The Great Sandy Strait

No fish, but with the water a thick brown from the floods don't think the fish could see the lure anyway, and we might hook up something much nastier. Heard on the VHF that someone had reported seeing a piece of jetty floating with 2m of concrete post above the water and goodness knows how much below. Not a thing to bump into at night. They have had mine sweepers out in Morton Bay off Brisbane to detect things on the bottom or below the surface.

A day trip today, carefully calculated for the tides, as we are transiting the Great Sandy Strait between the mainland and Frazer Island. Frazer Island is a huge (120 x 15 km) sand spit, mostly wooded over, and with freshwater lakes. A world heritage site, and has several 'eco' resorts as well as being very popular with day visitors, walkers and campers. The Strait is the shallow, sandy divide. Fairly narrow so tides rip through - from both ends. There is a particularly shallow spot in the middle which is the 'watershed'. Our plan was to get to this point, running with the incoming flow from the north, before high tide so that we had time with increasing depths should we go aground. All went well, and we have a nice sheltered anchorage with a little beach, picnic area, and tracks leading from it. Position 25 37.813 and 152 58.406. Will attempt the rest of the Strait tomorrow or the next day.

We hear that a possible cyclone is forming off the north Queensland coast so are keeping an eye on that though it sounds as though it will head out to sea.

Had quite a funny incident yesterday in our previous anchorage where the current also rushed through at about 3 knots (turning the prop generator nearly fast enough to generate). Suddenly a voice nearbye called us, and when we went out a boat was passing very close by telling us that we were dragging. Actually they were dragging, but had suddenly seen our boat from down below and didn't realise that they had moved. By the time they got their anchor up and had turned around they were several hundred metres further downstream. A bit of a red face there, but we chatted to them later and had a good laugh about it. Just lucky that 'close' wasn't collision or it wouldn't have been amusing at all.