple of tents at the top spot on the little beach at the head of Chinamans’ Creek, from where at a decent high tide you can enter the Jenny Lind Creek system, a couple of tents just in front of where we were anchored. Yet another camp on the beach at the outer anchorage, where we have heard there is a tap with fresh water, but as we did not check this out, we cannot confirm.
On Saturday afternoon we saw “Wild Thing” out to sea in the distance as she led the fleet in the Brisbane to Gladstone yacht race. Shortly followed by several other racing yachts all flying spinnakers in follow the leader style, in not very challenging conditions.
“Minx” had left to head northwards and was replaced by Terry on another catamaran called “San-e-t”. He is a keen fisherman and crabber and gave us some frozen Spanish Mackerel which Susie used cooking a Red Thai Curry, which was fantastic. We saved a portion of the curried fish for him, and in return Terry gave us three mud crabs.
We took the walk up to the Bustard Head Lighthouse on Easter Sunday, it was very hot day. The track to the lighthouse is getting overgrown with shoulder high weeds in places, it’s about 5 kms round trip passing through a variety of different environments. We noticed many trees down over the track (from ex cyclone Oswald) which required climbing over or under. There were a huge number of butterflies, Susie counted at least thirteen different varieties, not that we could name any of them, we also so saw several monitor lizards of different colours and markings and sizes.
Stuart Buchannan (the last lighthouse keeper) was there for a three week visit to prepare for the grand opening of the lighthouse to the public. You may remember that last year when we visited, Stuart had given us the rare opportunity into and up the lighthouse, prior to its official public opening. This time we remember to take some money so we could visit the museum. Stuart gave us his time for a private tour of both the museum and his house including an amazing collection of photographs before he was to talk a tourist group who had arrived from 1770 on the LARC, so it was a busy day for Stuart with people everywhere.
When we got back Terry called us over and gave us another mud crab and some more fish. Very generous and kind hearted. He’s leaving tomorrow to head north; no doubt we will see him again somewhere.
All day we kept seeing race boats heading towards Gladstone. But then we saw Wild Thing heading southwards, she was heading back even before some of the others had finished.
Except for a couple of the happy camping fishermen, all but one other boat have left, this now being Easter Monday (1st April) we are staying put as it has been so restful. That is not to say that chores have been not been done ie. the washing, the ironing, bread and yoghurt making, biscuits etc. Eventually the outer anchorage began to fill with returning race boats including the sail training schooner “North Passage”, who more than probably had the ladies of the charity “Red Kite” aboard returning to Brisbane, the charity women do the race every year.
German friends, Carsten & Mercedes on their boat “Forty Two” arrived. It was good to catch up with them and see how the repairs to the hull had turned out. The loads from the mast stays had caused the sides of the boat to deflect (old fibreglass boat). While Carsten & Mercedes were away in Germany, when we were in Tin Can Bay Marina, Having loosened the rigging, I had been visiting their boat every few days to tighten up an Acrow prop which was being used to push the boat back to its correct shape.
In all we spent 13 nights at Pancake Creek, during which time we had 4-5 days of blasting south east winds of 30+knots that kept us in the creek rather longer than anticipated. Pancake Creek is such a safe anchorage but it gets a bit trying over time as the boat sails around a bit in the wind from one direction and the tide from the other for two periods of each day.
When conditions and tides eased we moved into the outer anchorage in preparation to leaving Pancake Creek. Our plans were to head towards Targine Creek before the Narrows. Initially we sailed nicely against the tide but later in the early afternoon the wind dropped so on with the iron foresail.
Heading towards Gladstone is always interesting because of the number of ships in the area. We made the mandatory call to Gladstone Harbour Control to advise them of our intentions, there were no major ship movements due. En route we changed our plans and decided to head into Gladstone Marina.
We have not been to Gladstone or the Marina before and were pleasantly surprised how neat and tidy all the gardens and buildings appeared, the staff were helpful and helped us tie up and gave us keys etc. Then surprisingly, (they had planned to visit Colosseum inlet but also changed their minds) “Forty Two” came in a couple of hours behind us and after much needed showers we all had dinner at the Yacht Club. The food was average, ho-hum. A Praying Mantis joined us while we had dinner, which was fun.
We hired a car for a day and did the shopping, got our flu jabs and went to a couple of tourist spots before heading to Tannum Sands for a pub lunch and returning the car. There are several free tours of major industries available in Gladstone but these were booked out because of the Easter school holidays, next time, maybe. But we did book ourselves on a harbour cruise, this sounds silly as we already have a boat but the tour guide was very informative and the 2.5 hour trip was well worth it. There are billions of dollars being spent on four separate LNG plants as well as more coal loading and other infrastructure. We even talked about buying some “hi vis” shirts at St Vinnies, so we would not stick out so much…..
There are more strong wind warnings and rain forecast but these appeared to be worse offshore and as we need to get over the shallows in the Narrows we needed to leave or we would have missed the opportunity. We left the Marina at 6 am to catch the tide through the Narrows, we made good time through the harbour and had to slow down so as not to arrive too early. Susie kept a log of our depths as we went, the least depth we had was 2.40 metres, we need 1.80 metres. Not only is it narrow it is very shallow, in fact at the lowest tide of the year the place where we had 2.40 metres is out of the water by 2.0 metres!
Transiting Gladstone Harbour and the Narrows is always a bit stressful, with the harbour traffic and dredgers etc. followed by the Narrows so we were relieved to get to the other end and find a sheltered anchorage to hide from the strong wind. Barker Creek became our home for the next few nights. Local crab fisherman passed us twice a day and other that we saw no one. We tried our crab pot and nearly lost it, just by chance I went outside during the evening just in time to see our float going past us with the rising tide, it was rescued but whoever had been trying to open the cat food tin inside decided to leave. It was a big change of scenery from the sands of Pancake Creek to the Cityscape of Gladstone and now the greasy brown banks of Barker Creek.
Watching the weather again, we’ve had wind blowing at 35knots. Gale warnings and strong wind warnings again.
I made another batch of ginger beer (non alcoholic), managing to bottled it before leaving. Eventually the inshore winds abated, enough for us to head towards Great Keppel Island. We had a pleasant sail, particularly earlier in the day with the winds once again abating during the afternoon. On with the iron foresail. This was not supposed to happen! The forecast was for 20-25 knots!
We anchored off the old resort (soon to be renovated) on the western side where other boats were gently pitching. It looked like a better option than around the other side of the island is usually rolly. Then just after dark the wind started, 20-25 knots.
After an uncomfortable night with little sleep, we moved to Svendsens Beach on the northern side which was quite pleasant, before motoring across to Rosslyn Bay for a week in the Keppel Bay Marina. This was our 1st mail stop since leaving Tin Can Bay Marina, although we did have some mail forwarded to Urangan.
We caught up with an acquaintance, Howard who has two boats. He commutes by car between Rosslyn Bay and Townsville, convenient for his work. Howard offered to drive us to Rockhampton as the car needed new tyres, so we went along for the ride doing a little shopping on the way. While we were in Rosslyn Bay “Water Music” had a good wash down. It was a waste of time, the swallows were too numerous especially at sundown, the photo of the boat nearby with the eye painted on the hull shows the little pests.
Again we hired a car and drove to Mt Morgan, about 30 kms SW of Rockhampton where we joined a tour of the old mine site (gold, silver, copper). The start of the tour at the old Mt Morgan rail station was also the meeting place for the Queensland Riley car club rally. There were seven 1950-1953 Riley’s which Susie recalls from her childhood in WA that her Grandfather had one, she has a photo of herself posing with her Mother, little sister and great grandmother. Also there was a One Five Five maroon Riley which my mother used to drive. The memories!
On the way to the mine we were given a tour of the town and Susie even walked across the reproduction suspension bridge while it wobbled and bounced around. There were once three of these. They were needed to cross the deep valleys around the town and get to the mine. The open cut pit now contains a lot of acidic water Ph 3 caused not only by the exposure of the acid sulphate soils and by the processing of the precious metals. The creeks downstream of the mine site look like something you might expect to see in a third world country. Queensland Government is slowly undertaking remediation of the mine site but it covers a huge area and getting something to grow in the harsh environment nutrient lacking in soil is hard. We both enjoyed the tour and collected samples of Fool’s Gold.
More shopping, this time fresh produce as our next planned access to shops will be Airlie Beach in 3-4 weeks. An early start before dawn we headed out for the 56 mile trip to Island Head Creek. A good sail with poled out genoa until the wind died at about 3pm. Our usual stopover at Port Clinton was unavailable due to military exercises. At Island Head Creek we met some people on a syndicated (timeshare) Lightwave 38’ boat who were mad keen fishermen. They generously shared their catch of Black Dewfish (Red Thai curry for dinner).
The promise of fair winds drew us out, after an early start we headed towards our next destination of Marble Island in the Duke Group, all went well until the tide changed and then it was a struggle to make 4 knots at times. So decided to go onto the Percy Islands, 50 miles northwest. It was three days before the full moon and big tides were expected. We found changing course to the north increased our speed, and with more revs, we headed for White’s Bay on Middle Percy Island. The winds were forecast for light NW to NE. After 10 hours motoring we anchored in White’s Bay which is rarely visited because it is used in northerly winds, only a slight swell entered the bay and we had a reasonably good night.
Following a request from a friend relayed via Tony’s Net, we motored around to West Bay to buy honey from the farmer, paying careful attention when we re-anchored as the expected tidal range was for a massive 6.20 metres. The famous Percy Hilton is an amazing collection of boat bits left behind by visiting yachties over many years, due to the light winds of the previous few days the usually rolly anchorage was calm and very pleasant. In actual fact it was glorious. After visiting the Hilton we took the dinghy into the natural harbour behind the beach, it is only accessible at high tide and is almost landlocked.
The forecast for the next day was for increasing SE winds, we set off at 05.15am in the dark on calm seas flat seas. We motored all day, 20mins before we reached our destination of Scawfell Island, suddenly the wind came, 20-25kts. Very sad BOM, you got it wrong again! We had motored 60 miles with hardly a breath. The trolling line had a big hit, broke off a hook and scarred the lure but no fish.
Forecast for 20-25 knots for the next three days, I wonder if they are right this time? They got it right, it blew! We stayed at Scawfell for 1 night only, it is a steep island and in strong weather the bullets of wind keep coming and make the boats swing around as the tidal flow and wind compete for supremacy. The swell creeping in, the rolly became quite uncomfortable.
We left Scawfell, sailed the 32 miles to Goldsmith Island in gusts up to 25 knots and occasional light showers. En route we received our first decent internet signal and downloaded 34 emails. The last email we received just before we entered Island Head Creek on 21 April, four days prior. Goldsmith is snug and is safe in a SE wind, unfortunately there was more of a southerly element in the wind which caused some swell to enter the bay and make it rolly so after one night we headed off again towards Whitsunday Island but diverted to Shaw Island instead, we were not enjoying the 20-25 wind and showers. We anchored in Burning Point Bay with little swell but there is no escape from the wind, at least the island is not too high so we do not get “bullets”. Across the water we can see the old Club Med Resort on Lindeman Island, now defunct but has been bought and one wonders what will happen to it. We have sighted dugongs on several occasions but not much bird life.
The weather has been very ordinary and we are so over winds of 25knots. It seems that we have strong and gale force winds every 20 days or so. The forecast for the next few days is for increasing winds. And now there is the possibility of a late cyclone developing near PNG. All the models indicate the cyclone should stay north of Cairns. We will monitor carefully. Monday 29 April.