Glassy Calm

26th Jun 2010

Heading up the Great Sandy Straight, tide plays an important role in speed. For this reason I briefed the crew that we wanted to weigh anchor just on dawn as the high tide was due about 09:30 mid channel. This would give us in flood tide to about the middle of the straights, being the point where the tide direction changed as Hervey Bay tide takes over domination. The plan was to then head on noorth with the now ebbing flow into Hervey bay. All this, I am pleased to say, worked a treat with and average speed for the 8 hrs of just under 7 kts.

Now the Great Sandy itsef is a circuitous maze of channels and markers but is genetrally a little deeper than the Morton Bay straights so I was feeling reasonably comfortable. None the less, as the plotter image (left) shows, one needs to keep one's wits about themselves at all times. Locals of course, rip up and down these straight at high speed in their shallow draft boats armed with experience and current knowledge but we poor sailor type with 1.7M under us benefit greatly from a much more cautious approach, even in the finest conditions; something we didn't wake up to!

Setting out, a new challenge emerged; that of fog. Looking up the straight, the fog appeared to be down to the water so we had no choice but to wait. After a cuppa, it started to lift so we pushed off. We had a few little patches underway but it soon lifted into a fine day. From here on, the trip itself was generally without incident in glassy calm conditions but for two close encounters with the bottom, one being the nature of the place and the other being a fault on out part when we ‘skipped’ a marker and thereby cut a corner.This by the way is a real trap on these type of excursions so the routine is to mark off each passed marker as they go by and check their ident. number if it can be seen.

The good speed meant an early arrival in Urangan and this put us right on the bottom of the tide. Now tide up here are biggish with over a 3 m range so we entered the marina dead slow, watching the sounder all the way to the berth. “No problems”; my concerns were unjustified it seemed, as we tied up with a goo '10cm' under our keel in the berth!!!.

We plan to stay here in Urangan Marina (left), tomorrow as the day is forecast to be rainy and still with Monday much better and with more usable winds.