Oz Circumnavigation
Whitsunday Island Group to Bundaberg - Queensland
This has been a great trip as it was just Margaret and I on board and without others timetables, we were able to amble down the coast at a leisurely pace and securing an anchorage every night.
First stop was at Scawfell Island, then Middle Percy Island, Pearl Bay, Great Keppell Island, Pancake Creek, and finally Bundaberg.
It was our primary aim to get claim the Gold Coast, but the brisk SE trades wouldn't let up, and quite frankly Marg had had enough of the pounding, so decided we would sit out a few days in Bundaberg to see if the wind direction and intensity would change.
What would be ideal is anything that was more abeam or behind us as the SE trades dominate here for most of the year, and any boat coming down from Cape York has to travel approx 1240 nm to Byron Bay in NSW almost on a true SE heading, before the mainland eastwards bulge ends, and affords a more southerely course for any port south.
Arriving in Bundaberg we were delighted to meet the famous Hass's who are on their third world circumnavigation on their Nordhavn 46 - Kanaloa.
Wolfgang and Heidi Hass (and Zulu their little dog who was just released after a month in Quarantine) were fascinating to listen to, and we particularly probed them for their favourite places around the globe.
Obviously they love Australia, but I couldn't convince them to come south of Mooloolaba to see Tasmania which is my boating heaven.
Something about growing up in Berlin vowing never to experience cold weather again, was the explanation we received I believe.
Waiting for a change in the weather for three days which didn't eventuate, we ran out of time to attend our son Chris's University graduation ceremony back in Melbourne.
Chris has just been appointed the General Manager of our business, after having been in it for 10years, except for 3 years off for Uni, it's going to be almost impossible now to pick up one of our most accessible crew members as he has lots of work now on his plate.
We drove down to Mooloolaba in the Hass's car as they needed it down there before arriving on Kanaloa, and saved us from renting one.
We claimed the Palazzo Versace Hotel marina at 2000 hrs on November 15th, and early in the morning steamed SKIE around to the Gold Coast City Marina on the Coomera River, where she was pulled out of the water by a 180 ton travel lift to reveal an extraordinary site of a bottom that had been in the water for 30 months since new.
Palazzo Versace Hotel Marina. Image source: https://www.palazzoversace.com.au/
What a testament to Pettit Trinidad anti foul applied in the factory when built. Sadly it has been banned in Australia because of it's high copper content so we have had to use another product. This give us a chance to also polish the topsides and fill a few dings that occur when you put 16,000 miles under the keel.
The worst of the problem occured in Broome when the steel strapping on a very large mooring bouy we were on finished up scraping the hull which is very rare as the boat should hang off some distance by a line, but in Broome when you have a tide counter the wind, everything becomes neutral. However with a bit of gel coat and a polish it has dissapeared fortunately. Well the guy that applied it and myself can see a difference, most others wouldn't.