Aussie Specialness — It’s for Real

Aussies are special people, we have decided.  Since 2006, we have been cruising first up the coast of California to the Pacific Northwest of Canada and Alaska.  Then south to Mexico and finally across the Pacific in 2010.  We have made many friends along the way, but there is definitely something special about friendship here in Australia.  They include the outsider immediately.  “Join us,” they say.  “Come on up to the house for a drink,” they say.  “Call us when you’re in town,” they say, and they mean it.  It is hard to define.  The receptive openness and easy inclusiveness is something we cannot quite explain.  This Aussie Specialness — it’s for real, and we love it.

Tuesday, November 20th – We are at the fuel dock in Mackay by 0830 and on our way out of the harbor by 0930.  A much-anticipated call from the Social Security Office in Manilla, Philippines regarding The First Mate’s Medicare registration still has not been received.  She is getting tired of feeling like a non-person.

Contentment, peace — why are they often so fleeting?  In rapid succession, The First Mate experiences one calamity after another.  Her Apple computer displays a warning that its Starter Disc is not happy and may implode at any moment.  “What,” she wonders, “is a Starter Disc, and whatever did she do to it?”  The warning just as suddenly disappears, and not able to do anything about it at the moment, she decides to ignore it, backing up her hard drive just in case.  At some point, she checks the time on her trusty, though 30+ year-old, Rolex watch.  The watch has stopped, and what’s happened to the second hand?  It’s off the sprocket and free-dancing around the inside of the watch.  What did she do to the watch?  The Captain suggests she try to get the second hand to land back on the sprocket like one of those children’s games of rolling little balls into equally little holes.  Not funny!  Her watch!  She feels naked without her watch.  Later, taking pictures of the beautiful spot they are in, the shutter on her camera refuses to close.  By now, she is beside herself with frustration.  Whatever did she do to this thing?  She hands it to The Captain who somehow gets it to close.  He knows not what he did, but he smugly hands it back to her.  Another picture.  Another jammed shutter.  Captain gets it working again.  Computer, watch, camera — how can 3 inanimate objects so conspire against her?  She knows.  She’s always known.  Inanimate objects are diabolically alive, and their goal in life is to stymie her!

We wake to an unpromising grey morning.  As we take our places to haul up the anchor, a hefty rain shower descends.  We seek cover until it blows over.  Shower over, but winds have veered to the east which is exactly our intended direction.  We have no choice but to motor directly into the 20-knot winds and the bashing waves the whole way to our next anchorage, Middle Percy Island.  Although the distance is relatively short, it takes 6 hours to cover the 25 miles.  Thankfully, the approach to the anchorage is wide, free of obstructions and super inviting.  Several boats are already in the bay.  We can see an A-frame building on the beach and what looks like a lagoon entrance to the left of the beach.  Let’s explore!  Dinghy lowered, we head out and are hailed by a man on a near-by boat.  His name is Keith.  “Join us for sundowners at the A-frame at 4:30”, he says.  “We’ll be there,” we say and motor off to the lagoon entrance.  The lagoon is really a shallow, mangrove-lined estuary with a couple of old boats marooned in the sand.  We head back to Avante to gather our drinks and an appetizer to share.

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Thursday, November 22nd – We wake to a beautiful, sunny, and perfectly calm day.  In yesterday’s wind, we would have had a quick sail southwest to the Duke Island Group, but today, we have to motor the whole way.  Although the distance is almost the same as yesterday, it takes us 2/3 the time in the calm conditions. We head for Marble island and wend our way through Lola-Montes Pass carefully trying to avoid the shallow areas that could ground us.  Surprisingly, the charts for this area are not all that detailed, and we are forced to rely on guidebooks, our eyes, and the depth sounder.  We circle around Hunter Island and anchor in a shallow bay on the west side.  We are now surrounded by the islands of the Duke Islands Group, and, once again, we are all by ourselves.  Across the many miles we can see in every direction, there is not another boat in sight.

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The Captain motors over to a spot and cast his lure into the middle of the mass fully expecting that whatever bigger fish is chasing the little fish will grab his lure.  Nothing happens.   Up one side of the boat, down the other.  Off in this direction, back in another direction.  No bite.  Finally, he lets the lure sink to the bottom.  A bite!  He’s got a bite and hauls up a really ugly fish.  Is it even edible? 

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Friday, November 23rd – 0530 – We hear the blast (3 times) of a ship’s horn.  It’s the Biggs bidding us farewell.  The Captain is impressed with these early birds and wishes The First Mate would aspire to similar activity.  We eventually get ourselves underway and enjoy a fine day of sailing under blue, sunny Queensland skies.  We hear Patty and Keith on s/v Speranza talking to the volunteer Queensland coastguard.  They are underway from Percy Island, but we could not pick up where they are heading.  An hour or so before pulling into our anchorage at Pearl Bay, we cross within a mile of them.  We enter Bay and anchor.  We can see them out across the water but are not sure whether they are going to pull into Pearl Bay or continue sailing.  They pull in and anchor.  We radio them and invite them over to Avante for sundowners. 

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Saturday, November 24th – Leaving Pearl Bay in the morning, by 1530, we are anchored at Great Keppel Island.  This island is supposed to have some of the nicest beaches in this area.  Nice, they are, but both air and water temperature are a little too cool for either of us.  We would love to go for a hike, but there are no trails at our anchorage.  One of the things that has surprised us about all these wonderful islands is that few of them have hiking trails, and the vegetation is usually so dense that hiking without a trail is impossible.  We are reminded of the Pacific Northwest where trails were few and vegetation impossible to get through even with a machete.  We miss the wonderful trekking network of New Zealand.  It seemed that every island we stopped at in New Zealand had a trail somewhere, but unfortunately, that is not the case here.  We do, however, finally have internet access so we content ourselves by catching up with news and email for the afternoon. With 70nm to go tomorrow, we head to bed early, and to our dismay, endure one of the rockiest, rolliest nights we have had in quite a while.  Great Keppel is known for this, and we got a full taste of it.

Sunday, November 25th – 12 – 17 knot winds the whole day which is a great wind except, for The First Mate, it was a bit more on the nose than she enjoys. When she finally gets The Captain to ease up a bit, all is fine again on the good ship Avante.  The First Mate may have something like 30,000 sailing miles under her belt, but that has not made her a comfortable sailor.  For her, sailing is a means to an end.  She loves her boat and the cruising and the life of a cruising couple, but the sailing …. Well, there’s easy, comfortable sailing, and sometimes there’s not.  Most times, there’s not — or so it seems.  As The Captain says, “If departure depended upon The First Mate, we’d never leave port!”  True, but to her credit, she is out there and going.  She can admit this now, here in this blog, because from quiet, confidential talks with other cruising females, she learns that she is more the norm than not.  Oh, how wonderful!  Misery does have company.

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We are heading back toward the mainland today to anchor in a spot called Pancake Creek.  An interesting name, and we soon find out why.  For most of the day as we near the coast, we are in 60 feet of water, a good anchoring depth for those freighters.  We continue to be amazed at how shallow the Queensland coast is.  Every time we have had to go near shore or into a marina, we have had to go with the tides and carefully wend our way in.  If only Avante could pull up that hulking 9-foot keel she has!  As we near the entrance to Pancake Creek, depths drop to 20 feet and lower.  To pass through the creek entrance, we must follow a channel or “gutter” as they are sometimes referred to here.  Though it is marked, with depths of 20 feet and less at high tide, we sure do not want to veer off it.  We slowly motor through the entrance and into the river itself.  The channel opens up as we near the first anchoring spot.  Now, at high tide, we are only in 20 feet of water.  It will drop 6 feet by low tide to 14 feet.  We have rarely anchored in only 14 feet.  Fortunately, we are over mud — not rocks or coral.  There are anchorages further up the river, but they involve some tortuous winding up the gutter and do not appear to offer any more interesting a spot than where we are now.

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At night, we are amazed at the number of lights we see.  We are not so alone out here!  Those freighters, which we could barely see in the distance from our anchorage, are a maze of lights, and the marking buoys of the narrow gutter into and down Pancake Creek are all lit up.  What a difference this is from the isolated island anchorages of the last 2 weeks!

Monday, November 26th – “A Savoring Day,” exalts The First Mate.  We are going to stay here the whole day.  Just relax, enjoy and savor the experience.  There are Cruising Days and Savoring Days in The First Mate’s scheme of things.  Of course, there are also “Passage Days”, but The First Mate thinks about those as little as possible.  Of the Savoring Days, in her opinion, there are far too few, but she cannot dwell on that or marital bliss aboard the good ship Avante becomes a bit shaky.  So, she savors her Savoring Days to the fullest whenever one is so gifted her

After a leisurely Captain’s Breakfast of eggs and rashers, The Captain works on some boat projects while The First Mate cleans out and organizes the starboard aft cabin for two sets of guests who will soon visit.  We also finally get to talk to the Social Security office in Manila.  They have been in touch with the Social Security office back in Colorado which we have been unable to do.  It is finally agreed.  She does exist, but for some reason they need to have positive proof thereof to go forward.  Her birth certificate and marriage license must be presented.  Why?  We do not know.  They give us the number of the National Social Security office.  Maybe these people can help.  Too late to call there now.  We’ll worry about this another time.

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Tuesday, November 27th – There are two reefs conveniently located not far from the coast:  Fitzroy Reef and Lady Musgrave Reef.  Both have been highly recommended to us.  We are going to Fitzroy Reef today.  Winds were supposed to be 10 – 15 knots, but such information is never to be trusted.  Leaving Pancake Creek, we are faced with 20+ knot winds.  Raising sail, we put in two reefs.  Steve from s/v Camelot hails us as we exit the creek.  Where are we headed?  Fitzroy, we tell them.  They, too, are headed to Fitzroy Reef.  We see their boat in the distance, but they are a catamaran and can not sail as close to the wind as Avante can.  Our boats grow further apart and eventually we notice that they have turned away.  We later learn that they decided in these winds to by-pass Fitzroy and sail on to Lady Musgrave.  The winds do eventually settle down allowing us to shake out both reefs. 

As we approach Fitzroy Reef, ominous clouds begin to move in, and a sudden nasty wind shift has us scrambling as the sails are backed by the reverse wind.  We recover and with the reef entrance nearing, we take down the sails.  Nothing about this reef entrance is looking good.  With no sun, there is poor visibility, and the wind is blowing a rough sea right across the entrance making it very difficult to see anything under the water. We decide to anchor off the entrance, have lunch and then launch the dinghy to get an up-close look at this passage. 

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Then the wind and current shift.  We start to roll — and roll.  We scramble to shut and lock all drawers and doors and secure anything that’s loose.  How are we going to sleep in this?  The best way is to lie crosswise in the bed, but two cannot fit on our berth lying crosswise.  We try sleeping normally, but The First Mate feels like her body is flopping from side to side.  Feels like?  No, it is!  She’s grabbing the edge of the mattress to stay is place.  This will never do.  She gets up, kisses The Captain good night, and heads to the starboard aft berth which, thankfully, she had cleaned out on that wonderful Savoring Day in Pancake Creek.  Now we are both able to sleep rocking up and down, rather than side to side.

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It is warm.  We are here at a reef so we are going to snorkel.  As we head out to a promising section of reef, we stop by s/v Camelot to say hi to Cassie and Steve and their guests.  They invite us over for cocktails at 1730 which we gladly accept.  We continue on to a section of reef, don our gear and splash over the side of the dinghy.   For those who have been following this blog, you know that The First Mate does not just splash over the side.  She sits there on the edge of the dinghy surveying her aqua environment for any unfriendlies.  None seen, she eases, not splashes, her way into the water and kicks and paddles herself speedily toward The Captain’s disappearing form.  This section of the reef proves to be a disappointment.  The water is cloudy and with few colorful little reef fish to be seen.  The coral looks to be coated with a grey silt and dying.  We move to a different location with no better results.  We learn later that with the advent of the full moon, this is coral spawning time.  That’s the silty look we see in the water, not a dying reef.  We decide to try drift snorkeling through the pass as we had done so successfully in the Tuamotu Islands.  We position the dinghy so that the current will carry the dinghy through the pass.  Then each of us gets into the water and grabs ahold of the dinghy painter.  We drift with the dinghy through the pass.  It, too, was unexciting. 

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This is also the season when the sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs.  To see this in action, we have to come out in the wee dark hours of the morning to hunker down and wait for a nesting turtle to emerge from the sea.  Since we have to be underway early tomorrow morning, we decide to forego this expedition for now.  Maybe next time.

At 1730, we motor over to s/v Camelot and meet their guests, Jane and Kim Liddelow.  We have a great time visiting with everyone, and in typical Aussie fashion, the champagne, wine and beer flow freely.  We have a delightful visit.  The Liddelows live in Avalon which is in Pittwater Bay where we will be in a few weeks.  When they find out that we will be down there over Christmas and have no plans for the day, they invite us to join them for Christmas dinner.  We have just met them, and Christmas being Christmas — well, we do not want to impose.  Jane tells The First Mate that this is not a family thing.  Instead, they will be having friends over who do not have family attachments.  It sounds like fun, but since we are not absolutely positive of our schedule, we exchange emails and say we will be in touch as the date gets closer.  Once again, we are touched by the open friendship of so many of the Australians whom we have met.  They are truly interested in “outsiders” and seem to always have room to draw us into their lives and activities.  We love it.  It is this aspect of our Aussie friends which more than anything has made cruising this country so extraordinarily special.

Speaking of friends — Tomorrow we are heading into the marina at Bundaberg where The First Mate’s childhood friend, Jane Minor, will be joining us for a sailing trip down to Mooloolaba where she lives.  This will be Jane’s third visit.  She’s has traveled on Avante in Alaska and in Mexico.  Now she will be traveling on her in the coastal waters of her adopted country.  What fun!  The First Mate cannot wait.