The Easter long weekend of 2024 was to be our first time out on Lazuli by ourselves. The weather forecast wasn’t great, with rain predicted for a lot of the weekend, and winds from the SE.
The first job on Friday was loading up with everything we needed (wanted) for a weekend away.. 7 little carts full plus packs we were carrying:
I had originally hoped to get to one of the turning marks of the “Brisbane to Gladstone”, just off Redcliffe. However, with all the loading, getting set up, trying to find ‘reverse’, we didn’t quite make it.
We spent some time bobbing around watching the boats sail past before we needed to get a move on if we were going to make it to somewhere on Moreton for the night.
Originally I had thought the Sandhills would be a good spot, but then the wind dropped and we ended up motoring to Tangalooma instead. As expected it was quite busy, but we found a spot and set anchor.
We were close to a rather large luxury vessel, but we seemed to be far enough away during the various swings through the tide changes.
Not long after we dropped anchor we got a rather nice rainbow:
I got up a few times to check we hadn’t dragged and that we were still a good distance from our neighbours.
We had arranged with Luke & Alex, Zoe and Aaron, and some others (who were camping on Moreton) to meet up at the wrecks on Saturday around midday. In morning the 4 of us jumped in the tender to go spend some time on the beach before lunch.
We got to the beach and realised that a combination of wind and tide meant our boat was now swinging really really close to the very expensive boat next to us. Kristie and I jumped back in the tender and got back to our boat in double time to move it (their crew were standing at the back ready to fend off our boat!).
We moved a good 100m further away, and then went back to the beach and had a play and a swim. We headed to the boat for some lunch and realised that since a few other boats had left there was now a good spot a lot closer to the wrecks. So we pulled anchor and relocated just as the land based crew turned up.
We spent the next few hours ferrying people out to the wrecks, out to our boat for a visit, and snorkeling the wrecks ourselves (the girls tried their best to touch the fish!).
The girls requested we do our “Sips ‘n dips” on the beach this arvo.. who are we to say no!
No matter your boat, there’s always going to be bigger boat than the one you have…
Saturday night was much calmer knowing we weren’t anywhere near a multi-million dollar vessel!
Sunday we had planned another morning snorkel at Tangalooma and then down to the Sandhills for the night. The Easter Bunny found their way to Lazuli overnight (the girls weren’t sure of the logistics of that!).
With the wind on the nose, and rather inclement weather we opted to motor for the afternoon. The wireless anchor control decided to stop working just as we had pulled up anchor at Tangolooma, and I thought a charge would fix it. (no dice -turns out the wires detached themselves from the battery inside the remote). We found the manual/wired control and got that going.
The Sandhills were much calmer than Tangalooma, but still pretty full.
We got there too late to get to the beach on Sunday, but cheese made up for that:
Monday morning: due to tides we needed to be back in Scarborough by about 2pm, so the plan was to start back at 10am. This gave us a few hours in the morning to get to the beach and do some exploring.
We’d seen others climbing the Big Sandhills the previous afternoon, so that was our goal for this morning. Going in at low tide wasn’t ideal as we needed to wade a fair way in and drag the boat up a bit. However, low tide meant exploring and soldier crabs!
We got to the top and had good fun jumping down the sandhills. You also get a great view of the anchorage and surrounding bay. We’re the blue one ;)
By the time we were ready to sail back the wind had come up a little, and a few boats were now returning home. With no particular rush, and the possibility of rain we kept our sun cover up and opted to sail back with just the genoa out.
It made for some easy sailing, 6-7knts most of the time.
We caught and overtook one of the other yachts that had left earlier (it’s a race whenever two sailing boats can see each other right??).
We got back in good time, however a few issues prevented up from fulling the genoa, so we implemented an emergency/manual furl (tacking/gybing) before we were finally ready to head back in. That boat we were “beating”… well they got back in before us :(
Our marina neighbours (Sandy & Andy) had waved us off on Friday and suggested we call them when we got back and they’d pop up and catch our lines.
I had one failed attempt of getting back into the pen, before changing tactics and reversing down past our berth to then come back in from the other side.
We (especially Kristina) had hoped to have Fish ‘n Chips from Morgans when we got back, but as it was Easter Monday everything was closed. We had lunch on the boat then packed up and headed home (this took much longer than expected but hopefully we’ll get better at it!)
A bunch of boat jobs now result from our weekend away, some more critical than others:
- Fix the toilet (don’t ask!)
- Fix the genoa so it unfurls
- Get the depth sounder working
- Fix the anchor remote
- …
Bring on another… :(