We leave Rivergate Marina in Brisbane after cleaning up the boat from our passage and head to the MBTBC Marina in Manly which is just south of the Brisbane River entrance. Manly is a cute small town with a newer marina and everything we need is in walking distance. It even has a great rail system close by for going into the city of Brisbane. We are loving this place. Our first few weeks here are spent getting the lay of the land, checking out the Brisbane area and getting our new generator installed. Yes, I said getting a new generator installed! It's been a long and drawn out ordeal, but thanks to Hylas, Mastervolt and Jaime, we have a brand spanking new generator. It runs so much better than our other one ever did, and we are pretty happy about that as well. The only other cruisers we know around here are Walter and Tigs on Marnie (a classic 60ft.wooden ketch) We have been spending quite a bit of time with them, sharing rental cars and playing tourists. Soon, they will be flying home to the states for the holidays. We will miss them have really enjoyed the time we spent together. We have decided not to fly home in December because we will be shipping Morning Light to Ensenada the end of Jan. via the yacht transport company, Dockwise. After making the trip across the South Pacific, cruisers don't have a lot of options for bringing their boats back the way they came. They either have to keep going west or make the difficult trip back going against the prevailing wind and currents of the Pacific Ocean. It is very hard on the boat, not to mention the crew and not a very pleasant thought to us at all. To keep going west we would head to Indonesia, Thailand and then either up the Red Sea to the Med or go south around Africa. Due to the political climate of certain area (as in piracy) and the fact that neither one of us feels the need to round any "capes", we are taking the easy way out. There's a nautical saying that "nothing goes to weather like a 747" (as in sailing against the wind). We would have liked to have waited until Aug to ship the boat home, but Dockwise is cutting back and canceling that shipping date. Plus, they offered us a reduced price as they still had room for their Jan shipping. They have a great website with video showing how the boats are loaded and transported. www.yacht-transport.com. It was a very difficult decision for us to make, not only for all of the great experiences we have had, but for all of the wonderful new friends that we have made along the way. We won't be moving back on terra-firma for awhile as we plan to keep living aboard and enjoying this life style. At least we will be closer to family and friends.
In the mean time we have been trying our best to see as much of this country as possible. It's a really large country! We have always wanted to come to Australia, even though it is home to the world's most deadly spiders, snakes, jelly fish and sharks. Because it is cyclone season our insurance forbids us from taking our boat much further north than Brisbane, not that we would want to anyway this time of year. Speaking of cyclones, one hit Fiji right before Christmas. We later found out that a cruiser we knew lost his boat when cyclone Mick went right over the top of him. Thankfully both he and his girlfriend escaped with their lives. If you would like to read a short letter he wrote about his ordeal here is the link. www.latitude38.com/lectronic/lectronicday.lasso?date=2009-12-16&dayid=364
We rent a car and drive up the coast. The Great Barrier Reef is high on our list of places to see and experience. We are advised to be extra careful driving at dusk or dawn as that is when the Koala's, Wallabies , Kangaroo's and other assorted strange animals get hit. There is a lot of evidence as we check out all the road kills that we come across and try to identify them. Not an easy job as even the rodents look different here. We stop at Rainbow Beach, named for the rainbow colored sandstone cliffs. It also has huge sand dune area's. From there, we take a 4 WD day trip out to Frasier Island, which is the largest sand island in the world. There is a lot more than just sand comprising the island. Miles of white sandy beaches and dunes are all along the east side while lush rain forests
are in the middle. Throw in a few lakes and it is a very interesting place to see. Our next stop was the town of 1770, named for the year that Captain Cook landed there. And the Great Barrier Reef is just a few miles off shore.
We take a day trip out to Lady Musgrave Island to check out the reef. Although the visibility was not that clear, we still saw lots multi-colored fish and coral. Lady Musgrave Island reminded us of the Tuamotus in French Polynesia. It has a fringing reef circling a small island with a deep lagoon in the middle. As it is the height of the summer season here the further north we go the hotter and more humid it gets so we decide to head south. We take to the road and head inland for our return trip to Brisbane. The scenery is very pretty, with large cattle ranches and farm land amid the rolling hills. We stop in quite a few small towns and feel like we have stepped back into the 50's. Everyone is very friendly and eager to strike up a conversation with the new mates in town. To our delight, we find a Lutheran Church in one the small town of Kingaroy. We attend Sunday services at St. John's Lutheran Church, the same name as our church back home, which makes us homesick.
We stop back at the boat in Brisbane and repack for our trip to Sydney. We plan on being there for New Years. The firework display in the harbor is said to be the biggest and best in the world. We are really excited. We take the coastal route down the coast and are amazed at so many miles and miles of un-crowded white sandy beaches separated only now and then by a river. And of course numerous beach/river towns to explore. Most of the beaches in the heavy tourist areas have shark nets and designated swimming areas, but we are told that the nets are only a deterrent as they don't go all the way to the bottom and the smarter sharks just swim underneath. Hope there's not a lot of smart sharks around. We decide to live dangerously and take our chances in the water with all the other swimmers/surfers. It gets busier the closer we get to Sydney as this is their big season here. Not only is it the Christmas holiday season but also its summer vacation for all the school kids. We spend Christmas in Port
Stephens in an over priced run down motel which was the only place that had a vacancy.
It seems that Port Stephens is a very popular spot with tourists coming from Sydney. Christmas morning we get up early and drive in the rain to go to a Lutheran church only to find out that the church was not longer there. To top off our Christmas fun, we made a booking for Christmas dinner at one of the local hotels as all the restaurants were closed for the day. We decided to make the best of the sleazy motel and no church and enjoy a quiet Christmas dinner together. We got to the restaurant early as we couldn't wait to leave the motel. We were the first ones there and soon we noticed the hotel guests start arriving...in their walkers and wheelchairs! We soon found out that we were at a retirement home. Oh well, the food was good and the residents were very nice to us. Then is was back to the motel to watch TV on one of the five channels that came in decently and listen to our neighbors party till the wee hours. Our last stop before Sydney was the surf town of Manly, (the Manly in New South Wales, not the Manly in Queensland where we live), said to be where surfing in Australia started. The surf was pretty decent while we were there so Jaime made the most of it surfing the famous spot. Hey, and he still has all his appendages. Driving in Sydney is also a very stressful experience, at least for us. The motorways and streets are not marked very well making it hard to know what street you are on and after getting lost a few times finally made it to our hotel.
For our New Year's Eve celebration, we booked the evening aboard the 100ft. gaff-rigged schooner, South Passage. It turned out to be a great decision, as we were in the parade of lights and allowed to go where most of the other boats on the harbor were not allowed to go. At 9pm there was an early fireworks show. It was absolutely amazing as fireworks were launched from the tops of all the buildings in downtown Sydney. We would have been happy if that was it, but we still had the midnight show to look forward to. And what a show it was. We were in the perfect spot with front row seats to the bridge and the Opera House. Fireworks were also launched from barges in the bay and we were right next to one. It was incredible! Fireworks everywhere we turned and the fireworks on the bridge were especially magnificent. Definitely the highlight of our trip. It turns out that South Passage's home port is in Manly, Queensland, and right next to where Morning Light is berthed and plans are made to meet at the Yacht club for beers upon her arrival from down south. I also now have a new Australian sister here, as everyone thinks I look like the girl that runs the South Passage office. There is quite a similarity and not only that, both our names are Christine. We hit is off and were even invited over to "meet the rest of the Christine's family" for a traditional Australia Day lamb BBQ. We have found the Aussie's to be very friendly and hospitable. We even had a taxi driver invite us over for dinner. We hope to one day come back and see more of this country. We now are getting Morning Light ready for her trip home on the big boat. We say goodbye (how many times have we done that?) to our new friends, Dale and Paula on Sunrise who arrived in Manly not long ago. We are saddened by the fact that our South Pacific Adventure is coming to an end, but very thankful that we made it alive, well and in one piece! We look forward to new adventures, just not sure what they will be yet. We also want to thank everyone who has taken an interest in what we have done and taken the time to read about our travels. All the comments, emails, blog postings and prayers were really appreciated.
Before posting this blog, we did put Morning Light on the Dockwise transport vessel.
To be at the loading area at 6am, we had to leave Manly by 3:30am. Paula, on Sunrise,
got up to see us off and helped us with our docklines. Good on ya, Paula, we really appreciated the sendoff. Well.......there was problems with the loading procedures and we didn't load our boat until 10am. We could have slept in!!!!!. 14 boats were loaded including 3 mega yachts and a huge barge. We were the 10th boat to board. All went well with the loading even though we had to back our boat onto the vessel, which sometimes is a real challenge for us. We leave Morning Light in the care of Dockwise until she arrives in Ensenada around March 5th.