Start of the long stretch

I am now writing this on 21st August as we have been out of Internet coverage since leaving Rosslyn Bay on August 12th.

Christie doing the art work on door

Saturday 11^th August 2012.  As we are at the marina another day with not a lot to do, its time to give the tinny a bit of a make over so we pull her out of the water and Andrew gets out his trusty stickaflex and silicon and patches up a few leaks we have been having.  He has a good old chat with each person who walks by asking him advice on what he’s using.  So this takes him most the day, as Mr Haveachat is quite enjoying the attention.  Christie in the mean time gives the outside of Mingo a good scrub down with broom and fresh water and what a difference it makes, no salt all over her now. Then she drawers up and paints the door sign of Mingos Oasis.  The motor oils are checked and a vacuum of the inside of the boat and we are ready to head out the following day.   Being our longest stretch between main ports of over 400km's, with only one fuel stop so we are fuelled and watered and fooded up to the max and Mingo is very heavy.

Sunday morning and the weather is nice, so we motor out of Rosslyn Bay, Yeppoon and onto our next stop of Port Clinton which is part of Shoal Water Bay, Military training area, some of these parts are closed of to the public due to live fire being carried out.  We timed it pretty well with being here now as at the end of August the area is being closed for training exercises for three weeks. 

Whale very close by

On our way to Port Clinton we come across two whales swimming close by.  We turn the motor off and again watch these amazing creatures swimming around us, under the water and up again.  Its like they are sussing us out.  They are so big and we are amazed at how close they come to the boat and up to have alook at who we are.  This time they swam 2 meters to the side and front of the boat, if we were standing on the bow of the boat we would have been able to just about touch them.  Its hard to explain how fantastic it is to be so close to them.

Port Clinton

We arrive at Port Clinton at about midday and find a good  spot to anchor.  We have been told about a lot of these places by other boaties we have met on the way and also done a bit of reading on them.  Its funny as a lot of these popular spots you run into the same people again and again, or hear over the radio that another boat you have met has just left when you’ve just arrived.

Sunset at Port Clinton

We take the tinny out and motor around to an army boat ramp area, that is off limits to the public to use to get to land, but in the surrounding water where we are motoring there are loads of turtles all around us just popping their heads up to have a look and then going under water again.  It really is fascinating to watch.  We have read that these turtles at times will beach themselves for an unknown reason at low tide, then wait till the tide comes in again to head back to sea.

Little Turtle

  We didn’t see any on land but a few hanging around the mangroves, although not sure if it was the safest place for  them as it is known crocodile country too.

Andrew and his Flathead

Andrew catching fish

We head back to  Mingo and decide that as the wind is blowing up a bit we will motor her further down into Port Clinton and anchor up. Into the tinny we come across another little sand area because of low tide and get our fishing rods out for a bit of luck and hopefully dinner.  Its only about 10 minutes of fishing and Andrew pulls up a lovely looking Flathead, oh so proud.    He then does the dirty work on the flat head gutting, scaling and filleting the fish and oh yum we cant wait for dinner now. 

Dinner Time

Fresh baked bread

Back to the boat and thought we would try our luck at a bit of crabbing, so we head out with three crab pots full of the flat head innards, what a smell, it really was pretty high – but hopefully the crabs get a nice feast out of it.    Christie then cooks up dinner of lemon and garlic butter Flathead with green beans and baked potato and some fresh bread she has made later in the afternoon (first attempt at making bread and was not too bad).  So we sat down to a delish dinner and  felt quite content that the hunting and gathering part of us had finally set in and we CAN live off the land.. ( Well so we like to believe).  Just before dinner as the sun was setting and we were having a drink out the back, we see a pod of 5 dolphins swimming slowly by. It doesn't seem to matter how often or how many of these wild mammal's you see out here we still have to stop and watch them.

Chris with a Brim

Up and time to collect the crab pots.  Can you believe that there was not one crab in any of them, we were so disappointed so decided to change the area we dropped them and give it another go.    Then back to do some more fishing in the same little spot where we caught Mr flat head yesterday.   We have pulled the tinny up onto the sand bank as the tide was going out, and it was right by us so we hadn’t put the anchor out, we definitely wont be doing that again, as we are both so involved in our fishing we look up and see another boatie shouting out to us with our tinny that is now in the middle of the channel and we had not even noticed.  He kindly pulled it back in behind him and with a couple of red faces we  thanked him profusely.  Thank goodness he had seen it as it had gone out quite a distance and neither of us realised.  We laughed after he had gone.    Another successful day catching fish and this time Andrew caught two brim and Christie caught one, so once again dinner to night will be fish, but this time it will be fish with a white parsley sauce.  This really is the way to live.

We now haven’t had Internet or phone access for a couple of days which makes it very hard to read the weather.  We are in contact with the coast guard on radio, but they only give readings at certain times, so you have to be on the boat to listen at these times, sometimes its nice to check the weather forecast yourself to decide how we will plan the coming days.

We get up and collect the crab pots again and still nothing, so much for this being such a great crabbing area.  At least we have the fish to compensate, so we are happy about that.

The weather this morning is 10-15 knots, SSE direction, which is in our favour as it means the waves are coming up behind us giving us a bit of a push along.  So we head out the headland and it is fairly calm, then get just round the entrance to the port and the wind seems to have picked up to 20 knots making it really rough.  A bit of an argument (first one since we left which is pretty good considering we are living 24/7 in small space together) on do we turn back (Christies Choice) or do we carry on (Andrews choice).  It is only a 3 nautical Miles (6km) to our next stop of Pearl Bay, but Christie could see the waves ahead and really was not comfortable going.  So we head back in to the entrance of Port Clinton and decide to sit it out another night in calmer water.  Although it had blown up a bit, it was suppose to get calmer at around 1600 that afternoon.  So we anchored and decided to reassess at 1600 and wait for the radioed weather forecast.

Chris collecting Oysters

We sat back and watched a DVD then went over to the beach and had a walk and tried collecting some oysters off the rocks, so hammer and screw driver and here we are walking along the beach chiseling these little shell fish off the rocks,  unfortunately they were a bit small to eat.   The wind seemed to have died down a little from this morning so we headed out onto the tinny to have a look out the entrance again and it did seem a lot calmer.  We both agreed that we had time to get to Pearl Bay before dark and anchor there for the night.  We motored off and were pleased that it seemed so calm.  10 minutes out of the entrance and the swell was unbelievable and very very unexpected.  It seemed to be getting worse and worse and was at a height of 3 meters plus.  It was pretty terrifying, as we were in the trough of the rolling waves and really felt like we were in a washing machine.  We had waves crashing over the front of us and splashing up into the fly bridge where we were sitting.  Christie always goes very quiet if she is upset or scared  and doesn't say a word, so we did this hour trip in pretty much silence as Andrew carefully manoeuvred the boat in and out through this huge swell.  We could see in each others eyes that the other was scared and that it was very touch and go at times.  It was a really long hour and we misjudged the weather on this occasion big time.  We both learnt a very big lesson today, even though we know how unpredictable the weather can be already, we didn’t really know that in a matter of minutes the swell could turn on us.

Ever so faithful and unfaithful Mingo, getting us back into calm waters

Andrew really was amazing motoring the boat through these waves, watching for a smaller one in amongst them to find an area to turn the boat into the direction we needed to be (this needs to be done in a pretty precise way as you don’t want to be putting the boat sideways into a bigger wave).  Christie is sitting there with the map (which at times, can be hard to read as not all landmarks are exactly as they are explained) trying to navigate us through this area which amongst the huge swells we are in there are also a lot of little islands scattered around us.    We can then see the area where we are suppose to be heading into, but its also still a fair way in front of us.  Andrew is clutching at the steering wheel and motoring the boat standing up looking out of the clears, when he turns to Christie and says if it makes her feel better, put our life jackets on.  So on the life jackets go.  Not sure what we were really expecting to happen but we know how things can happen in a split second.  It was a terrifying ride into Pearl bay and when we were safely inside, in what was suppose to be calmer waters and all anchored up for the night.  Christie just burst into tears, absolutely stunned at what we had just been through.  Andrew always the calm one he is, was also a bit shaken up and just sat there and we hugged each other.  There was a great feeling of relief.

Andrew at Pearl Bay

We were told that Pearl bay was a beautiful little spot and we had read that it had great anchorage for winds that were blowing SSE.  How wrong someone was as it was the most uncomfortable night, I think we have spent on the water since we left.  The boat rocked solidly all night.  Not a good night especially after having been in the swell earlier.

We set the alarm early the following morning, but didn’t need to as we were up early anyway.  Andrew then radioed  the Thirsty Sounds coast guard and got an updated weather broadcast.  The weather today was 10-15 knots, so we decided to leave early.  (There were 6 other boats in the bay when we arrived last night, and by the time we left there was only 1 staying – that kind of says it all). 

There was a light breeze as we motored out the short distance into Island Head Creek and how nice it was to see the calm waters with lots of little inlets that we could choose to anchor in.  The further north we head the tides have more water passing in and out of them making the currents stronger and anchorage spots hard to pick as we have to now read tides that are up to 9 meters difference between low and high, where as in Brisbane they are only up to 2 meters difference.

YAY Calm waters

Crab "Sand Art Deco"

Now all anchored up and we motor around in the tinny having a look and it really is the most beautiful spot in here.  It is once again an army training area.  There are hills that are surrounding us with pine trees in the distance and the beaches below with bluey/green water that looks so pretty. 

Our bucket of bait (Yabbies)

Catching yabbies

Its coming into low tide now, so we head to land and start pumping for some yabbies’, a few dozen later and we now have our bait for the day so its time to see if we are having fish for dinner again.  Not a lot of luck today, we only catch a couple of little unknown fish so put them back to sea. 

We then go for a walk around the headland and Andrew rummages around some old fishing net he has found washed ashore, thinking he may have found some treasures.  Nope no gold on these beaches.    We walk up some distance on the beach with the mobile phone, as we have not have any coverage for three days and are wanting to get messages through to our family that all is going OK.  Finally we get a bar on the phone and send a round robin message to all.  We are now happy, knowing they know we are fine.

Andrew searching for "Treasures"

Eggs on the beach

Heading back we find two eggs lying on the beach - we are not sure what animal they belong to, back in the tinny over to Mingo we have a couple of lures out the back and Christie manages to snag a small bait fish, about 4 inches long – good enough for us to use as bait.  Red meat for dinner now now white.