Sailing Around Australia; Barred

Mooloolaba, Queensland

16/7/2015 Barred

Having Easy Tiger back in the water and the final wash down completed, we were eagerly anticipating heading off on the next leg of our sailing adventure.

A few “finishing off” tasks were completed along with a final wash down. That’s when I suffered the usual bout of anxiety and apprehension about what was in store.

Turns out I didn’t have to fret or wait very long at all for the next story of our adventure.

After pulling out of the Boatworks, Easy Tiger glided along the Coomera river quite effortlessly. The outgoing tide helped us along. All I had to do really was keep an eye out for the deeper water channel markers. I had just spent time with our friend, Leanne Clingan, who is along for the trip to get some sailing and boating experience, explaining that the red and green markers outline the channel and to keep vigilant because the channel may not necessarily be in the middle of the river.

Unfortunately, I didn’t heed my own advice. The girls had given up their bow seats where they had been marveling at the castles and mansions built along the river banks and had gone to the galley to fix lunch. I gave up spotting the channel markers and weaving Easy Tiger in and around the bends, and corners the deep water channel makes along the river, to place my lunch order.

As I was confirming my order for roast pork sandwiches, Easy Tiger gave a stutter. Then a lurch and then we came to a quite dainty but definite stop.

Quickly hitting the throttles to neutral and then full reverse, I took stock of the situation. Looking to my left I saw the port side channel marker. The one we should have been on the other side of. Reversing the engines proved futile. We were stuck in mud, no more than about 800mm deep. We need 1200mm to float.

Even though it was obviously too late now, we logged on to the internet to work out the tides. Should have done that before we left the Boatworks.

Sure enough we were right on low tide. High tide would see us float quite easily over this area, but that was seven hours away. Leanne Clingan had an idea to use a stern anchor and see if we could pull our way into deep water that was only about 20 metres away. I dropped the dinghy and set the grapple hook anchor up on a 45 degree angle from the stern, as this was where we entered the shallow water. Alas, it was no avail, but at least the stern anchor would stop the wind from pushing Easy Tiger sideways on to the shallow water.

There was not much else to do but sit and wait for the tide to turn and push more water underneath us.

While we did this several big boats teased us but traversing the channel quite easily just 20 metres from our stern.

After 3 hours of sitting and waiting we felt a slight rocking motion. Then as a boat went past, Easy Tiger rocked quite a lot on the wake. Encouraged, I started the engines, put one in forward and one in reverse. It seemd to work, we were now slowly twisting around. I then reversed the direction of each motor, then back the other way. After several attempts at this we finally wriggled free.

Leanne and Leanne pulled in the grapple anchor and we were underway once more.

We had hoped to make Peel Island but having lost three and a half hours on the sand bar, I thought it might be worthwhile to find the nearest anchorage and call it a day. Across the Broadwater from the Coomera River mouth, on the end of Brown Island we saw a few small boats obviously anchored.

There were three channel markers noting the entry channel to the anchorage, so we were very careful to pick our way around these. After the third marker I steered toward a houseboat that I thought we would anchor near. Unfortunately I should have turned right rather that going straight on. I say unfortunately, because we ran on to a sand bar and came to a sliding sort of halt.

This time I wasted no time at all in getting both throttles into full reverse. Gradually we started inching our way backwards. Keeping the power on we gained momentum and finally were back into enough water to start floating again.

We dropped anchor into some quite shallow water, but thinking the tide was coming in, we would be ok for an overnight stay. We would leave next morning on high tide.

Having settled in after the days events, we were sitting in the saloon, chatting. Leanne C, put her head up with a start. “We didn’t anchor so close to the house boat did we?” she gasped. Like Meercats sprouting out of their desert den we all popped up to see that the wind had blown us back and Easy Tiger dragged the anchor about 100metres, perilously close to a houseboat and the muddy shore of Brown Island.

So it was all hands on deck, to pull up the anchor, get the engines going and find some deeper water with protection from the now very strong wind.

We crept around behind some anchored boats calling the depths as we went. .8 then .7 then 1.1m there had to be some water hear somewhere. We sort of ended up behind a row of mangroves and dropped our anchor in what seemed like only a puddle at about .8 metres of water. It made for a nervous night.

Next day we were up at sunrise, pulled the muddy anchor up and gingerly made our way out to the Broadwater. Happy to have used high tide we had no problems with sand bars that day motoring all the way to Scarborough.

The next day, we motored through windless conditions arriving in Mooloolaba about 2.00pm.

As we came into the Mooloolah river, passed several marinas, fishing boats and the yacht club, we found the anchorage we had ben told about. Both Leanne’s were on the bow and marveling at the shops etc as we went past. I was looking at the many boats already at anchor, surveying for a possible spot for Easy Tiger to rest for a couple of days.

BANG! Nothing even nearly dainty about this one. One second we were going forwards at about 2 and a half knots, then the next second we were at a dead stop.

Easy Tiger’s helm like most Fusion 40’s, is hidden in the cockpit. When maneuvering in close quarters there is a hatch like a sunroof that I put my head though to gain full view of the boat and what is in front of us. This is a great idea if you are sailing out in the open ocean as the helm is very well protected from the elements. This is not so good if you have your head though the hole, looking for a spot to anchor and the boat slams into the third sand bar in three days.

On impact my chin hit the hatch opening, resulting my tooth going though my lip. Also the newly fitted washing machine left its’ post, the oven fell out of it’s cupboard and fruit and veg flew from their storage points to the floor and many points in between.

The noise of the impact roused a fellow on a boat anchored nearby. “Oh", he said "by the way there’s a sand bar there. Better reverse over to the other side of the channel.”

After the initial shock, I checked all the bilges for any incoming water. I didn’t think it was a big enough hit to cause real damage but you never know.

Some Dettol on my fat and bloody lip and after putting the boat back together, we had a debrief on our issues with sand bars.

Seems that we had been a bit complacent with our system for entering unknown water ways. That is with our helm being where as is, it is impossible to keep a good look out as well as watch the depth and directional instruments. So Leanne usually watches by Navionics on the I pad, while I keep a look out up through the hatch.

In each case we just weren’t being attentive enough. No-one to blame but ourselves. So lesson learnt the painful way.

The real message is to stick to the system, no matter who else is on board or where we are.

I think also we should bar any possibility of sand bars for at east the next month.