Close Encounters

Another blog from Symphony’s intrepid crew!

The Wide Bay Bar

My last blog concluded with us heading for the Wide Bay Bar – the most notorious bar (and deservedly so) on the east coast of Australia. The Wide Bay Bar is at the southern-most point of Fraser Island, allowing passage into the Great Sandy Straits – the beautiful waterways between Fraser Island and the mainland.  There’re not too many mariners, no matter how experienced, who don’t feel at least a little nervous when approaching the  Wide Bay Bar.  Beacon to Beacon, the popular Queensland navigation directory, has a note on the Wide Bay Bar page:

Caution – crossing Wide Bay Bar should not be attempted without local knowledge.  Conditions on the bar can vary rapidly with changes in tide height and direction, ocean swell and prevailing winds.  Extreme caution should be exercised when crossing the bar … Ebb tide combined with a south east swell or sea may cause significant waves to form on the bar and break on the adjacent banks. 

And seriously, any bar with a section called the ‘Mad Mile’ should be respected!  To me, the Wide Bay Bar is kind of like a wild tiger.  You can be prepared, but you’re never quite sure what to expect.  Maybe it will be asleep and you can just sneak past…  Or maybe it will have its claws unsheathed, mouth twisted into a snarl, ready to spring.  And so we approached…

The seas swirled and built.  The swell seemed to be coming from all directions.  Three metre waves were breaking on either side of the crossing; big rolling tubes of white foam, threatening to engulf our boat at any moment and smash us to pieces.  Jamie and I huddled in our lifejackets in the cockpit as salt spray stung our faces and the waves roared by like wild beasts.  Graeme clung to the wheel, grey-faced, water streaming from his wet-weather gear, edging us ever deeper into the white walls of water. The boat was tossed about like a bath toy and I watched my potted herbs go over the side, swallowed by the frothing water, followed by the cockpit cushions and a bundle of ropes.  As a huge tsunami of water tumbled towards the boat, Graeme looked at me with terror in his eyes and yelled above the roaring seas, ‘Sorry honey, guess this wasn’t such a good idea after all!’

Nah.

Only kidding.

None of that happened.  There were no huge seas or breaking waves. I didn’t even lose my herbs. It was the most placid we’ve ever seen the bar.  Yep, the nasty tigey-wigey had gone beddy-bye-byes.

So, what really happened?

Given its dynamic nature, the channels and safest approaches through the bar shift and change.  So, anyone attempting the bar needs to request the GPS way-points over the VHF radio from the Coast Guard based at Tin Can Bay.  (That’s the bit about gaining ‘local knowledge’.)  We like to be well prepared for these moments of ‘extreme sailing’, so we’d checked the tides, swells, wave heights and wind predictions using almost every app known to mariners.  We chose a day when conditions were forecast to be optimal, and set off from Mooloolaba (as previously mentioned) to arrive a couple of hours before high tide.  It all went beautifully to plan.  We found ourselves sailing along with another couple of boats and one of them called on the VHF to see if anyone else was planning to cross the bar.  We confirmed our intentions and, all of a sudden, we were ‘sailing in company’ with a boat called John Barleycorn.

These things are always less worrying when attempted with someone else.  Graeme entered the way-points into the navigation system and we all followed them in.  That’s pretty much it.  Things were so darn quiet the volunteer at Tin Can Bay Coast Guard stopped answering our radio calls.  We figured he must have knocked off early and gone fishing.

We didn’t have much time before we lost the light, so we anchored at Elbow Point and our new friends from John Barleycorn, the delightful Steve and Helen from Fremantle, came over to ‘knock the froth off a beer or two’.  Turns out they left Fremantle in January in their full keel, steel boat, sailed around the bottom and are ever so grateful they no longer have to wear their beanies.

Yes, the weather is certainly getting warmer as we move north, and we’ve put all our winter clothes away too.  Shorts and bare feet are now the go.

Great Sandy Straits

We were underway the next morning by 7am, for a quick run up to a spot just beyond the popular Garry’s Anchorage with the last of the rising tide.  It was time to try out some of the fishing gear (we’ve been trolling from the yacht with no success as yet) so we decided to troll from the dinghy. (We’re pretty lazy fishers, really.)  Well, it was quite a bit of fun and I even caught two Queensland schooling mackerel.  Schooling mackerel need to be a minimum of 50cm (they make ‘em big up here) so our little 30cm fellas had to be kissed and thrown back.  Thanks to our nephew James for the loan of a great rod and reel. It works!

There are loads of turtles around these parts, popping their heads up for a look around then darting away when they realise they’re being watched.  We also startled our first dugong.  Those things erupt from the water like small mountains.  We launched the kayak for the first time, and I went for a paddle to soak up some of the serenity.  Gorgeous area.

The Eye of the Needle

Alarm at 0600.  AGAIN.  But necessary.  The next stretch of the Straits involves passing through the Eye of the Needle, a treacherously shallow section where you really have to play the tides and thread your way along watching your position and the depth at all times.  The skipper managed to get it exactly right. Not that he wasn’t a little white-knuckled at times!  I think the shallowest it got was 3m, which means we still had 800mm under our keel.  We stopped for breakfast at South White Cliffs then continued up the Straits then into Susan River, a small river that shares the same mouth as the bigger Mary River.

(Here are a few pics of the Straits when we were going through; so very placid. We were so early that we caught the pelicans still sleeping.  They looked like they were headless!)

Susan River

Kind of nice having a river named after me. 😉
The northern bank of Susan River is flanked by a peninsula of land called North Head, and has a small settlement (big houses with nice water views) called River Head (probably an outer suburb of Urangan). Both Graeme and I had a sense of unease as we headed into the anchorage.  There was a strong current from the tide which was against the wind, making for an interesting spot to anchor.  We decided this would just be a quick stop – we would just stay to grab a few things at the local shop and be on our way.  The sky was clouding over and rain was predicted.  The first of our trip so far.  Graeme dropped Jamie and me at the boat ramp and went back to Symphony to keep an eye on things back there.  The shop was a bit more than a kilometre but I had my trusty (slightly rusty and held together with cable ties) grandma shopping trolley.  We were not impressed by the local IGA, which was trying to stock everything from clothes to fishing gear but not much of anything else.  (Jamie was disappointed the ‘bell tower’ outside the shops didn’t have a bell.  I couldn’t convince him it was just a ‘sign tower’ – he kept asking the shopkeeper where the bell was.)  Came away with only about half my shopping list.  On the return walk it started to sprinkle.  We arrived back at the boat ramp to discover a small crowd had gathered, looking out to the water, phone cameras ready.

‘There’s a whale just up there in the river,’ a fellow said to us.  Graeme arrived.  Avoiding fishing lines, we stuffed the shopping into the dinghy and clambered aboard.  The rain started to get heavier.  A fellow from a fishing runabout called Baited Breath (who had been fishing near us earlier) called out to us that he’d left a mud crab on our boat.  He’d only caught one, and one simply wasn’t enough to bother taking home.

‘Welcome to Queensland!’ he called, grinning, as he motored away.

The Susan River Whale

There certainly was a whale just up there in the river.  It was right near our boat, actually.  Closest a whale had ever been to our boat and we weren’t even on board!  We motored back to the boat but the whale had moved further into the river.  We found our mud crab – what a beauty – and stowed the shopping, keeping an eye on the tell-tale signs of the whale beyond the furthest moored boats.  There were a couple of tinnies following the whale around.  We didn’t know if they were trying to herd it back out of the river or just capture the unusual moment with their camera phones. Eventually, the whale decided it had done enough exploring and headed our way again.  It came up just off the stern to port, and I managed a blurry photo – but this gives some idea of how close it was and it was the best I could do in the adrenalin-filled moment.

As we scrambled to get up on deck to watch it, it came up so close to our port side that we couldn’t see it from our position on the coach house roof.  Fellow in the tinny was yelling, ‘It’s right there on your port side!’  It then dived right under our boat, and we held on, wondering if it would hit us.  We were only anchored in about 6 metres of water.  It came up again well off our starboard side and continued into the bay.  The show was over.

The Mud Crab

After all the whale action, we decided to tackle the mud crab. Literally.  Not having had much success crabbing in the past, we had ditched our crab pots and the pot to cook them in.  All I had was a big saucepan.  We weren’t sure he was going to fit.

Graeme lassoed a claw while I got the pot ready with boiling water.  Well, he didn’t want to go in.  Can’t understand why!  It was quite the contest.  Graeme prodded him in with a long stick. I held the saucepan lid like a shield.  Finally got him in and got the lid on, then had to poke his legs in.  Apologies to anyone who thinks this was a bit inhumane.  I did attempt to stroke him – I believe that helps ‘put them to sleep’, but his claws were enormous and he didn’t seem to want to be stroked.  It was all over very quickly, I promise. We got him back on the heat and pretty soon we were enjoying our first mud crab of the trip.  He was divine.

Consumed as we were with devouring the crab, we failed to notice the boat was being invaded by mozzies. (Maybe they were from Greenpeace?) We spent quite a bit of time killing the blighters and making sure no more could get in.  The rain continued and because of all the dramas it was well after dark and too late to go anywhere else.  It ended up being a very quiet night, with the rain pattering on the roof.  Not sure what we’d been worried about.

Monday morning (rather late) we weighed anchor and headed back out into the Straits.  We watched dolphins playing in the shallows, then, wonder of wonders, watched a spotted eagle ray leap out of the water right next to our boat.

A few hours later we anchored off the Kingfisher Resort on Fraser Island.  Tough area to anchor due to a steep shoaling shoreline, so you might anchor in 7 metres but then the boat will be sitting in 17 metres.  Certainly makes it a tough gig for the Rocna. We were rocking and rolling around with current and wind 90 degrees to each other.

Kingfisher Resort, Fraser Island

We went ashore mid-afternoon – probably wasn’t a good idea.  First sign: conditions were too rough to manhandle the heavy 9.8hp outboard onto the dinghy, so Graeme put on the much lighter 3.5hp.  Of course, the 3.5hp goes much slower through the water… and it was ‘farting around’ (in Graeme-speak).  We could get it running but when we’d try to put it into gear it would stall.   It was a bit of a hairy ride to shore when we finally got it going, dodging waves and trying not to get swamped.  Once ashore, we pulled the boat well above the high tide mark near the bar on the jetty.  Kingfisher Resort really is a lovely place (what we’ve seen of it), with an expansive wooden deck and plenty of shady trees, and an eco-friendly roof-line created to emulate Fraser’s many sand-dunes.  The resort has a reputation as ‘friendly to yachties’ because they welcome us to use their facilities – pool, bar, restaurant, showers… Well, that’s all very nice but I’m pretty sure the women’s shower has been ‘out of order’ for years.  So I showered in the men’s. Jamie tried the pool but didn’t get past his knees.  Too cold, was the verdict.

Dinner was good – pizza and Angus burgers loaded with bacon with great chips, but pricey.  A (small) schooner of pale ale will set you back $9.  We left the resort in the dark.  Never like doing dinghy stuff in the dark when it’s rough. The dinghy had been liberally splattered with sand – thanks very much.  And it was tough to get it going.  After what seemed like ages we made it back to the boat.  We spent a very bouncy night off Kingfisher and we were happy to get away early the next morning.

Next stop, Platypus Bay.