SERENITY NOW

Pancake Creek turned out to be a good place to relax after our snake encounter. After a restful day, an early night and a flat peaceful sleep, we were up again at 3:30am and off on our way to Bundaberg. Six hours later, we’re still happily gliding along, the breeze is just starting to become usable.. which is nice. Through the long day the wind picked up, making our dusk entry into the channel at Bundaberg a hand steered splashy affair. Fuelled up at the dock, then entered our berth with the normal marina associated angst and a few harsh words here and there. I then did a quick stomp up to the bottlo in Burnett Heads, getting swooped 4 times - magpie style- by a masked lapwing. I learn that angrily swiping my hat in its direction as it gets within pecking distance makes it veer away - this saves my eyeballs. Having survived that encounter, we treated ourselves to rather good fish and chips from the marina shop. The next morning both of us braved the walk back into Burnett heads - this...

After a restful day off in Rodds Bay, the next morning we planned to jump the short distance around the corner to Pancake Creek. This will give us a head start on our journey down to Bundaberg the following day. The outflowing current is best for a 7am departure. At 6:30am, I’m enjoying my first coffee of the day in bed when I hear a blood curdling scream from up on deck (Chez says it wasn’t blood curdling... but it was!) “RICCHHHYY!!” It’s the type of scream I used to wake up to on our long Pacific crossing. Those ones were just nightmarish hallucinations in my head that didn’t actually happen (I was having a bad time back then) - This one was not. Dashing up the companionway stairs I see Chez in a state of heightened distress, which I initially think is either a dirty inky squid or a large flying fish that has somehow jumped on board overnight - this was not the case. The scream inducing interloper was in fact an Aussie icon - one that throws unaccustomed Poms (like us) into a terrif...

Day 1: Bleary eyed, at 4am, Chez lets me know it’s time to go. Goodbye Airlie - it’s been special. It’s now time to begin the long migration South. We up anchor under a bright full moon, and head out from the back of the anchorage, past Funnel bay, Pioneer rock on the corner and down towards Long Island as I write this. We’ve got 4 days of island hopping to get us down to Great Keppel, with (allegedly) usable wind throughout. Fingers crossed for that. With the current helping us along, and actually getting some just about usable wind (pretty much on the nose) we made good speed through the morning in flat water. That ‘pretty much on the nose’ translated into a mildly frustrating, and an exceptionally tiring time, pulling the sails in and out seemingly every 15mins or so as the direction and strength ebbed and flowed. At 2pm, with the wind, the tide and the current trying their damndest to get us to go back the other way, we opted to call it a day. It was that or continue motoring at hi...