Two Ships Head Out

 

The beginning of our dual trip (Oso Blanco and Mystery Ship) out of Mooloolaba began with a "bash". We were lead boat out of the harbour entrance and where there were markers buoys on the sand bar when we arrived, now there was nothing, but the sand bar was still there as evidenced by the breaking waves. We followed our original course in, out (and a sailboat ahead of us) only to be rudely awakened by slamming the sand bar. We bounced once and were lifted clear by the next swell. Visions of our impending destruction flashed through my mind - being stuck aground, being battered with the swell, falling over on our side and ultimately filling with sand and salt water. Good thing my imagination is not reality. The worst that has occurred is that we now have a shinny spot on the bottom where the sand rubbed the anti foul paint off.  The rest of our day was uneventful, even the crossing of the Wide Bay Bar in a 1.7 M swell. (we wouldn't want to be going in anything bigger than that though).

 

It felt so good to be letting the anchor down for the first time this season. Even the little rust bits that flew all over the freshly polished white gel coat didn't dim the fun. We are just snuggled up to the shoreline of the Great Sandy Strait channel, in a spot just south of the very shallow crossing that we will do tomorrow on the afternoon high tide. Our freshly inflated rubber dingy is plopped into the water and Glen and I head over to Oso for pot luck super, so we can all exaggerate about our day. Eric has lots of good stories on touching bottom over his extended boating history and we find that they even kissed the sand at Mooloolaba today too.

 

Our sleep has been peaceful. The day begins on a falling tide, so after breakfast, Glen and I head out in the dingy to check out the now exposed beaches and sand dunes. There isn't much to find as far as neat shells, but as we crest one sand pile on the beach, we are met with the strangest sight….. it is like we are looking down from an airplane and under us we see the gathering of multitudes of armies, jostling for position on a great battlefield. These tightly packed foot soldiers turn out to be tiny little blue crabs with white legs, they are the size of small marbles and there are literally thousands of them swarming over the beach in compact groups. If you get too close, they all dig themselves into the sand, disappearing in seconds. They are funny to watch. We are wondering why the birds aren't down here having a feast? Maybe the little critters taste bad! Of course our camera is on the boat, so no pictures to validate our story. This is Fraser Island that we are on and we do come across some dingo tracks…so we did hear one howling the night before.

 

The high tide happens at 5:00 pm today so we up anchor and start motoring at about 3:00 pm so that if we get hung up along the way, we at least have a rising tide to wash us up and away. We let Oso Blanco lead - Eric has a track from when we came south through here (we forgot to make one on our chart - tisk, tisk). We make it through without incident; the least amount of water we showed on our sounder was 3 feet below our keel. Now we have to pour on the coal to get to our anchorage destination before dark, which is complete by 6:00pm. Tonight anchoring isn't so fun as it is raining and windy (breezy) so I am freezing in my shorts by the time I have the snubber lines properly set. I am mollified (is that a word) by the fact that we get to have pizza at the Kingfisher Resort.