Monday 27 September 2010

We were up early and prepared to cross the bar, it is one of the largest bars on the east coast and takes about an hour. The passage through the sand banks has a 90 degree turn half way across. There are leads for both legs; the first, on the mainland, are 2 triangular boards and are easy to follow right out to the turning point. The second set of leads are on 1 large white board on Frazer Island and it has 3 lights on it. You are supposed to be able to see a green if right of track, a red if left and a white if on track. In practice, during daylight, none of them can be seen and you have to use the GPS way points.

Today, luckily the bar was fairly benign, not like it was when I came in. This is my 7th crossing of it and it is the calmest that I have seen it. After crossing the bar we set course for Mooloolaba and had a pretty good run down with a 8 – 10 knot following wind. I was beginning to think that we would get there before dark but it was not to be. The sun set at 17:50 and we went into the river about half an hour later when it was quite dark. I haven’t been in after dark before, always preferring to anchor in the bay and wait for morning, but with the nor’easter there was quite a swell in the bay and it would have been too uncomfortable. The channel up river is well lit and we were able to find our way to the fuel wharf to tie up for the night. There are large signs all along the wharf saying no berthing at any time, trespassers will be prosecuted, etc, but we decided to chance it, there being nowhere else, that I knew of, that we could go.

The pub overlooks the fuel wharf so we went up and had a meal there, on the veranda overlooking the wharf where we could keep an eye on Paragon.

The next morning at 7 the wharf attendant arrived and we told him we had just arrived and were waiting for him to re-fuel. After re-fuelling he directed us to the passenger wharf where the whale watching boat had just left from. We spent a couple of hours there waiting for the marina to open and go in there. We got lots of black looks from the smaller tour operators as we were in the way. One of them even tried to hamper us by mooring a boat right across our bows, which I had to move before we could leave.

Yesterday was spent catching up on all the chores and, today, (Wednesday), we are catching a bus over to a big shopping centre and also visiting Whitworths, a large discount boat parts store.