Heading south again

18 November – 14 December

Urangan (Hervey Bay) through the Sandy Straits to Inskip point

18-19 November

Back from a short Sydney visit we left the marina in Hervey Bay, the goal of the day being to anchor just north of the shallow bits of Sandy Straits called Sheridan flats.

Engine troubles….
Light northerly winds and we motor sailed, as we often do to make our target 6 knots. All went well until we suddenly heard the low oil pressure alarm. Not a good sound at all. Engine off and Sanna sailed the boat while Niclas did the troubleshooting. Turns out the blanking plug for the spare dipstick hole had popped out. About 3 litres of engine oil had leaked out and ended up in the bilge area under the engine.
An hour or so later all leaked oil was extracted (luckily we had our oil extractor on the boat) and we filled up with new oil. Niclas also made a small fix to ensure the blanking plug wouldn’t pop out again.

We had some nice time catching up with the original owners of Rara, Simon Rock (and Sonja), on Rara’s sister boat “Rock the Boat”.

The next morning at high tide we continued south, and using a slightly different route now suggested by Navionics. It all went well and we had at least a meter under the keel at all times.

Widebay bar to Noosa

20 November

From Inskip point we motored out early morning through Widebaybar in calm conditions.
Rather than stopping in Moloolaba we chose to stop in Noosa Bay this time. Good to see something different, and the sea state was so calm that although this is not a very protected bay we thought it was worth trying. With a slight swell from the east we decided to set a stern anchor to ensure the boat was pointing eastward all night. This worked really well and we had a (mostly) good nights sleep.

Noosa to Moreton Island and Peel Island

21 November

From Noosa the next stop was near Tangalooma on Moreton Island. The northern entrance to Moreton Bay is quite shallow and we had to navigate around some outgoing larger ships. On the way to Tangalooma we saw a few sharks having a feeding frenzy! You need to have some caution swimming here… The other more significant threat were thunderstorms lurking around and one hit us quite badly at anchorage in Lucinda Bay, with the wind from the west. Luckily our anchor held well, but we were at the helm ready to go if needed. We’ve had so many storms over the last week as it’s apparently the season for them.

Redland City Marina and the Eprapah Creek

24 November – 3 December

Now some maintenance was due and we had booked a yard in Redland City where they had all needed trades at hand and we were also allowed to live and work on the boat at the same time.

Navigation to and from Redland City Marina is not for the faint at heart, and you have to pick the absolute high tide to go through the Eprapah Creek. It’s about 2 nm of tricky navigation where we used two chart apps (C-map and Navionics), and one handwritten note about where to go the wrong side of channel markers (!) We were pleased to reach the marina without having touched bottom.

Our week on the yard was an experience. There was a heatwave on and very hot and humid. The weather also caused thunderstorms to form and we had a few of those. On top of that there were millions of mozzies and midges… We applied plenty of deterrents and also bought a gas powered device at Bunnings to reduce the bites. Still had several hundred bites.

In spite of the above little annoyances, it was a good week where we got a lot of jobs done on the boat. It also feels good to have done the bottom painting ourselves once. We have to save some money where we can.

Jumpinpin, South Stradbrook Island

3-4 December

It felt great to be back on the water again, and we now went towards the Gold Coast, this time taking the less used eastern Canaipa channel for a change. We ended up near the Jumpinpin bar, between North and South Stradbrook Islands, at a place called Millionaire’s row (must be good!). From there we went ashore and climbed a sandhill to get a view of the ocean before dinner on the boat.

Southport Yacht Club, Gold Coast

4-5 December

After the week at Redland and sailing down to Gold Coast again we took the opportunity for some luxury staying one night at the Southport Yacht Club.

Gold Coast to Illuka/Yamba

From Southport we had a long, 100nm, passage to Illuka and we left the marina around 9 am, to time the bar at Gold coast. We wanted to arrive after sunrise in Illuka though so we had to slow the boat down to no more than 5kn average not to get there too early. Adding to this, we had the East Australian Current with us, sometimes up to 2kn, and hence we only had a small part of the headsail up and no motor. It made for a comfortable overnight passage.

Illuka had a very good dinghy dock, and we went ashore and went for a walk to the local shops and also had a meal at the Sedgers Reef hotel. Another big storm hit us at night with some 40kn gusts. Our anchor had to reset as the wind was 180 degrees from the previous wind and we dragged for a bit before it set properly again.

Illuka/Yamba to Port Stephens

8-12th December

This was our longest non-stop passage on Rara so far, 220nm, which we did in 34 hours. We had a fairly short but good weather window and rather than stopping in Coffs and/or Port Macquarie we decided to just make a longer passage. We don’t want to miss getting to Sydney by Christmas. The winds and currents mainly from the north and good weather meant we had a really good passage, and Sanna finally got night sailing in calm conditions with plenty of stars and moonlight. We have improved on our watch system, but still find it a little hard to get any sleep in when the boat is rolling around.

Once past the Port Stephens Bar we took a mooring in Shoal Bay just before darkness. The day after we caught up with new friends Craig and Islay, before heading off to the Anchorage marina to hide from more expected stormy weather. The Anchorage is a truly great marina with great service, top class amenities and free courtesy cars. It’s just changing ownership to D’Albora and we really hope they can keep the good service level without hiking up the fees too much.

Port Stephens to Pittwater, America Bay

12-14 December

Another fairly long passage of 80nm. We left Port Stephens around 7am and got to Pittwater and America Bay just before sunset. It feels good and a little weird to be back in familiar waters again. Although we’re not yet in Sydney harbour it feels like we’re ‘home’ again. The end of this chapter of our new adventures. We’re now awaiting a big southerly change to come and go before going the last few hours to Sydney harbour.