Lyn's Log, 25th December 2011
Bundaberg to Sydney

Pittwater, Sydney
S33º39', E151º17'
36,823 miles

Up until the last day of November and the boozy dinner marking the end of the 2011 Port-to-Port Rally in Bundaberg, Queensland, the weather had been perfect. Now people were ready to sail away, it changed to rains and strong southerly winds. It wasn’t until 10th December that we could leave for Sydney, where we planned to see the New Year celebrations. Even then the contrary winds made it impossible to go outside Fraser Island and south down the coast, so we headed instead for the shallow inside route through the Great Sandy Straight. It would be a slow passage.

As we waited for the tide to cross the shallowest spot, yet again the prop-shaft started to rumble and rattle alarmingly. Fortunately we were able to sail the remaining 20 miles to Tin Can Bay Marina in search of emergency repairs. This turned out to be one of those friendly ramshackle country marinas we so like. Behind the marina was a tree on which the local parrot population roosted, hundreds of birds making an incredible amount of noise.

Sentinel was hoisted out the water and everyone in the yard clustered around to give their opinion, the concensus being that we have an engine alignment problem. We could hear the shaft scraping as it was turned by hand. No other explanations seemed likely so we put Sentinel back in the water and the engineer was summoned. He found that the two aft engine mounts were loose. How ironic that after all the work that has been done on the forward mounts since we left New Zealand, the aft ones had been neglected. He tightened them and realigned the engine, and we have had no further noises since.

From this point south almost all the harbour entrances have offlying bars that need to crossed. These are not to be treated lightly, specially on an ebb tide, as pictures like these show. Wide Bay Bar, the one nearest Tin Can Bay, is one of the most dangerous, where yachts are regularly lost. First checking with the coastguards for the exact position of waypoints to cross, we motored through in light southerly winds and then south through a maze of sand-bars into Moreton Bay, anchoring in the early hours near Brisbane.

We had no time to visit Brisbane but spent a pleasant two days following the winding, shallow inland passage while southeasterly winds persisted. Often we scraped mud to get through. Then, just south of Jacob’s Well, a notorious shoal area grounded us for an hour while we had a cup of tea. The tide rose a little and we wriggled our way afloat only to ground again. By the time we got through we reckoned we had dredged the channel several inches deeper. A couple of real dredgers we found at the next channel mark didn’t seem to be doing much better. Another yacht behind went through the same procedure while we chatted to each other on the radio.

Finally we reached the southern-most point of the "inside route" at the wealthy, watersports town of Southport. It looked very much like some of the towns we had seen in Florida on the intercoastal waterway, where smart housing developments are built around canals each with their own mooring. En route we had put into one remote anchorage during a rain-squall to find a Dutch yacht there: Nige Faam which we had last met in Recife, Brazil, five years previously. At Southport we found ourselves anchored next to Nine of Cups which had left Opua, New Zealand, shortly after us.

We had now covered only one-third of the distance to Sydney, and time was running out. From here on it was going to be out in the Pacific, but at least we would have the benefit of the East Australia current that runs south at up to 3kts. Plus, at last, northerly winds were forecast. We came out across another dangerous bar at Southport, then in two days sailed into Coffs Harbour. This pretty town was in full holiday mode with many people enjoying the beaches, waves and sunshine, but we lost our north wind. After another two days we left in light south winds, turning northerly, but still light. We motor-sailed and kept going until we reached Pittwater, Broken Bay in the early hours of the third day at sea, on 23rd of December. Pittwater was where we planned to stay while visiting Sydney, just 15km away.