The tides were good to take Lazuli out for another short weekend overnight trip: we could leave around 11am, and return between 12:30 and 4:30 on Sunday afternoon.

My BIL Scott and his sailing partner met us 10am, and we had the boat loaded up with plenty of time to spare before we had enough depth to head out.

Whilst I was off the boat on some important business, the rest of the crew had seen a pod of dolphins swimming nearby in the marina. A good start to the weekend away.

The wind forecast was for 10-15kts SSE, which was perfect for sailing to and anchoring up at Tangalooma. Full sails out for a fun sail across.

I got new jackets and pants for the girls to try and keep them a bit warmer up on deck. They worked pretty well.

There was only two other boats over at the wrecks, maybe they knew something we didn’t? The girls were keen for sips’n’dips on the beach, so we didn’t waste too much time getting the tender in and over to the beach.

The water was lovely and flat, albeit a little chilly. We enjoyed a few nibbles and drinks, and the girls spent the afternoon chasing seagulls and playing in the water.

When ever we stop at wrecks, we need to climb up this hill and take a photo, Kristina suggesting I could frame Lazuli between the trees.

Back on the boat we got to warm up a bit and had a pleasant evening and dinner.

It turns out the other boats did know something we didn’t - the wind swung round SW overnight (it wasn’t on the forecast!) so it was a bit of a bumpy night and morning.

We briefly considered heading down to the sandhills, but it wouldn’t have been any nicer and the girls were keen for more time on the beach here. The ride in was slower and not so dry as the day before.

The girls and I enjoyed a long walk up and back on the beach, with Emma collecting all the little jelly-like sea snail egg sacs she could find.

The clear, jelly-like sacs that you see along Australian beaches are not jellyfish.
They’re actually the egg sacs of predatory sand snails, like the moon snail or conical sand snail. 🐌
If you look closely, each sac contains thousands of tiny little eggs.
Moon snail egg masses usually float near sandy areas, and they often wash up on beaches in the spring.
They easily crumble when handled. These egg masses consist of tiny eggs in a jelly matrix.
The matrix absorbs water and swells to form the distinctive crescent-shaped tube which can be three to five times larger than the snail that laid it.
The egg masses break up in the water after a few days, releasing planktonic larvae from the eggs.

You can read more about them:

• https://www.dolphinresearch.org.au/weekly-creature-feature-do-you-know-what-this-is/
• https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/species/8732

We were nearly ready to head back when Kristie looked up from her book and noticed a whale spout just near our boat. A quick moment of disbelief before the two whales surfaced and continued their swim north through the channel between the sand and the wrecks.
It was going well (for the whales) until some idiot on a jetski (she was working for the hire place) got all excited and started chasing them… the Park Rangers came and had a good word to her afterward.
The whales swam all the way up to where Micat comes in, then turned around and swam all the way back out the deeper channel to the south.

With that excitement over, we got back onboard and had a quick lunch and got ready for to sail home. It was gusting 17kts SE when we left, so we stuck with one reef in and had a comfortable sail home. We saw one more “lost” whale jumping in the bay.

We were tied up just before 3pm, and a quick pack up saw as walking to Morgans for a very early dinner just after 4pm. Dinner done and on the road home by 5.

Stuff that broke this week:

• more stitching on the bimini infill and sail covers.

Lessons learnt:

• Whales do come in to the bay!
• Tangalooma is rubbish when it’s SW winds
• Don’t walk under birds sitting on wires

The tides were good to take Lazuli out for another short weekend overnight trip: we could leave around 1pm, and return between 1:30 and 5:30 on Sunday afternoon.

My sister Suz and her daughter Abby jumped at the chance to come along for the trip, and timing meant Abby could still do her soccer game in the morning.

We’ve been leaving more and more stuff on the boat, so this weekend we only needed two trolleys!

When we got the boat, the anchor chain had various colour markings at regular intervals.. some red, some yellow, some green… but we had no idea what they meant.
It’d been on our list to remedy this, so as we got up there by 11am we had enough time to lay the entire chain out on the walkway and put on our own indicators.

Turns out the markers we thought were 10m were closer to 7m, so we’ve had less out than we thought.

Our boat neighbours saw us setting up and mentioned one of their friends had just come back in because it was “a bit wild out there”.
Willy Weather showed about 15kts WSW.

With the wind right behind us once we were out of the marina channel, we motored to the Lateral beacon off North Reef.
We had to doge a race/regatta coming from up south, but we then put the main up and pointed to Mud Island.
We were sitting on about 8kts with just the main up, but was a little overpowered, so we dropped it a bit and put in reef #1.
We were still going 8kts but in much more control and much more comfortable.

While we would have loved to have taken them to Moreton, westerly winds meant Moreton was a no-go.
We (I guess I should say “I”!) decided a quick trip down to Mud Island was the go: we’d seek shelter on the Eastern side.

We tucked in close to the shore along with two other boats also sheltering from the westerlies.

Suz had forgotten her fishing gear, but she picked up some bait at the marina. I had a quick go but didn’t get any nibbles. I cast out the other side towards Mud and still got nothing.
With the wine calling, I gave the rod to Suz and within 10seconds she had a fish hooked and was bringing it in. As is usual I hadn’t expected to catch anything so we didn’t have the net out.
Just as she was about to bring it on the fish (we think Snapper) wriggled free and swam off :(

With the net now ready Suz put some more worms on and had another go. Wasn’t long before she had another fish hooked!

It was a nice looking (but still too small) Snapper. A few photos later and it was back swimming.

We then took turns to see who could catch the smallest fish!

We enjoyed the quite and cloudless night. Steak, salad and red wine (thanks Suz!) for dinner followed by some chocolate.

Earlyish bed (no late night whisky drinking partners this time). We had a few time when the boat rocked a bit from swell off the ships coming/going into port but otherwise a nice anchorage.

We didn’t have too much planned for Sunday other than starting the day with coffee and pancakes.

With breakfast done it was time for more fishing.

Despite lots of other boats around this morning, we didn’t have any luck.

We launched the tender and I took off to go see if there was anywhere close by with easy access onto the island. It was close to low tide, so no there wasn’t.

With the sandhills only an hour away we decided to head there. Even though it would be crappy conditions we didn’t plan to spend much time sitting around at anchor.

Abby found driving over under power a little less stressful than sailing along at 8kts trying to dodge container ships coming out of the port :)

We had anchored up near the little sandhills trying to get any protection we could (nothing really!) so we just went in to explore them. We all jumped into the tender and had a slow but dry ride in. The bay is really quite cold now!

The girls always enjoy exploring beaches at low tide. We didn’t appreciate the sea-grass as much as Suz (apparently we walked over at least 5 different types!)

We’ve had the kites on board the last few trips but never got them out. The Westerly winds provided the perfect opportunity.

The boat ride back was a lot slower, and quite a bit wetter now we had to head into the chop.

We had a quick lunch and tried to sail back home. However, with the wind coming from the West (maybe even WNW) it meant we would have to tack the whole way back. We sailed for about an hour before dropping the sails and motoring a direct line back home.

With the engine on and sails down, it gave Suz and I (Kristie skippering) plenty of time to get the boat pretty much packed up before we got back.

We had a helpful yachtie come and grab out lines and help us dock (we’ve found so many people there really friendly and helpful!).

The girls (and ladies) took one load up to the car and brought back 5 trolleys. We had them loaded and heading back up to the car within 30min of docking.

A quick goodbye and then around the corner for dinner (5pm is dinner time for us!)

Stuff that broke this week:

• nothing (that I know of!)

Lessons learnt:

• Reef early
• Mud Island is fine in Westerlies
• Mud Island is probably good for fishing
• I can’t catch edible fish.

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.