As a result of the pandemic, we have remained in Australia sufficiently long that we feel as though we have become quite well-practiced at certain things. For example, asking for a 'berth' at a marina rather than a 'slip' and crossing familiar river bars. While complacency about terminology is not likely to be dangerous, the same cannot be said for crossing river bars.

Thus, when we left Mooloolaba Marina in the dark at 4 am on Sunday (9th May), we were very thankful that the wind was light and the ocean swell was only about 1 m (3 feet) high. As we approached the end of the harbor channel and passed the breakwaters, it was a great relief to see only small unbroken waves crossing the bar ahead of us.

The light winds were not forecast to increase much during the day which meant that we were committed to motor-sailing the 55 nm to the Wide Bay Bar (WBB) at the south end of Fraser Island. Waiting for stronger southerly winds did not feel like a good option for us as we had spent enough time (and $$$) in the Mooloolaba Marina, and the crowded anchorage in the Mooloolah River is not much fun. We were obviously not the only people to feel that it was a good time to head north because we soon found ourselves leading a parade of six other boats. Rather to our surprise, only two of them followed us cross WBB, the others stopping at Double Island Point or continuing around the ocean side of Fraser Island.

Staying fairly close to shore, the southerly flowing East Australian Current had little effect on us, so we arrived a bit earlier than intended at Wide Bay Bar. With the light (5 knot) easterly winds and slow, southeasterly 1-m swell, we decided that rather than wait 50 minutes until the mid-rising tide, we would go ahead across the bar. Maybe this was being a bit complacent...

We made it through without incident but it was a much tenser experience than we expected. Although there was plenty of depth over the bar for our draft, it was shallow enough to make the swell-waves steepen sharply. Coming from 4 to 5 o'clock on Tregoning (if the bow is 12 o'clock), some of these waves pushed Tregoning's stern around fairly smartly. She was able to recover her course before the next wave, but some of them looked very likely to break as they reached us which could have been a bit messier. One or two waves did break across the bar far behind us (this is harder to see ahead). Even though they were not deep walls of broken water and would have been easily survivable, they would have been a bit alarming. And once we had safely crossed the bar and had made the sharp turn to head into the gap between Fraser Island (north) and Inskip Point, the "Mad Mile" was quite bouncy with the flooding tide, residue of swell, and easterly chop. Yes, we had been a bit too complacent about how benign the WBB looked, and we should have waited, at least, another hour to be closer to high tide slack.



Australian pelicans and pied cormorants on the sand islet next to the anchorages in Pelican Bay

A little chastened but glad that we had arrived in the Great Sandy Strait, we anchored at Pelican Bay. There were only two other boats there (often there are many boats waiting to cross WBB or recovering from an overnight passage from the south) and we enjoyed a restful calm night.

It was so calm that we awoke the next morning to thick fog. Luckily, we were in no hurry to move but we felt very sympathetic to the group of boats that we could see on AIS were approaching WBB. Going through the bar when you cannot see the waves far ahead or approaching from behind must be very nerve-wracking.



The neighboring boat just looms out of the fog at Pelican Bay while the catamaran just beyond is still hidden

Once the fog had burned-off in the morning sunshine, we raised the anchor and set-off in a southerly direction. We have never visited the inlet south of Pelican Bay before, always scurrying north to Garry's Anchorage once we have crossed WBB. As part of our effort to revive our spirit of exploration and find new anchorages, we were both rather excited to delve deeper into Tin Can Inlet. If nothing else, we wanted to learn why this large estuary had such a comical sounding name.