Great Sandy Strait 22nd - 24th May

During the last few days we have slowly motored north up the Great Sandy Strait. It poured with rain on our first night at Pelican Bay. Peter bailed Lily as she was half filled with water. As soon as that was done a dark bank of heavy cloud descended and down came another lot. We had to wait an extra couple of hours for the rain to clear before setting off for Garry's Anchorage about 10nm north. It was lunch time when the sun reappeared, Peter bailed Lily again and we had collected three large buckets of lovely fresh rain water for drinking from the canopy.

Garry's Anchorage is in an offshoot channel up against Fraser Island. It is beautiful and peaceful. We were amazed at how thickly forested the island is. Huge trees and thick bush covers the hills and birdsong fills the air. Mosquitoes also like living here, so when we went ashore we had to coat ourselves with repellent. There are plenty of walk tracks all over the island and Peter and I walked for a couple of hours along one hoping to see a dingo, but no luck. We did however have a really good view of one from the boat. It walked along the shore for about 15 mins giving us plenty of time to have a close look through the binoculars. It was big and healthy looking, with quite a dark, rusty coloured coat.

On Friday we had to wait until 2pm for the tide to be right at the shallow section of the Strait. We needed it to be about 2 hours from high tide to cross the sand bars at Sheridan Flats, firstly to give us enough depth and also the ensure that if we did run aground we still had a bit of incoming tide to help us off. Everything went according to plan, although there were a few tense moments. I gave up looking at the chart plotter as it was obvious that the constantly shifting sandbanks and channels had changed considerably. At one stage Rene was making her way across dry land according to the chart plotter. Even though we were expecting this to happen, it is still unnerving to see. We had been told that the channel markers are shifted as Mother Nature constantly redesigns the Strait. By this time the sun was beginning to sink, and we didn't want to, so we decided to pull into Yankee Jack's Anchorage at South White Cliffs with several other yachts for he night.

Things are beginning to look complicated!

 



Uh Oh! This doesn't look right!

(Going north starboard markers to port)

 



This morning we pulled the anchor at 8am and headed for North White Cliffs and the nearby Kingfisher Resort about 10nm away. With absolutely no wind and a total glass out we glided along and enjoyed the scenery. Being a Saturday plenty of boats were buzzing around and the car ferries were being kept busy. Kingfisher resort is impressive, set amongst tall trees, behind a white sandy beach. Tonight the lights of Maryborough are twinkling across the Strait, the lights of the resort flicker through the trees in front of us and peace and quiet reigns. Lovely!

Glass Out

 



 

Kingfisher Resort