After nearly 10 days sitting at Mooloolaba waiting for conditions on the Wide Bay Bar to improve all seemed good to go and so we, together with a few other boats who had also been waiting, made the move on Saturday night for the 15 hour sail – timed to cross the bar nearing high tide with the minimum of tidal run out.

We had an AWFUL trip up - really messy 2 mt swells hitting our aft starboard quarter (back right hand side) with winds doing the same. It was the worst point of sail for us and it was hard to get a sail plan that worked - and being a dark night we couldn't see the swells coming so weren’t able to counteract them on the helm. To make matters worse, our Autohelm which works with our Fleming self steering hasn’t been working and so one of us had to be on the helm the whole time.

I ended up throwing up a number of times – basically every time I had to go down to plot our position on the chart, or try to answer a radio call from other boats traveling up. But, after 14 hours we made it to the entrance to the bar.

The Wide Bay Bar is reputed to be the worst in Australia. Conditions when we crossed really weren’t too bad although a swell was running which made it somewhat interesting at times! One difficulty with the bar is that it extends for about 3.3 nautical miles (over 6 km) with a 90° turn in the middle – which meant we were then taking the swells on the side. It also has breakers on both sides although fortunately they were subdued when we came in this time. Ken did really well bringing us in.

So after 15 hours we got to drop the pick (anchor) again. We were pretty exhausted, and with the conditions we didn’t get to do watches so there was no sleep – but adrenalin keeps you going! (And for those of you following Cedric, he’s quite the seafarer, did much better than the rest of us, and slept all the way.)

Its amazing what a good feed and sleep can do (neither of us could stomach any food or drink the whole way). And now the weather is gorgeous, the Strait is so beautiful – photos really cannot do justice to the 360° panorama of smooth waters, low islands and enormous sky. The Straits lie behind Fraser Island (at 120 kms long the largest sand island in the world). We’ve just been sitting watching the stars, with a half moon getting ready to set and electrical storms off to the south.

On another note, I’ve been trying to learn to bake biscuits (never done it in my adult life). So someone kindly shared her recipe for ginger snaps and I’ve had a few attempts – Ken called the first batch “ginger bends” – there wasn’t a snap to be heard. He labelled the next batch “ginger cakes” – I had stupidly tried adding extra self raising flour. At last, triumph and I’ve finally managed to produce ginger “snaps”.

Well that’s us done for the moment - we expect to continue moving north over the next few days.