The 2nd week of the June/July School Holidays worked out both tide wise, and appointment wise (i.e we weren’t busy).
We invited some diving/sailing friends along: Craig & Tal. I had sailed with Craig onboard Merit when we helped deliver it down from Airlie Beach late last year. Lazuli isn’t a Volvo 60, but she’s still fun to sail and a lot more comfortable.
The plan was to leave as soon as the tide would let us on the Saturday 29th, drop our guests off somewhere on the Monday, and then we ourselves return to Scarborough on the Friday.
I had been keeping an eye on the forecast, but when Saturday rolled around, it was without any wind.
We loaded up the boat, usual supplies plus a few extra items: dive gear and new Bauer dive compressor.
We left pulled out of the marina just before 2pm, and started motoring across the bay in “perfect boating conditions”.
After four hours of motoring we got to Flinders. In the dark. With the torch lights out we found a mooring and tided up.
We fed the girls then Craig and I geared up for a night dive: Kristie was still to sick to dive, and Tal had started “Sips ‘n dips” earlier in the afternoon!
I had rigged up my old cave diving canister light (the canister battery had died some years ago) to be powered off a small car battery and hung the head of the torch in the water amidships to help us with the underwater navigation.
As we were pretty shallow the torch lit up the bottom and proved very helpful in getting back to the boat.
The dive was a typical Flinders night dive. Almost no current, reasonable visibility and lots of life.
At one point a 2m shark (not a Reef, and not a GNS) swam right underneath me from behind. I think Craig found that funnier than I did at the time!
After a quick hot shower off the back of the boat it was time for salad and lamb cutlets… and some very fine red wine from our guests.
The plan for the next day was to get in a few dives and then sail back towards Cleveland.
We found it hard to get stuff done quickly in the morning, as there were so so many whales about. Over the course of the day we reckon it must have been close to 100 that swam by, some as close as 2m from the boat.
The wind had picked up and swung to the NW overnight, so dodging the whales, we slowly left the western side of Flinders and picked up the southern morning on the eastern side as that was a lot calmer.
We had to fill the two tank from the night dive, to out came the compressor for it’s first real use. 25min to fill both our tanks from ~100 to 200 bar.
Craig, Tal, and I geared up and jumped in. Craig aborted the dive, so Tal and I continued on down. We had a fantastic 45min dive, with the highlight being two whales swimming right past us, maybe only 10m away.
Given how many had seen from on the boat, I had been looking up the entire dive in case one did swim near us. Such a great experience. Sadly I hadn’t bothered with my dive camera, so no photo evidence.
After our dive, the girls put on their wetsuits and snorkeling gear and Craig drove us over to a shallow calm spot a bit further up.
With water activities done, we had lunch and got the boat ready for a sail.
The wind had really come up by the time we were ready to leave. Wind was probably 15-20 NNW. We put in one reef on the main and then hoisted what while still on the mooring. We cast off and headed back the way we’d come yesterday.
With just the main up were we doing 8kts, so we unfurled the smaller jib and got the boat moving a bit faster, and a little bit more balanced.
Today was definitely proper sailing conditions (much to the enjoyment of Craig and Jeremy!)
It didn’t take us long to get around to the western side of Moreton. With the wind directly behind us for the first bit we aimed in for Bulwer before angling almost straight for Mud Island.
With strong NW winds, there aren’t too many places to hide in the northern end of the bay. Peel was a good option, but we wouldn’t get there until after 7pm. We decided to try and hide behind Mud or St Helena.
We got to Mud not long after 6pm, and tucked up nice and close to the island in 5m of water. Still a bit of wind, but mostly flat water.
We enjoyed a delicious dinner from Tal and Craig, and after finishing their wine supply broke out mine. Craig and I also finished off what was left from the Whisky Evan had brought along when he came out (thanks Ev!).
The wind had dropped out completely the next morning, and we could now see just how close we were to Mud Island.
Tal offered to cook up some breakfast wraps, and these turned out to be by far the most delicious breakfast wraps ever.
With bellies full, we had 3 or 4 hours before we could drop them off at the Raby Bay public pontoon.
We did a quick motor down to St Helena Island, dropped the anchor and enjoyed stretching our legs on the section that you can access without a guide.
See a map here.
Before you can stretch your legs, you need to run the gauntlet of sea-birds.
Back on the boat we had lunch and motored (still no wind) back around between St Helena and Green and then straight down to Raby Bay.
Thankfully no boats were using the pontoon, so we did a drive by to warn the kids fishing off it that we were about to dock. Did a quick u turn and got the boat tied up without issue (we had Craig’s son and another boatie on the pontoon catch lines for us which also helped!)
A quick unload and hugs goodbye, we pushed off and went back out into the bay. As Kristie’s parents were supposed to be visiting the next morning (and we were going to collect them from the same spot) we just anchored out in Raby Bay close enough to be protected by the wind but still with enough depth (it’s a shallow bay!).
We set anchor, but realised after a few hours that we were dragging, so had to reset it while dark, and raining. Not fun.
We had a quiet night, but come 7am the forecast wasn’t great and Kristie’s parents decided to put off their trip until another time.
The girls suggest we might try fishing. I’d bought a few jigs and lures from the marina shop on Saturday, so with the platform down, and whiting jig on it was time to fish.
I’d barely had the jig in the water 5 seconds before a fish latched on. It was too small to do anything with other than raise the hopes that the girls might also catch something.
However, other than one or two other nibbles we got nothing.
Emma brought out her iPad to show me how much easier it was to go fishing in Minecraft, and proceeded to catch a lot of fish to prove her point.
Given the forecast for the next few days we decided to head home. As it was still raining, motored until we got to the top of Mud and then unfurled the jib for the sail across to Scarborough.
It was an easy, but slower sail than we’d had coming south.
It worked out ok, I had a work call/meeting that I took while perched in the companion way and the autopilot in charge.
It was still wet when we got back to the marina at 5pm. Kristie went to get dinner and I started on getting the boat sorted.
Kristie and the girls left to go home at 7pm, and I slept on the boat to continue the packup (and more work) that night and the following day.
1 meeting, and 4 runs from boat to car (3 in the rain) and I was ready to go home, and then unpack and wash dive gear.
Stuff that broke this week:
- The dive compressor filled two tanks then started leaking.
- The Radar… but I’m not sure if it was really working to begin with.
Lessons learnt:
- Don’t leave the ladder on the swim platform overnight… unless you have scuba gear ready to go retrieve it the next morning!
- Tal cooks amazing dishes (we already knew this I guess)
- Lazuli likes to go fast off the wind even with one reef in
- We can dive off the boat.
- I can’t catch fish.
- Don’t place a steel weight container on your white floor in wet salty conditions.
