Capricornia Coast, Great Keppel Island to Yepoon

We have been at the marina at Yeppoon in  Rosslyn Bay for the past few days. Our trip up the coast was uneventful and the weather excellent. We spent a rolly night in Capricorn Bay but it was nice and quiet on Great Keppel Island anchored in a wide bay out of the SE swell. We made some new friends, a Dutch couple on a schooner called Spirit and Gary and Natalie on a brand new 45 foot Hanse. We spent a pleasant 4 days wandering on the beach and gathering coconuts . We thought we would spend the Admiral's birthday here at the marina and get some maintenance jobs done while we are here. This is a very good marina and we have enjoyed it here. Hanging about with Gary and Natalie and their friend Mark who has a 44 foot Lagoon powercat set up as an ultimate fishing machine. They kindly took us to nearby Rockhampton locally known as 'Rocky',where we spent the day exploring the zoo and botanical gardens and the art gallery. Rockhampton is a Queensland cattle town and looked quite a bit like a US middle western small town. Weather permitting we will leave here on Wednesday and head north again. Next destination is the Whitsunday Islands where will have Roger and Janice to stay for a couple of weeks.

The sand bar at low tide in Pancake Creek

Sunset Great Keppel Island

The beach at Great Keppel Island

A Cassowary, a very strange looking bird at the Rockhampton Zoo

Captain Cook monument, Yeppoon. The statue sings during high wind conditions and it did that day. Captain Cook was here 1770 and named Keppel Bay

Cape Capricorn, Queensland, Oz

We left Bundaberg three days ago after spending just
over a week there.The  marina was excellent,
very easy in and out and well run. The same
cannot be said  for the local services. I had
some work done on my Genoa at an outrageous price
but I don't think that I had much choice.
Otherwise, the time passed by very  quickly.
The town itself was quite interesting being
the sugar capital of Oz and  you could see sugar cane
for miles and miles in every direction.
Bundaberg is  also home to the nationally famous
Bundaberg rum and Bundaberg ginger beer.
Tours of the factory were offered but we declined.
Not much in the way of  eateries except for a
Thai/Indian place we patronized quite a bit and
we thought it excellent.We met up with some old
friends from last year, including Lori and Ken
from Trim and John and Cheryl from Sea Mist
and we made some new ones as well.
We left early to get to the next anchorage
called Pancake Creek some 60 miles to the
northwest. It took some getting into but once there,
was very quiet and  safe. There are some huge
tides in Queensland and we would not have been
able to  enter or leave at half tide.
We left this morning for Cape Capricorn and it is
thus named as it sits on the  Tropic of Capricorn
at 23 degrees 30 minutes south. Hopefully, we will
have a quiet night and it's on to Great Keppel Island
tomorrow as we make our way to  the Whitsunday Islands. 

Brisbane-bundaberg

Aground at Scarborough,coastguard kedging us off

The bar at Mooloolabah Harbour

Full moon rise at Mooloolabah

Bunderberg, Queensland, Oz

The admiral and I left Brisbane on April 5th after spending more than a month there.

It was as though we were growing roots and becoming all too comfortable with being tied up to something hard with all the power, water and air conditioning available to us.

We even had the use of a car, courtesy of our friends Phil and Kristina of " Songline". A simple thing like that made our trips to the market and the chandlery much easier, instead of sometimes spending an entire day getting groceries.

We had a good time in Brisbane but it was time to move on and explore the Queensland coast and the Great Barrier reef.

We left on Thursday morning on a clear, bright fall day and made our way down the river into Moreton Bay and on to Scarborough about ten miles outside of the estuary of the Brisbane river. On the approach to the marina I ran aground in a very narrow channel on a falling tide. Fortunately, the weather was benign and the bottom was soft mud but we were pretty well stuck. We managed to get Australian volunteer coastguard to come and help us and we then made it safely into the marina. Not a very auspicious start to this cruise.

We made some sail repairs and the Admiral went up the mast to check the rigging after the grounding and to replace the bulb in the steaming light.

We left the following morning for Mooloolabah, this time managing to stay in the channel. There are many places that there is very skinny water in Australia and it is imperative to keep a very close eye on the tides and your navigation.

We had a very nice sail out of Moreton Bay up the coast to Mooloolabah. When we got there we discovered the harbor entrance was being dredged and getting over the bar in breaking waves was interesting to say the least. We had a quiet night and left early the following day to sail up the coast through the narrow entrance south of Fraser Island up to Bunderberg. This particular entrance called Wide Bay Bar has a reputation for being difficult due to breaking waves but would have saved us about 75 miles. The weather was perfect with good wind and a full moon so we decided to take the long way round Fraser Island. We got into Bunderberg at about noon today. A nap is in order and we will visit the town such as it is tomorrow. Photos to follow.

P.S. Brisbane

One last tip to all those who may visit Brisbane ,go to the Wednesday farmers market at Queen street just across from the Victoria bridge at 4.30 pm( market open  10am to 6pm) all produce is marked down to a dollars bag, excellent value for good produce.

A visit from Julie

Julie came to Brisbane for her spring break,alas only a week,but no complaints as she was also with us over Christmas in Sydney.We went to one of a chain of our favorite vegan restaurants 'loving Hut' here ,plus a visit to Govindas restaurant again,the captain had rather too many helpings as noted in the photograph !
We are now preparing to set sail in couple of days,we will be making our way slowly up the Queensland coast,so we are busy with last minute laundry,maintenance chores ,food shopping etc.