Saturday 18th September 2010

Lance came over mid morning and said that bad weather was on the way and unless we got away fairly quickly we would be stuck there for several days. His intention was to leave mid afternoon, sail all night and reach Bundaberg early Sunday morning. He invited us to follow him if we wished and we decided that that would probably be the best thing to do.

We departed about 15:00 and followed Lance most of the way to the Burnett River. It was a very long, tiring and cold trip with headwinds all of the way. We got in about 08:00 this morning. Up until midnight we did hourly turns at the wheel, but then the wind got up and the boat became very hard to handle and Chez’s bad shoulder didn’t allow her to be on the helm for very long. She was able to go on for short periods of time when I needed a break. I was getting very tired and falling asleep at the wheel, but still, somehow or other, managed to keep it approximately on course. While we could see Lance we followed his stern light. He was slightly faster and for the last few hours of dark I had to follow a compass bearing. I was pretty glad when, about 8 miles out, we picked up the Burnett River entrance light and was able to head straight for it.

We went into Burnett harbour and dropped anchor, but Chez was having difficulty getting in and out of dinghy with bad shoulder, so I found out the availability of a berth in marina just up river from harbour and we came up here and have booked in for 2 nights or until this bad weather passes.

Lazy day to day recuperating from last night and catching up on the washing.