It has been nice up at this end. We are enjoying the walks on the beach, as long as you protect yourself from the bugs, and a lovely swim. We didn't get out until late in the day as I had to take care of some travel business most of the day, but when we finally did the area was alive with wildlife!
We saw a shovelnose ray see photo, ducks having a feed on bait fish, and dolphins as well. We also both saw some very big fish jumping out of the water from the boat. Wishing we could say here a few more days, butmore heavy weather is on it's way and we are just not sure what this area is like in Heavy Se winds. We will move back into the straights and stay off of Kingfisher resort for a few days until the weather clears.
Hopefully we will get another break and we can check out the top end of Fraser.

Has it been a week already?

I can't believe we been here a week already! Last Tuesday we left Big Woody to move to more protected anchorage for strong SE blowing in. We decided to go into the straights and sat out the weather off of Yankee Jacks, or South White Cliffs. We were very protected there, so much so the mossies, and noseeum found us right away!! We had a couple of boats join us the 2nd day there, but they moved on the next day. Which left us in the anchorage by ourselves which is something that doesn't happen to often. I must admit that after a few days there I was starting to get cabin fever, as it had been raining for days! We did finally get off the boat and had an explore around the old logging site, and a lovely walk on the island. Saw a few sea Eagles here, and a kingfisher see photos.
Oh and speaking of photos: I stand corrected as the fish we caught last week was not a Wahoo, but a Narrow barred Mackeral. Thanks to Bruce Morgan for spotting that one. Afetr all it is your fishing rig we keep catching our dinner on!!!
Today we moved on up to the top of Fraser Island. It is much nicer up here, but guess what? yep i must be focusing on to much of what's been biting me, because I brought it with us. We went for a swim and what was in the water with us sea lice, we went for a walk and what was on the beach with us. yep sand flies. Oh well it is Feb. in Qlds, and we are at Fraser Island!

Monday 15th of Feb

We had a great run down the coast! We decided to go out to the Cape, and we spent a night anchored at Cape Capricorn. We left out of there at 5am with plans on stopping at 1770, Round Hill, but as we were going we made such great time we would have been stopping at like 1:30 in afternoon, so we decided to keep going as we were both confident into arriving into Bundaberg in the dark. We arrived at the channel marker to the Burnett river around 8:30 pm, and anchored right in the river mouth as we were leaving first thing the next morning. I was cool with the whole thing until we got to the anchoring bit as it was dark as hell, and we had spring tides with wind against tide which made anchoring a challenge as we couldn't set the anchor. I ended up setting the alarm for the tide change just to be sure when it did that we would stay put. Didn't sleep until midnight as we were watching our position and plotting our course for the next day. The alarm went off at 2:20 am so we didn't really sleep much. We left out of the river around 7 am and it was quite rough water as the wind had been blowing all night. We had another super sail with the winds starting out on the beam, then moving to the port quarter, and once in the Fairway channel we were running with it, so out came the spinaker! Delightful.
Oh yeah and to top off the trip we caught my most favourite fish a WAHOO! Check it out!! We are still eatting from it and have shared it with 2 other boats.
Anyway we are now anchored behind Big Woody Island we're here! Going to play around Fraser Island for a bit.

We're off YAY!!!

The weather has changed to our advantage. We are so lucky to be having a forecast of the next few days of winds starting to shift from SE to E and then to NE. We are currently at Great Keppel Island and are ready ourselves to leave. We are still deciding which way we will go, so once we are out of here and moving South we will decide whether we will go through the Narrows or around Cape Capricorn. We will most likely be out of email range for the next few days, so will update when next can.

This is a squid

On our beach walk today we came across this squid in ankle deep water. I wasn't sur eit wa still alive, but it was. Just barely moving the squid had itself camouflaged in with it's surroundings. I was just about to take a second photo when it must have caught sight of us or the silver of the camera may have caught the sunlight and the squid took off so fast like a bullet and in doing so it lost all it's color so it was just a streak of silver/ white returning to deeper waters. I hope you can make t out in this photo. Doesn't look to big here, but I'd say it was about a foot long.

We're off

We left the marina today!! We had a nice sail out to Great Keppel Island, and are anchored off Fisherman's beach. What a lovely evening. After tea we sat and looked up in the sky and watched shooting stars, it's been a while since we've seen the stars! There is so much going on I don't know where to look fish leaving phosperous trails in the water, shooting stars, satelites stationary and moving and lightning in a storm to the south of us! That's all for now goin back out to view some more.

more photo's 2009

more photos

more photos

favorite nature photo's 2009

Some of my favorite nature phot's taken on our journey 2009.

Tuesday 2/2/10

Well Tuesdays here and we haven't seen a change in the weather. It did calm down a bit yesterday, but what s happening now is the monsoon trough on which Olga has been sitting is now moving back north. With the trough we are experiencing gale force winds, and showers, with heavy rain expected later in the day. Looks like we will be in port for a couple of more days.