The worst storm in 8 years at sea.. (Pancake Creek - Elbow Point QLD)

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 time avoiding the swooping/nesting area. It’s the most exercise our legs have had in a month, and returning to the boat, we felt like it. Decided to stay a second night, woke and did a Bundaberg supermarket run on the bus, then slipped lines and anchored in the river opposite the marina for the afternoon, with a view to departing for Fraser Island (K’Gari) tomorrow morning.

…which we did.

I’m writing this as Burnett heads fades in the background behind us.

We’ve seen a lot of fish activity on the surface both this morning and over the last few legs. Possibly bonito or similar sized tuna style fish jumping around and obviously terrorising something smaller near the surface. Having recently seen a doco on inter species herding of small bait fish into balls that can be easily picked off, every time we now see these splashes we declare: ‘Bait Ball’ and sagely nod to each other.

Arrived into Fraser Island, just outside the Kingfisher resort at 4pmish. We’re both knackered yet again: suspect we may (to quote Danny Glover): ‘Be getting too old for this shit!’

Well rested, the next morning we hopped in the tender and headed over to the pool at the Kingfisher resort from where I write this. Lovely way to spend the morning.

The afternoon was punctuated by a single gasping breath from a dugong passing close by - a mammal of the dolphin variety, only slower, fatter, some would say uglier. We haven’t seen one of them since… well, since we were in the US in the late 80s..

Wow! That’s a lifetime ago: Two naive backpackers glugging down half price happy hour Budweisers in an oyster bar on the coastal waterway in Fort Lauderdale. I digress.

…and I’m writing this the very next morning, sitting on the same sun lounger, by the same pool.. I could get used to this!

They’ve also got ludicrously fast free wifi - Which Chez is sitting next to me making good use of as I type.

We’ll need to go shortly though, a cruise liner has just arrived at the small dock here at Kingfisher, and will no doubt be disgorging its human contents shortly.

On returning to the tender we found it half filled with water which had splashed over the side as the wind and waves increased in our absence.

Had to take the engine off to tip it out. There followed a wet bumpy ride back to the boat.

The action for the afternoon was having a shiny motor cruiser anchor too close, directly in front of us - shouting and stink eye ensued, but no relocating. They dropped off passengers, told me to ‘suck my cock’ then left. Ahhh… gotta love the camaraderie between folks on the water!

Jokes aside, they anchored and acted in a terrible manner. (Too close in strong wind, turning current, in front of the jetty where the ferry needed to turn round) Had they been capable of self reflection, I suspect they’d be giving themselves a pretty hard time.

More of the same the next morning (that’s lounging by the pool as opposed to being told to suck someone’s cock)

The afternoon and evening were a horrible wind howling, hull slapping affair. The conditions were supposed to calm down by bedtime.. they didn’t. We lay there being thrown around as the bow pitched up and down and listened to the outside nastiness. Must of slept, because I woke to the sound of a helicopter above us and search light panning round. I’m assuming it’s some sort of emergency on the island - I can’t see a pilot choosing to try and land in these conditions if they didn’t have to.

By morning, although the sky is still very overcast, the sea-state has calmed, and we once again head to shore in the tender for another peaceful poolside start to the day - it was not to be. Apparently today is Saturday, this equates to numerous young families and their exceptionally vocal offspring screaming in the pool. That’s fine they’re enjoying themselves - we head off after a quick dip, back to the serenity of Serenity Now.

We’re due some strong Northerly wind and a storm in the next 24hrs, and our current home isn’t viable for those conditions. Both up just shy of 5am the next morning, we upped anchor and headed 2 hours round the corner to a (hopefully) more protected spot at Beaver Rock, just short of the entrance to the shallows we’ll need to negotiate in the coming days. The wind does pick up through the day, and by nightfall, the horizon is putting on quite a show of repeated lightening bolts arcing down to earth and an angry dark purply green sky (bear in mind I’m colourblind). It then ramped up to be directly overhead - or more concerningly directly above our 20m metal mast/lightening conductor! The constant rubble of thunder accompanied by the all too frequent deafening crash close by made for a teeth clenched grimacing evening for both of us. …one which I’m happy to report we lived through! Yay! During the next day I finished writing a story I’ve been working on: ‘The Pattaya flying club’. (I enjoyed it, but it’s a pretty grim affair)

The evening followed much the same pattern as the night before: as I write this, a cloud that has been sparking massive bolts of lightening all evening is now sitting on top of us dumping rain in buckets. The upside: this may finally wash the last of the bird poo off the bimini. Had a gusty horrible evening, the anchor chain spinning nearly 360, and a (thankfully false) alarm going off at one stage to suggest we’d dragged.

Both over it. Woke after a fitful disturbed night to more howling - the other boats who’d been with us when we went to bed having all opted to leave.

We will be tackling the shallows at lunchtime today - and of course the intermittently working depth gauge is most definitely not working today.

…did I mention we’re over it?

The journey through the shallows was a success, in that we didn’t ground, can’t really say much more positive about it. Chez was tormented by the Navionics app as we made our way through - the app choosing the most inappropriate times to loose GPS signal. This combined with no depth gauge does not make for a happy Captain, or first mate for that matter.

Regardless - as I write this, all that is behind us. Onwards towards the Gold Coast in the next few days!

Anchored at Elbow Point - nice and flat. Lovely.

…it’s just gone 10pm here (at Elbow Point)now.

I need to bring you up to speed with what’s just happened while it’s still fresh in my mind.

At exactly 9pm all hell broke loose - that is not an exaggeration. The worst intensity storm in 8 years at sea has just hit - It absolutely f***ing smashed us!

First we knew about it, the wind began to rapidly rise, the howling outside turning to an immense roar in the space of 60 seconds, and the spaghetti (our curly spaghetti like track on the naviontics app) showed us we were rapidly dragging anchor - bear in mind we’re next door to land and a coral reef. There followed 30mins of absolute hell: An immensely fierce white out storm in pitch darkness. Chez at the helm hanging on for dear life as I shouted left or right and watched our track - I definitely got the better end of the stick as Chez was whipped by the rain and wind at the helm.

Lightening would occasionally light up the waves, they’re angry, furious in fact and streaked with torn white sheets blown from their crests by the jets of wind and rain beating down (actually beating sideways ) on to us.

Everywhere is deafening chaos, utterly uninterpretable chaos threatening to kill us.

We grounded briefly on the reef - a grinding coming through the hull - Chez felt this. In the frantic frenzy we found ourselves in, I did not. By the power of Yanmar (our engine) we got free. Engine still revving at its highest we fought against the elements to then try and keep us away from the land - at times only seconds away from us.

“Lifejackets!!” Shouted chez after we’d been fighting it for some time: It’s so obvious, but until that point everything had happened so quickly we hadn’t even thought of them. I was actually still in just my underpants. The jackets were grabbed from below and hastily donned as Chez continued to keep us from further disaster. The anchor still down, but god knows where it’s been dragged to, the boat turned this way and that in the maelstrom. On two occasions we seemed to be losing it completely- ‘it’ being our battle with the storm, the boat and our lives.

“Please stop” was a plea screamed on a few occasions as the f***ing awful conditions appeared to want to continue ramping up and to go on and on.

Everything is drenched. The iPad got wet, the screen at times not showing our position , or zooming in on its own on to another area. At the time that was our only indication as to where land was, the helm compasses barely visible in the intense spray. Downstairs got wet, there’s water in the bilge, everything got thrown about.. but we lived! After perhaps 30mins we found some stability in our position in the still pretty strong storm conditions and were able to ease back on the throttle. I tried to get an utterly drenched Chez away from the helm.. she was hunched over in the ‘hang on for dear life while I steer this bloody boat stance’, her legs had packed up - turned to jelly & she was freezing. Towels and tea followed as the storm began to abate - down to just the now normal wind, rain and lightening all around.

Sitting here writing this, Chez has been staring into space musing over what went on - she’s just declared:

“That was fucking mental”

..and you know what?

It was! We don’t want to do that again - ever.

Added some more chain (40m - 60m) when things calmed down after midnight. Hopefully that is just shutting the door after the horse has bolted.. but we’ll see.

Eventually managed to go to sleep at 2:30am. Woke again at 7, and straight into the aftermath jobs:

Donned a snorkel and dived down to check the rudder - thankfully no damage (and no sharks, and surprisingly warm water). Next, whilst Chez began hanging up all the drenched clothes and furniture, I set about investigating the wet bilges. This made slightly more interesting by a curious number of large biting marsh flies buzzing round me as I grunt and groan sponging out the water.

Inconclusive on where it exactly came from, best guess at this stage is through the water strainer seal on the raw water inlet.. time will tell.

Speaking of raw: we both are from last night - a bit wobbly emotionally, and with another storm forecast for tonight and no alternative but to grin (grimace) and bear it, it’s not ideal. Ahhh… boat life!