Balance of Trade made Manifest.

18th Oct 2010


Yesterday might have worked but today was better so up we were up at 04:45 and off the berth by 05:15. Setting course across Morton Bay, our destination was to be a quite spot in the northern end of the Broadwater shallows some 63 nm away. Once underway, the day was good with smooth water and very light albeit adverse, winds for all but a few hours when the morning land breeze gave us a push along.

Perhaps unexpectedly, crossing Morton Bay is actually something of a challenge as large areas of it are too shallow for all but runabouts. This meant that I needed a couple of hours over the plotter and some new charts before settling on a route that, out of necessity, zigged and zagged considerably. Now, almost by default, this also meant that we would use or approximate the channel route used by heavy shipping into and out of Brisbane. This is not a problem on a clear day as there is plenty of room to move out of the way but it was one that provided quite a spectacle when Pilgrim intersected in time and space with two ‘heavies’ overtaking as the picture shows and this leads me to the Balance of Trade.

Shortly after the event pictured, we had opposite direction traffic in the form of yet another large container ship outbound. The fact that all three of these monsters met at a relatively tight corner of the channel was interesting to watch but as Paul pointed out, what we had before us was a statement on the Australian economy. With the dollar so high, two ships in and one out meant that Australia is spending up big, a negative Balance of payments. This, as every schoolboy economist knows, does not auger well for our debt reduction program. Anyway, back to boats!

In the Southern end of the bay we encountered many small craft as the day was idyllic and even saw a misguided whale. Misguided as the whales are south bound and Morton bay doesn’t provide a route South. Maybe just resting?

Arriving at our destination I was surprise by the beauty of the place and the resultant population density. As all these places are islands, so this also meant an extremely high density of ferries and vehicle carriers moving at high speed from dawn to dusk. Still this didn’t disturb our night one bit as we slept well in the tranquil waters. We are also here tomorrow morning as we can’t leave until after lunch. This is because the track south to the Gold Coast includes some very shallow water. (there is a spot with only 1.3 of water and as Pilgrim draws 1.7) so we simply must wait for the tide which is due late this afternoon. No problem as we only have about a 4 hour run.