Cruising Log—25...Fraser Is to Double Island Pt

Now it was Leanne’s turn to go into a blind funk, as she was doing the navigation. Fortunately I got my second wind at this point. With Leanne back on the helm and the deadline rushing inexorably closer, I sat at the navigation table with the paper chart and worked out the latitudes and longitudes of a set of waypoints to get us to the anchorage. Then I sat in the cockpit and keyed them into the GPS, finishing with five minutes to spare.

It worked a treat. We safely sailed the channel all the way to Bookar Island in the dark, without running aground. The relief after dropping the anchor at 8 p.m. that night cannot be described. The wind howled in from the northwest but the anchorage was flat as a tack. We had been at sea for 58 hours on a passage that had only taken us 28 hours on the way up.

A more frightening problem was the onset of darkness with still 12nm to go to the nearest NW-sheltered anchorage, in the lee of Bookar Island at South White Cliffs. We realized we had to get rid of the mainsail which was causing us a lot of grief in the strong winds – we were barely in control. There was not enough sea room to maneuver under sail so we fired up the engine, turned into the wind, and dropped the main. As soon as we could we turned down wind again and shut down the engine, running now just on a small part of the headsail to keep our speed down.

Having overcome this hurdle, I then told Leanne of the imminent end of our electronic charts. They don’t cover the whole of the Sandy Straits, only the top and bottom. We faced the prospect of following a narrow twisting channel in the dark with no route to work with. Not good. Leanne had not realized they were going to run out. I did, but was too paralyzed with tiredness to tell her earlier or to figure out what to do.

Next morning we woke to a 30kt northerly. We desperately wanted to stay put and rest but couldn’t. The 30kt SE change was on the way and our anchorage was not sheltered from that direction. Besides, we needed the northerly wind to sail further and the tides were right to cross the shallowest and most tricky part of the Straits, but they wouldn’t stay that way.

So at 11 a.m., about an hour before high tide, we departed. We used only the staysail but still couldn’t keep our speed under 6kts. This was scary as there was no room for error in picking the course and making the correct turns. If we ran aground at this speed and at high tide we would probably never get off.

After the first half hour, once we’d got used to handling the boat in such a wind with only the staysail, and having survived almost being swept sideways past the wrong side of a port marker, we began to enjoy the exhilarating sail. Other yachts coming through under motor were trying to pass us with not much success, due to our good speed under sail.

So it was on Saturday 28 October in the early afternoon that the anchor went down at Garry’s, a bomb-proof anchorage on the west side of Fraser Island. More food and straight to sleep.

It wasn’t until Wednesday 1 November that we had a suitable forecast to move on. We had to sail to Inskip Point at the southern end of Fraser Island, where we would wait for high tide to sail across the Wide Bay Bar, the most notorious on the east coast.

We were ready to leave Garry’s at 7 a.m. but waited for three hours until there was enough of a puff to make it worth while trying to sail. In the end a gentle breeze came in and we had a lovely sail. We arrived at Inskip Point at 1 p.m. We dropped the sails and the anchor without using the engine. There followed a huge feed of pasta for lunch, in preparation for the overnight sail of 105nm to Scarborough.

At 3 p.m. we departed. It took for ever against wind and tide to get down the last part of the Straits and onto the leads ready to cross the bar. We tacked all the way but had to use the engine as well – we couldn’t make much progress without it. With the greatest relief we turned onto the leads and headed for the bar, which put Masala onto a tight reach. We shut down the engine, pulled out the headsail to a #3 position to go with the staysail and full main, and shot out over the bar doing 7.5 to 8 kts. It didn’t take long to round Double Island Point at this speed, where we could turn south and get the wind behind us, just on dark.