Things happen for a reason, or so "they" say. So, as we slowly drifted away from Great Keppel Island en route to Mackay, Uwe was excitedly in the midst of hoisting the gennaker for the first time in years and I went down below to check our position on the electronic chart where I was greeted with a blank computer screen.
I tried to turn it back on, nope, still blank. I checked the outlet underneath and realized that the surge protector unit was off. Hmmm, strange occurrence indeed! I switched the unit back on, tried to power the computer on again, still nothing-frozen, damn it. Tried some more tricks, but to no avail. What was the reason?
Time to pull out the backup computer, delighted I was at how prepared we were for the inevitable failure of technology. Then I cursed and cursed again, silently of course, firstly at Microsoft, and then at myself. You see, our backup computer I was about to sell at the next port, since it's VISTASTER (microsoft vista) and is not compatible with our electronic charts (even though we were assured it would be). For many frustrating weeks, we tried to make it work without success. We realized we had to replace it with a new XP computer, in the unlikely event that our main computer failed. And we would have done so at Mackay. Okay, still no worries as they say here in the land down under. We proceeded to the next backup: good old paper charts, and since we acquired a big roll of charts just recently, we dug into our underwear, locker that is, to pull them out. Egypt was there, the Red Sea too, all of Indonesia, Thailand, Pirateland, hell, I'm sure we even had Mars, but no sign of East coast Australia existed. Oh man! All backup ideas were exhausted.
We did have the correct bearing to go to Mackay, but the lord threw a lot of reefs and islands in our way. The islands we could pick up at night with the radar but not the hidden reefs. So, should we or should we not continue under such lovely sailing conditions? Was it meant to be? Being the prudent individuals that we are, the answer was clear:NO.
We called our friends from Pacamama to tell them that we will now come into Keppel Bay Marina along with them after all, only 6 miles away, and they told us they would sail real slow and we could follow their trail inside.
As we made our turn, Uwe noticed a fish on the line, but we continued our turn and let the fish hang on while we did our maneuver which required a jibe, which required all kinds of special gennaker handling which unfortunately pushed us towards the rocks of North Keppel Island. Eventually we completed the jibe but the wind did not allow us to fly the gennaker anymore. So it had to come down. We were forced to turn on the engine, we tried to pull out the jib, which wouldn't come out as it was tangled up with some gennaker lines. We sorted that out, and then had the jib up and it was time to pull in the fish. Uwe pulled the fish close enough to the boat to take a good look at it; it was a metre plus, was brown, moved like a shark but didn't look like one, and boom, for no reason it was gone.
Super disappointed, we reached the harbor entrance where we discovered the jib would not roll in because the gennaker halyard was rolled around the top of the furler preventing it from turning. Surely, there had to be some unreasonable magnetic field around us to explain this?
But the weirdness of the day was not yet over. The lady told us to go to slip F1, between the blue and red poles. We followed the instructions that led us to a slip small enough to tie up the dinghy. That was not meant to be. After a few phone calls to the lady at the marina she sent us for a spin around the marina assuring us that we had been assigned the correct slip. We were convinced she was either completely mental or suffered from some form of dock dyslexia. To the amazement of all those persons watching us go and back and forth between the fingers, we pulled into a vacant slip next to Pacamama, blaming our meandering around the marina on the incompetence of the marina staff.
We were both dying to go up there and give her a big spiel on her ineffectual directions. Again, it was not meant to be. A friendly gentleman greeted us and was curious as to the name of the lady we spoke to since there was no lady working in their office. Much to our embarassement and his amusement we had communicated with the marina at Mackay.
And so, while we sit here and enjoy our dinner, and reflect upon the day behind us, with Kara delighted to be reunited with her friends Salina and Andrea from Pacamama, we can only assume that being here in Yeppoon was meant to be, which is quite nice by the way.