Prop be gone
08/07/2019 Mooloolaba, Qld, Australia
Today was a chore day. We slept in, did a wash, did a shop, went to the post office, scoped out the town and visited the dentist. Nothing major, just one of Lara's baby teeth cracked in half and we didn't know what to do. Turned out she just needed to pull it out. Anyway, Mooloolaba is a really pretty coastal town on the sunshine coast. It has everything we need, nice beach, good anchorage, plenty of restaurants and a nice view. I can see us staying a while.
09/07/2019 Mooloolaba, Qld, Australia
We had a day off today. Yay! It's amazing how much work is involved on an adventure such as this. We got up this morning around 9am and had eggs for breaky. We then slowly got ready to go out and headed straight for the beach. The waves were awesome. Jake and I spent ages splashing about in them. The water was freezing though and because of that I don't think my body temperature will ever get back to normal. Despite this we went for ice cream, did a shop and went back to the boat for a chilled afternoon before an amazing sunset. It sounds like Vanja's Mum will join us on the boat for a few days, so that should be good.
11/07/2019 Mooloolaba, Qld, Australia
Enisa arrived yesterday morning while I was finishing off the deck shower. It works great BTW. After Enisa settled in we went to the beach, had an ice cream, kids went for a swim, etc, etc. Not much to write about, but a great day nonetheless.
Today started out nice with some swimming, jumping off the boat and kayaking. The water of course was freezing so I could only bear a few minutes with my body draining heat like a hot water tap. The rest of the day was spent tracking down mozzie screen material and something to attach it with. We don't have any screens on any of our hatches and as we get closer to the tropics we are really getting nervous about it. I did find some, along with a bunch of other pseudo-required items. When I got back Vanja folded it all away somewhere, probably never to see the light of day again. Until the mozzies come that is.
We are planning to leave tomorrow night for Fraser Island. It's meant to be a 10 hour journey, so hopefully we get some nice weather. Especially since Enisa will be joining us.
14/07/2019 Fraser Island, Qld, Australia
We left the other day for Fraser Island, and here we are! The trip was ok. We left the anchorage at 5:30pm and motored out onto the beach and anchored so we could leave later in the night. The idea being we wouldn't have to navigate the channel in the dark. That part worked, but I didn't take into account the horrible rolling anchorage on the beach. It was so bad Enisa was feeling very sick 2 hours into it. Not good. Anyway, we all tried to go to sleep with the plan to wake up at 11pm to take off, but not much sleep was had. The alarm went off and we pulled up the anchor and headed for Wide Bay.
We started with head winds of 10 kts and it stayed like that for about 2 hours before it swung around to the West a little bit. We eventually had enough angle to shut off the engines which was really nice - for the people sleeping anyway. I stayed on watch from midnight til about 4am when Vanja took over. Jake joined me for an hour which was so nice. He is so enthusiastic about the stars and the universe. We might have an astronomer on our hands. I slept until about 8:30am which was great, before taking over from Vanja. We sailed slowly throughout the morning with the kids and Enisa up and having a good time. Enisa and I were in the cockpit having breakfast when Enisa jumped up yelling 'whales!'. I almost lost my cereal. There were 2 huge whales 50m away breaching along side us. It was awesome. Everyone came out to have a look, even Vanja from her deep sleep. They left as soon as she came up though.
The rest of the day went pretty well. We motor/sailed upwind pretty much the whole day and I now know why everyone complains about it. What a monotonous slow painful way to travel. If it wasn't for the waves it wouldn't be too bad, but they are there, consistent as clockwork. Bang. Bang…. Bang! Also our port engine was giving us trouble at one point, not producing any thrust. I had a quick look at the engine and couldn't see any problems, so I decided not to worry about it until we got over the river bar and into to the anchorage.
River Bar Crossings 101:
- crossing the bar an hour before high tide ensures the best possible sea state at the bar
- as little swell as possible
- onshore winds are better than offshore winds and less is better than more
- basically it should be the opposite of good surfing
The Wide Bay Bar is a notoriously dangerous river bar, and thankfully our last on this trip up the East coast. We were pretty pedantic in picking the weather window to head to this bar and it definitely helped. We smashed it. The swell was so non-existent we decided to forego the number 1 rule of river bar crossings. As we passed through the flat bar though we could really see how dangerous it could be with even a tiny bit of swell. Once we were through we motored around to Pelican Bay where a couple of boats were already anchored for the night. We hopped into the dinghy while Lara kayaked over to a nearby sand island for a bit of light beach combing. After we got back to the boat we made chicken tacos and fell asleep exhausted at 8:30 for a 12 hour nap.
Today we got up and had a relaxed breakfast and coffee. I then made water and ran the generator for an hour or so. We left at 11:30 to head to Garry's Anchorage on the the West coast of Fraser. We had 6-10 kts of dead downwind sailing which was slow and relaxing. We sailed with another cat for a while before they got sick of it and motored. We joined them 30 minutes later and made it to the anchorage an hour later.
We jumped in the dinghy and hit the shore only to find big warning signs of dingos and crocs in the area, so that was nice. We went for a walk, found no crocs or dingos, came back, had dinner and the kids are now 2 hours into a spelling competition game with Enisa.
We made a pretty devastating discovery when we arrived. Remember when the port engine wasn't giving any thrust yesterday, well it turns out it was because our propeller, the thing that turns the engine into something useful, was gone. Yes, our propeller fell off. This is not something you would normally worry about, until now. I did a heck of a lot of refit work on this boat myself, but there were a few things I left to the professionals. A full engine service and anode replacement was one of them. This required the propellers to come off and go back on. After thinking it through, I can't think of any reason for the prop to come off other than incompetence in putting it on. They are folding props, so if we hit something with it they would just fold. What else is there? That means we could potentially have another prop that could come off any minute, leaving us with no engines. Yikes.
So what do we do now? We need to order a new prop and install it. Our options are to beach the boat and have a look and see what type of propeller it is, or take it to a boatyard and do it the expensive way. I really don't have the confidence to beach the boat, so expensive way it is. The worst thing about this is that I had 2 or even 3 spare propellers in the boat that I chucked away before we moved on, thinking why would we ever need a spare prop and we can make much better use of the space. Yes, what an idiot.
16/07/2019 Kingfisher Bay, Fraser Island, Qld, Australia
Yesterday Vanja woke me at 8am to suggest leaving to go further up the Great Sandy Straights. I was happy to go. Got up, made coffee, upped anchor and off we went. There were 2 boats ahead of us motoring up. The wind was nicely behind us so I couldn't understand what they were doing. I hoisted the sails and we had a great sail all the way. Lucky, since we only have one engine. It was directly behind us which was a bit of a pain but we got to practice our gybing as we pointed the boat from one side of the route line to the other. At one point we were doing 10kts with the current which felt amazing, though slightly scary for some reason, like these boats just aren't meant to go that fast. Maybe it's just because it happens so rarely. There was a big motor boat trying to pass us but they couldn't as we were going so fast. Yes!
We landed at Kingfisher Bay Resort in the afternoon, which is about half way up Fraser Island. Once anchored we went to shore to check it out. We were immediately presented with signs warning of dingos and crocs again. Aside from potentially being eaten by wild animals, the resort is really nice. It is set amongst the beautiful bush with nice wooden paths snaking all the way through it. We passed a sign saying 'Guests only past this point' which we promptly walked past causing the kids to protest, worried we'd be caught. They are such sticklers for other peoples rules. Not ours of course. After satisfying our curiosity we headed back to the boat and fried some sausages and potatoes for dinner and got a reasonably early night.
This morning we all woke up pretty late. The usual for breakfast, coffee and plenty of early morning sun. We all went to the beach and Enisa and Vanja went for a walk while the kids and I checked out the pool (which does allow guests). It was way too cold for Lara and I, but Jake was so determined he braved it. Not for long though, he was out within 15 minutes. We then went for another walk around the grounds and met up with Vanja and Enisa for lunch at the Sandbar, who also allow guests which pleased the kids.
After lunch we all went for a walk to the beach to find some old jetty and rusting boiler. Interesting eh? We stumbled across about a million soldier crabs on the beach. There were so many it looked as though the beach was moving. Very freaky. The kids were initially curious, but got progressively more frightened so we turned back to safer grounds. Back at the dock we spotted a huge sting ray which turned out to be dead. How'd we know it was dead? Well a crab crawled across it's head and started eating out of the eye socket like a buffet table. Very disturbing to say the least, but interesting nonetheless.
Once the tide came back in enough we dragged the dinghy into the water to get back to the boat where we had a sundowner, nice dinner before bed.
17/07/2019 Kingfisher Bay, Fraser Island, Qld Australia
What a great day today, exhausting, but great. Enisa left us this morning on the ferry which was a little sad, but we all pulled ourselves together and did the Lake Mackenzie walk. We took 'Route 1' as it was slightly shorter and wouldn't involve walking along the dreaded "crab beach from hell". It was 20km of magnificent bush walking. The vegetation changed every 20 mins as we walked up, down and around the small hills of Fraser Island. We were all a little on edge throughout the day hoping we wouldn't encounter any dingos, even though we all sort of wanted to. We kept practicing what to do if we saw one; keep eye contact, don't run, fold your arms and walk away backwards slowly.
After a gruelling last couple of kms we came upon the lake, and oh my what a sight. Crystal clear ice blue water ringed by sparkling white sand, and not a person within sight. There were other people, but they were over the other side presumably where the 4WD's are allowed to park. Anyway it felt as though we had the whole lake to ourselves. We stripped off and put our swimmers on and went straight in. It was freezing, but that didn't stop Vanja and Jake. Lara was more sensible like me keeping the freezing to a minimum. After our "swim" we ate the lunch that Vanja packed, had a small lie down and then headed home.
We knew it was going to be tough heading home, but we did our best to keep the kids energised and positive. Needless to say we were all pretty bloody tired by the end, but the blessedly hot shower at the Sand Bar seemed to wash away the pain of the last few kms. We headed back to the boat before zoning out in front of a movie then collapsing into bed.
We are off to Hervey Bay tomorrow to see about getting our propeller fixed. It's probably not going to be the most enjoyable couple of days, but we'll make the most of it.
