Here at the beautiful Garry's Anchorage in the Great Sandy Straits.

Up at dawn. Mooloolaba looks very different in daylight. Spectacular place to spend the night.

A bit of swell rounding the headland but once clear of land the sea calmed and allowed some very nice sailing.

After a calm but short night we are up at 5:00am. After a coffee and a quick bit to eat we set off for the infamous Wide Bay Bar.

We headed out across the bar exactly at high tide. A 0.5 to 1m swell was rolling across the bar but which was absolutely nothing to worry about. After being apprehensive about this bit of the trip for the last 3 months it was quite a relief. In fact conditions were worse as we went further offshore - the seas not large but just lumpy and confused

Left Urangan boat harbour - not my favorite marina! Very unpleasant seas crossing north of Big Woody Island. Short, steep choppy waves.

But as soon as we turned south and set the sails we raced along with tide and wind behind us. We timed high tide beautifully so that the tide turned as we reached the shallow section. From there the ebb flowed south and so we had the tide and wind with us the whole day.

With Dennis

The forecast is for wind to ease to 20-25 kts and seas to drop from 3 to 2.4m. Not great conditions but better. So I decided to at least head out and see if things are better. So, we were up at 5:30 and out in the bay by 6:00, just after high tide. The waves in the bay are still huge but not as bad as the last time. progress out of the bay is really slow - 3 kts at best even with the motor flat out. At this rate we wouldn't get to Yeppoon until well after dark. Not a nice thought given the conditions. I gave the headland a very wide berth but the steep waves extended out a long way. By the time we were about a mile offshore the waves were still big with the occasional huge breaking roller but no where near as steep so much more manageable. Wind was only about 20kts. We put some sail up absolutely close hauled with the wind about 25-30 degrees off the port bow. this managed to increase the speed to about 4.5 kts which was still not quite enough to cover the 45 miles to Yeppoon. However once past the cape we turned further south and our speed picked up to about 5.5kts. We still needed to motor sail but at least we would get there before dark. We had intermittant rain the whole day but by afternoon it had eased considerably. The seas had calmed too but still quite lumpy. We arrived at Yeppoon boat harbour at about 5:30