Moreton Bay provides many obstacles, quite a few we encountered on the trip down:

• Shallow channels - 2.3m draft is not ideal for the southern part of the bay.
• Power lines - having a nice tall mast (great for sailing) means a little caution on the way down.

With many shallow sections between Cabbage Tree Point and the Broadwater we had to be up and motoring by 6:30am to make the most of the high tide.

Thankfully the main shoals just out of Jacobs Well have been dredged, we still wouldn’t have got through on low tide.

We got down to Labrador boat ramp and started looking for somewhere to drop anchor.

Most of the well protected places were either taken or too shallow.

We ended up finding somewhere, but it wasn’t that great. We were hoping to only be there the night so not too concerned.

We had arranged with both sets of parents to come down and catch up for dinner before we set sail.

Kristina asked to get her togs on, and it only became clear why after she started looking for the Frisbee that she’d thrown and the wind had taken it for a swim.

Justin and family got down to the park and the kids had a quick play together before we said our goodbyes to everyone.

We had a quiet night in preparation for a big day or so sailing.

The weather forecast wasn’t pretty. Strong 20knt SE winds that would turn more East and drop off overnight.
Sounded uncomfortable but doable.

With the decision made to go, our Navigation devices decided to stop working. An hour of pulling the switch board and panels off and testing circuits we found some fuses that needed replacing.

With everything now working, and everything stowed away we pulled up the anchor and headed for the seaway.

The bar crossing was ok (funnily enough we had it all to ourselves) - and once we got out there were some big waves (2m).

We motored south for a bit before putting the sails up and started tacking down the coast.

The sea state was terrible, and it wasn’t long before the vomit bags came out (and stayed out).

We also had many rain squalls throughout the day. All in all, not much fun.

Once we cleared Cape Byron we didn’t have to tack anymore.

We tried getting the girls (and Kristie) downstairs to sleep but that didn’t work, and it wasn’t long before they were all back up on deck sleeping in the cockpit.

The wind then died off altogether at about 3am and we had to start motoring.

Given the weather conditions and state of the crew, pushing on to Coffs or further wasn’t on the cards.

We were only about 20mn out from Yamba, so we aimed there.

A quick check of the bar cam revealed it was looking good, and not long after sunrise we crossed the bar and found somewhere to anchor up.

We are now at Whiting Beach, and have it all to ourselves.

After a bit of drying out and recovering from the trip, I dropped Justin off to the beach so he could bus home.

Many thanks Justin we couldn’t have (also wouldn’t have) down the trip down without you.

We had lunch then went to shore ourselves to find a much deserved ice cream and have a swim.

We walked around to the ocean pool, but the girls much preferred playing around in the waves.

Lessons learnt:

• When Predict Wind says it’ll be uncomfortable it is an accurate prediction :(
• Have vomit bags up on deck before they’re needed, rather than catching vomit in a sailing jacket :(
• Check hatch seals, we think our covers are messing up the seal, or just the seals need replacing (we haven’t had Lazuli in those sort of conditions before)
• Don’t do night passages in crap conditions :)
• Having an extra crew member makes a massive difference
• Don’t hang cheap paper decorations under hatches

What’s next:

• Spending the next few days exploring Yamba and Iluka
• Finding a weather window to get down to Sydney.

Today is the day! We have moved out of our land based home and onto our floating home, and have cast off.

We got on board yesterday (Friday 13th) and had a quick dinner with mum and dad who helped with the logistics of getting up to Scarborough one last time.

I did 3 trips to Scarborough during the prior week and did 3 or 4 trips to the boat on each one.
On Friday we still had 7 more carts of stuff to pack. I think we are full.

Once we had most things stowed (we have 3 bags of extras we’ll send home tomorrow!) it was time to decorate Lazuli ready for Christmas.

The girls have nested and ready for the trip.

It was a long wet day, so motoring all the way down to Cabbage Tree Point (46NM).
We had to stop for dinner while waiting for the tide to come up a bit.

Today is the culmination of much planning and hard work to get us to on the water.

Many many thanks to Kristie for her amazing organisational skills and list making: it’s 100% the only reason we managed to get here!

Rough Plan:

• Spend today and tomorrow (Sunday) getting down to Southport
• Dinner with both sets of parents on Sunday night
• J jumps aboard to help sail down to Sydney
• Monday morning we depart the Seaway and head South (well, maybe a bit East - we’ll see what the wind is doing)
• Not sure where we’ll end up - could be Coffs, could be Port Stephens or anywhere in between that we can get to - we may have two good days of wind before having to find somewhere to hide out the strong southerly winds that are predicted.

As with all things (for the next year at least) we’re at the mercy of the weather gods.

If you’d like to follow our journey, our Garmin inReach will be sending regular position updates.
You can check the link here:

https://share.garmin.com/7WW9W

Note: the password is just our boat name (all lowercase)

For those of you that like looking at AIS/Marine Traffic - our MMSI is 503172130

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:9143352/mmsi:503172130/imo:0/vessel:LAZULI

The 2nd week of the Sept school holidays had been penciled in some time ago as good opportunity to take Lazuli out for more than an overnight trip.
It also coincided with Kristie’s birthday.

With the advanced planning, we’d lined up my brother and his daughter to come out for a day trip on the Sunday, and Kristie’s parents on the Monday.

After dropping Craig and Tal off at Raby Bay public pontoon once before this has become our go-to pickup point.
It’s nice and sheltered, and the channel in reasonably deep (we need about a 1.1m tide to be safe and less stressful!).

Given the tides and wind, we weren’t in much of a rush on Saturday.
Saturday morning was Park Run at Ipswich for Kristina and I - followed by Maccas as we did a pretty good time.

We got up to Scarborough around 11ish, and got the boat ready, had a quick lunch and then set out for Raby Bay.

We had reasonably good winds and could sail most of the way down on one tack, with just a bit of motoring at the end.

It did take a bit longer than anticipated, so we got there with the sun going down.

Raby Bay is quite shallow, and there’s really only one spot that is both protected and deep enough at low tide for us.
It also happens to be sort of in the road of everyone leaving from and returning to the boat ramp. On the plus side we saw lots of boats up close!

We had a few attempts at getting the anchor to set before we could get “sips ‘n dips” underway.
I also set the AIS anchor alarm on for the first time this trip. Quite a handy bit of kit.

Sunday morning turned up without much wind and it wasn’t looking good for my brother’s day trip.
However by the time we picked him up and got back out beyond Raby Bay the wind had picked up to 12kn or so, and coming from the SE it meant we’d head for the top of Peel.

After this short stint at the wheel, the girls went back downstairs.. no seasickness issues for those three!

With the SE winds, we were comfortably cruising along at more than 8kn and in no time had got to the top marks at Peel.

Given it was only 11am, and you can’t really do much there, we sailed on a bit more, dropped the sails and motored around to Horseshoe bay.

It was a bit bumpy in the SE winds, but we had a quick lunch and launched the tender for a play at the beach.

By the time we’d got back to the boat and hooked up the tender the wind had died off, leaving us a slow run downwind back to Raby Bay.
We weren’t in a hurry, as we were planning to anchor there for the night again.
The drop-off went smoothly for us (tears due to forgotten cuttlefish for my niece) and we were back at anchor for more cheese.

Monday morning had even less wind than the day before. We weren’t picking up Chris & Rod until after 10, so we had a lazy morning (no luck fishing).

Pickup went smoothly, and given there was no wind we motored all the way to Peel, only having to stop for 4 humpbacks whales we saw between Raby By and Peel!
(2 lots of mum and baby swimming north).

After these encounters we got to Horseshoe bay, had a fine lunch (thanks Chris & Rod!), and then back to the beach for a swim.

We left to start the return journey home around 2pm, had our guests back on the pontoon before 3:30pm.
By the time we got back out into the bay the wind was up and from the NE. We had a quick sail back across to Peel.

We had the sails down and motoring the last bit before we were again waylaid by some lost whales, these ones just near the cardinal mark at the western end of Horseshoe Bay.

Given the forecast, we planned to spend 3 nights anchored here. It’d be great to not have to up anchor and move every morning.

I grew up going to Coochiemudlo Island for holidays, and we’d always look from our beach across to Horseshoe bay and all the boats there (we’d often count 200+ on good weekends!).

I always told myself that one day that will be me in my boat there. Monday night was that night.

Tuesday morning was one of those picture perfect mornings and ideal conditions.

It also happened to be someone’s birthday. Pancakes with jam and cream as requested by the birthday girl.

With breakfast and presents done, it was time to head to the beach and hangout there for a bit. Paddle boarding, swimming, throwing/catching, sandcastles.

We had freshly baked croissants for lunch, followed by more beach time, followed by more cheese, then creamy garlic prawns for dinner.

The next day was more of the same. Plenty of time at the beach, lots to eat, and not being in much of a rush to do anything.

Kristina was quite insistent we all had to jump off the boat.

When we bought the boat it came with quite a few self inflating life jackets. They were all out of service and not worth keeping.
However, two of them still had the firing mechanism intact, but out of date by 3 years.
Kristie and I had recently done our Sea Survival and Safety course so we’d a chance to see our jackets inflated, and thought it useful for the girls to see what would happen.
We took the 2 with us on the tender into the beach, and when ready we fitted the girls and had them jump off the tender into the water.

They both inflated reasonably quickly (they are the Hammar depth activated units) and was good to know that even 3 years out of date they still work!

The sudden inflation gave the girls a bit of a shock, and Emma wasn’t a fan of how they puffed up (they were large adult jackets)

I tried more fishing, but got nothing. Tried with fresh(ish) pippies but only got two nibbles the entire time.

Thursday morning was back to the beach for a quick swim before we had to head back home to Scarborough.

By the time we left the wind was 15-20 and straight from the North. Which is not great for going North to Scarborough.

We motored around the Eastern side of Peel, and then sailed straight across to St Helena, before motoring into the swell all the way home :(

We got back to the marina about 4pm, and I tried reversing into our arm of the marina. As soon as I stopped going forward the wind blew me all over the place.
There was no way we were going back into our pen without much stress and probably quite a bit of damage to other boats.

The marina has a nice empty arm that’s easy to get onto for just these occasions, so we tied Lazuli up there and had a quick pack up.

Given it was 5pm, we opted for local dinner before heading home.

Massive thanks to Kristie going sailing on her birthday and being the best First Mate any skipper could wish for, also big thanks to my brother and in-laws for their company (and food!).

Stuff that broke this week:

• Nothing - though we came very close to having a toilet malfunction!

Lessons learnt:

• AIS Watchmate is useful.
• Now that I fixed the RADAR, it also is very useful (got to use it in anger crossing the shipping channel!)
• Still can’t catch fish
• When in doubt take the easy marina berth option