The Final Instalment

OR …
A SERIES OF UNEXPECTED EVENTS, PART 2

The first blog for this adventure was entitled A Series of Unexpected Events, and it strikes me that the last blog should be given the same name.

The previous blog concluded with us departing Gladstone under a weeping sky, as the folk from Mischief cast off our lines.  I write this now from the comfort of my home many weeks later, feeling more than a little reluctant to return to that day and some of those that followed…  But something started should be finished, so I’ve been told.

Gladstone to the Gold Coast

True to Andrew and Lynne’s predictions, we had a fairly dreadful day at sea, with current against us out of Gladstone Harbour, then current with us causing large overfalls and great sheets of bow-spray, which then became overfalls out of Rodd Creek, which then became overfalls out of Pancake Creek.  (We had no choice but to stay close inshore, with an exclusion zone in place. To turn back and go seaward of the exclusion zone would have taken us 20-plus miles out of our way.) With intentions to sail all the way to Rooney Point (top of Fraser Is) we continued past Pancake Creek whilst other boats went in…

A few hours later the forecast thunderstorms loomed on the western horizon, dark and anvil shaped.  Graeme thought we had avoided the storm to our north west and would somehow (hopefully?) miss the one to our south west, as it would cross in front of us.  Wishful thinking!  As the sun set behind storm clouds – copper gleaming through charcoal grey – we ate a simple dinner and prepared the boat for a beating, putting a triple reef in the main.

The wind  quickly rose to over 35 knots (constant 30 knots).  The waves rose to suit.  Perhaps the dark was a blessing: we couldn’t see how big they were!  Graeme had to hand steer, and tried using the motor to slowly jog into the waves, holding position, waiting for the storm to abate. Winds came from the south, south east then east, building three different wave trains.  The storm, though quick to build, was slow to move on, so Graeme remained hand steering and jogging into the waves for a long two and half hours.  (This storm management plan was subsequently reviewed and thrown out the window.) Downstairs, I tried to keep Jamie calm in a boat that leapt and rolled and bucked and skewed.  At one stage, the diesel drums lashed on deck came loose and Graeme had to leave the cockpit, crawl up the deck, and brave the wild weather to secure them!  To heighten the drama, we were traversing the same seaway as the bêche-de-mer trawler that had gone down only days before, with six lives lost.  Recovery operations were underway and there was a large exclusion zone around the area (due to authorities not knowing exactly where she went down), pushing us closer to shore and making it tricky to attempt running with the storm.

Our original expectation was to reach Burnett River (Bundaberg) around midnight.  We arrived in the river a painful four and a half hours over our ETA.  Trying to anchor in the dark is always a little stressful, and the anchorage downstream of the marina at Bundaberg is shallow and dotted with unlit boats.  We spent so long checking depths and boat positions and searching for a spot that the sky began to lighten and we could mostly see what we were doing. With the anchor finally down after a hellish passage (Graeme won’t admit to ‘hellish’, only ‘tough’) we relaxed with a hot chocolate before falling into bed.

But sleep was hard to get.  With a new day begun, and the sun shining, Jamie wanted everyone to be up and into it! Rest, it seemed, was only for quiet, night time anchorages. It soon became apparent that where we’d anchored wasn’t much good, anyway.  Not only were we were copping overfall waves from the flood waters, but a large bulk carrier was heading in, flanked by tug boats, and we were anchored right on the edge of the channel.

We moved further upstream, beyond the marina, and found a delightful anchorage in the river beyond.  We spent an uneventful day and night in that spot, before heading out early the next morning, with hopes of spending some time with the whales.

Most of the whales, by this time (beginning of November) had already started heading south, but there were a few pods still enjoying the cruising grounds of Hervey Bay.  It would have been great to spend some more time in their company, but the wind was clocking around to the west, and forecast to be strong, so we couldn’t anchor on the western side of Fraser Island – we had to get ourselves down into the Sandy Straits, toot sweet.

The wind howled in from the west for the next couple of days, making many of the anchorages in the GSS untenable.  (Have I mentioned Jamie had developed anxieties about anything beyond a light breeze?)  We kept heading south and finally reached Moreton Bay and a sheltered anchorage in Deception Bay.

We had planned to return to the marina at Raby Bay but after booking and paying for a berth over the phone, we were advised that they had a burst water main and thus NO WATER! No long hot showers, no hosing down the boat, no refilling water tanks.  No water?!  And so we had our first experience of the marinas at Manly, and the madness of the surrounding waterways on the weekend, which included a fleet of kids in sailing dinghies tacking through the marina with one capsizing in front of us, and a 70-foot power boat simultaneously bearing down on us from behind.  Nevertheless, we enjoyed spending a couple of flat days in a pen at the Moreton Bay Trailer Boat Club (great access to the shops). We even found our previous boat, Echo II, in a nearby berth. It was interesting to see what the new owners had or hadn’t done to her, and sad to see her looking a little unloved.   We had a quick stop in at Raby Bay after leaving Manly, and anchored in one of the T-intersections of the canal, which worked quite well and allowed us to catch with our friend, Noelene, for coffee in a boardwalk cafe.

From Raby Bay, it was a matter of making our way through the calm inland waterways back to the Gold Coast.  We spent a blessedly still night anchored off the channel below Jacobs Well.

Our friends, Andy and Kelli, were waiting to catch up with us at Paradise Point, where they live on one of the canals.  We have kept in touch with Andy and Kelli after getting to know them on the Louisiades Rally back in 2013, and were looking forward to seeing them.  We anchored in the Coomera River for a couple of days, and it wasn’t far to dinghy around to their pontoon.  We enjoyed our very short time with them, but the clock was ticking.  We were keeping a very close eye on the weather.  We were well within the thunderstorm season (they were forecast almost every day) and it looked like we might have a small window to make it down to Coffs Harbour between southerly blows and storms.  We left very early one morning (4am, from memory) and crossed the Gold Coast Seaway in the dawn light.  Outside, the sea was like a washing machine, all confused and messy.  We kept pushing into it, hoping it was localised . It didn’t abate.  Interestingly, only one other boat (of the many waiting in Bum’s Bay) headed out that morning.  After much discussion, we decided to turn tail and head back in. I think the folks in the Seaway Tower had a chuckle as we came back through.  We re-anchored in the waterway between the Sovereign Islands and Ephraim Island.

Andy had been expressing his concern about Jamie, and we were also worried about Jamie’s increasing anxieties and decreased capacity to cope in stressful or unusual situations. When Andy heard of our aborted attempt to leave, he proposed to help us get the boat home.  Bless his heart!  Light started to shine at the end of a long dark passage full of storms, big seas and meltdowns. Discussions started in earnest. Plans were put into place. In an unexpected turn of events, Jamie and I moved off the boat and in with Kelli, while Andy packed a bag and moved aboard Symphony.

Southport to Coffs Harbour

While Jamie and I swanned around the Gold Coast for a few days with Kelli and Deb, Graeme and Andy were getting down to the serious business of sailing Symphony from Southport to Coffs Harbour.  Here’s how it unfolded…

Graeme and Andy sailed out the Goldcoast Seaway in the mid-morning, into a fairly developed SE swell with SE and E waves.  They had a headwind that was supposed to shift around to the east… but didn’t.  The wind direction remained just shy of being able to maintain a genoa, so they motor-sailed with the mainsail.  Although they had a big southerly swell and twenty knots on the nose, it was a fairly uneventful day…

…Until 1830 when they saw a thunderstorm rolling across the horizon towards them.  They made ready, with two reefs in the main, and headed into a storm with building seas, a constant 25-30 knots and lots of rain.  Symphony handled the storm much better with the double reef, which still allowed them to get along at a satisfying 6 knots and thus get through the storm a little faster, albeit with a slightly damp cockpit and crew.  So after the storm coming from Gladstone, where we had a triple reef, it was good to see how much better the boat performed with just a double reef, and it wasn’t overpowered.

The wind abated to about 20 knots, but still from the south.  And just when the boys were starting to relax, they got hit by a second thunderstorm.  The rain was torrential.  It blew above 25 knots for an hour or so.  Unbeknownst to Graeme, whilst cranking on the jib, a jib sheet came loose and wrapped itself in a big knot around the other jib sheet.  Andy was off watch, so Graeme perched mid-deck untangling the mess with sheets of water flying over him every time the bow hit a wave.  He untangled the knot, but the ropes were still twisted tightly together. (Andy untwisted the ropes on his next watch.)  Graeme ended up saturated and finished his watch sitting on the floor of the cockpit, having a warm shower in his undies.  (He doesn’t remember what colour they were.)  The rest of the night passed uneventfully, although it remained bumpy.

Symphony snuck into Coffs Harbour just ahead of another south-west front.

They found themselves in the company of, and being joined by, boats returning from Noumea at the end of the Sail West Rally.  They were interested to watch boats coming in, licking their wounds.  The fleet had had a tough time of it, copping a fair beating for the last couple of days as they neared Australian shores.  There was a 60-footer with her bow down by about 10-inches.  She slowly came back up to her waterline as the crew bailed bucket after bucket of water out of her forward sail locker.

Whilst waiting for Kelli, Jamie and I to arrive, the boys took their time sampling the local beer and restaurants, – excellent service and great food at the Yacht Club, which is regrettably closing down to make way for a council park!  They also undertook some work on the boat: changed the water pump, fixed some deck leaks that had been annoying us for ages. (Got a good testing in the next passage and didn’t leak at all.)

Meanwhile, Kelli and I packed Jamie and all our stuff into the car and had a nice road trip down to Coffs.  Jamie and I temporarily moved back aboard Symphony with Graeme, while Andy and Kelli stayed in an Airbnb not far away.

Whilst in Coffs, friends of Andy and Kelli’s arrived back in from Noumea in their catamaran.  They had experienced storms with eight metre waves on the third and fourth day of their passage (which made our passage from Gladstone look like a stroll along the promenade).  They were extremely relieved to be in one piece and back in Australia after a wonderful two years’ cruising abroad – and no prior storm conditions. We enjoyed dinner at the Yacht Club and a walk up Muttonbird Island, among other things, whilst the wind spent its days howling around the boats and whistling through the rigging.

Finally came a day with a weather window.  So it seemed.  Most people were waiting for a better window, which wasn’t opening for another few days, but the boys were chaffing to get going and Andy was running out of time before things at home needed attention.

And so they set off!

Coffs Harbour to Broken Bay (Pittwater)

The seas were a washing machine, with a big southerly swell and waves, but also an easterly wave train.  Graeme thinks the swell was about 3 metres with a 2-metre sea.  Once again, the wind was just shy of being right on the nose, so they motor-sailed with the mainsail.  The wind was supposed to kick around to the east and the northeast, but never made it beyond southeast for the whole trip – thus the jib never went up.  It was a bouncy trip, with wind speeds up to 25 knots.  It was considerably rougher than Southport to Coffs, with nothing predictable about the motion of the boat.  Fortunately, no storms on this leg.

Andy hooked a big fish (whilst off-watch), so Graeme hauled it in, killed, bled (and there’s always so much fishy blood to deal with!), and bagged it for the fridge whilst already feeling a bit under the weather, only to later discover it was a trash tuna and he should have just thrown it back!

Finally, and with much rejoicing, Symphony sailed under a blue sky into the calm and familiar waters of our beautiful Broken Bay.  They tied her up at the RMYC –arranged, gratefully, by our friends from the stink boat, Papaya.  Jamie, Kelli and I welcomed their arrival as they were tying up.  We then enjoyed another few days relaxing in our own ‘backyard’, Cowan Creek. We’ve covered a few miles and seen a few places, but there’s really nothing that compares with the beauty of these magnificent waterways.

Final thoughts:  In retrospect (and with the memory-numbing passage of time since) Graeme enjoyed appreciated the southward passage, as he learned how to better manage the boat in rough conditions.  (We must thank Andy and Kelli for helping to get us all home safely.  Do I regret not joining my husband on the final southward passage?? Do I regret missing not one but two storms?  Hell, no!)

We both learned about the need to be flexible and go with the flow when things don’t go as planned, or when unexpected things happen.  Graeme discovered the excitement of spearfishing and landed some fabulous fish.  We both enjoyed the chance to dive but were saddened by the state of the reef around the Whitsunday’s after Cyclone Debbie.  Perhaps the highlight was interacting with the whales and listening to their song echo through the boat.  It was a joy to meet like-minded people and cruise in company with new friends, and wonderful to meet up with club members in exotic places like Lady Musgrave.

Thank you to everyone who read and supported our sailing blog along the way.  This last instalment (for this trip, at least) probably wouldn’t have been written if one of my avid readers (you know who you are!) hadn’t bailed me up at Christmas time demanding the final chapter.  This one’s for you! X