The Great Sandy Straits

Arjuna at twilight. Photographed from Twilight. (c) SV Twilight

As the First Mate points out, it may be a bad sailing omen to start a voyage on a Friday but probably no worse than quoting Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem on dying in a previous blog post. As we and the internet can attest, the Wide Bay Bar was survived (if the truth be known, the swell was worse on the journey up than that on the bar itself) and we lived happily overnight at Pelican Bay - or at least as close in to it as we felt comfortable with.


The next morning, with a desperate need to burn off energy, a Zodiac Assault was made on the sandbar at Inskip Point with an Away Team. The trip across took less than 20 seconds and we could have swum the distance quicker than the time it took to release and load up the dinghy. After briefly getting damp in the 10 centimetres of water available before the sandbar dropped off into the 8 metre deep channel we sat down and watched Arjuna drift along one way then casually drift back the other. Apparently, the anchor was dragging - probably because we had dropped anchor on the side of the steep drop off. Given that this had probably been happening all night, cool heads prevailed and we sat and watched the car ferry between Inskip Point and Fraser Island for a while. It was doing an admirable job trying to cope with an endless stream of four wheel drives going back and forth.

The Away Team looked back at Arjuna, startled to see the engine on and the anchor coming up. No doubt the crew on board had been alerted to the drifting danger and were taking sensible measures to secure the vessel. On shore however, cool heads gave way to panic at the likelihood of being marooned on a sand bar without a musket or the alternative: being taken in and brought up by a family of kindly four wheel drive nutters. Order was restored when the Away Team returned at high speed; some walking on water. As one would expect in an experienced crew - there was laughter all round as the crew was reunited - everyone keeling over and slapping each others backs at the sheer hilarity of the situation.

The Arjuna departed Pelican Bay in a fine northeasterly and headed up Wide Bay Harbour deeper into the great Great Sandy Straits. There was some fine tacking action as we worked our way past Fraser Island on one side and the mainland on the other. Relying on our chart plotter and the latest Great Sandy Strait charts we would reach into shore on one tack until the depth was minimal then tack back out again. The wise words of the Specialist Sail Trimmer were close at heart: "just keep sailing until you can see the bottom or hit it - then turn".

Because of the precise accuracy of our navigational charts and electronic systems we were able to drop the sails as the channel started shoaling into shallows on either side and from then on proceeded more sedately on engine towards the planned encampment at Garry's Anchorage entrance whereupon we slid onto a sandbar and came to a dead halt.

Now long term readers will already be aware of our minor sandbar-keel frictional event in the Canaipa Passage and query how this could happen again. Less diplomatic persons might query the captaincy skills of a ship's master who could repeat this. In the Captain and Navigator's favour, The Gospel of Lucas (circa 2003 of course), the official charts and our chart plotter all indicated that there was suitable depth and in addition we had an hour and a half of tide on top of that. Also, we were proceeding with caution at the frightening speed of 1.5 knots knowing that depths were not good - so all was not lost. In fact, we just hit reverse and backed off it. What was worrying was that this called into question how much we could rely on the charts to plot our course. With the fair catamaran Twilight behind us at Tin Can Bay, we had no one to send ahead onto sand bars on our behalf.

The wind was building from the North East against a strong opposing tide so we stood off until the tide rose further, eventually entering Garry's Anchorage on dusk with about 70 centimetres under the keel at the offending sandbar. We moored in the relatively shallow waters of Garry's with about ten other boats.

Garry's is apparently a very popular anchorage with a nice beach and good shelter - which is why the insect life find it so appealing. The Captain, among his other skills such as finding unexpected shallows and catching poisonous fish, also has a keen radar for biting insects. To insects, he is like a lobster tail arriving at a banquet of otherwise ordinary green salads. It was not much longer than the descent of an anchor to the bottom of a shallow channel before early guests started arriving at the boat. Murray's fine seam work came into its own as we dropped all the mesh sides on the new bimini to seal ourselves in. Unfortunately, the hoards quickly overpowered our first defences and we retreated below decks, sealing all hatches to prevent entry. The Captain turned off all the seacocks to prevent underwater sneak attacks through the pipes and we backed into the bow cabin laying down a covering cloud of flyspray.

Garry's probably is a very nice anchorage. It certainly looked very nice and tranquil the next morning at 0600 as we surveyed the carnage - a boat completely coated in a fine dusting of dead and wounded bugs. The First Mate, concerned about depth during the night had also checked the depth sounder at 0200 hours and confirmed that there was only 30 centimetes of water under us at low tide. The next two low tides were expected to be even lower - which clinched the deal for the Arjuna and we up anchored before the remainder of the crew awoke and ploughed out of the channel on the rapidly rising tide.

Our new purpose was to get through the shallow choke points of the southern Sandy Straits and into somewhere a bit more open. The shallowest point (according to official charts) on the main route through the Great Sandy Straits is at Boonlye Point, not far north of Garry's Anchorage, and it was to here we motored. On current tide predictions we had some 40 minutes to cross this at the top of the tide which, according to our increasingly fallible tidal calculations, would give us just enough water to skate through the shallowest sections before the tide cut things off again. So we virtually had the yacht up on the plane as we twisted and turned up the channel watching the clock. With about ten minutes to high tide we approached a catamaran also making a high tide crossing. We paused to yell out to them and confirmed that they drew half a metre less than us. Their captain crossed himself as we indicated our depth but waved us through - presumably so he could get the whole incident on Youtube from the best angle possible. We gave some thought to tossing our precious cargo of spices to lighten the load but a hundredweight of cumin seeds and tumeric would have curried up the channel for years.

We elected to follow the channel leads rather than our backstabbing chartplotter which predicted that the same course would plough us directly into a sand island. Using our now standard approach of slowing to absolutely minimum speed we basically drifted into the shallow areas so slowly that our friendly catamaran overtook again. The First Mate crossed herself. The Captain held his breath. The Ship's Monkey, as usual, chose this moment to come on deck and discuss dolphins or Minecraft or lunch or something. We coasted along past the channel markers and emerged into deeper waters. Interestingly, the depth sounder never went below 1.7 metres in the whole shallow section - well and truly enough water under the keel. Once again, we scratched our heads trying to relate the chart depths with what we had just passed and put it down to the unpredictable nature of the sea and a lack of coffee.

Moonrise over Sheridan's Flat

We could now turn our thoughts to the impending arrival of Cyclone Ita - at that time crossing the coast in the far north. Arjuna pulled gently into the calm water of Sheridan's Flat. This seemed to present a reasonable place to ride out the predicted southerly / southeasterly winds against the side of Fraser. In here the bottom tapered off gradually giving us more scope for getting a good anchor in - unlike a lot of the anchorages in the Sandy Straights where the bottom drops away rapidly. On arrival, several boats were anchored giving some comfort that this was where a salty dog would hole up. Most of them left within the next hour leaving us and one doughty cat - no doubt a true salt.

We prepared the vessel for a bit of an extended blow.The wind certainly got up but we were relatively protected in our snug little anchorage given the winds on the other side of the island. Sheridan's Flat is apparently where the North and South tides meet in the Sandy Straits and we expected that this would slow the current slightly more than what we had experienced

Double layer of cockpit rain protection...

further south. However, the current was still running at probably three knots. Definitely the sort of speed that convinces a man making a nocturnal passing visit to the stern to hold on to

The inside of a cataract

something tight lest he wash away in the current with naught but an empty bladder and embarrassing tale to tell. Arjuna also has a problem in that current because the boat wants to swing downstream while Ex-Tropical Cylcone Ita wants to push it in the other direction - with the result that the boat simply points in a direction somewhere in between and leans on its side.
Fortunately, our training at Woolwich Marina had prepared us for these conditions. The crew retreated downstairs and many a game of Monopoly was had where the Second and Third Mate taught the Ship's Monkey about life by repeatedly bankrupting their younger sibling.

And so we rode out a few days of rain and wind before emerging into a sunny Tuesday morning. To celebrate and burn off energy we took the tender out for a Zodiac Assault on Yankee Jack Creek to explore the delightful backwaters and to find some mosquitos.

The crew investigating just how many
mosquitos bites it takes before you pass out

Sunrise over Fraser and ex-TC Ita

The moon hovers over our wind generator