Guess where we are...

Last night, after posting here. I jumped into bed...for a very short kip. Nick and I both got up at 11:40 pm, got dressed and sorted and upped anchor at midnight and motored up and out of the Great Sandy Strait and into Hervey Bay. We decided that we'd seen enough of Fraser Island for now, and will probably stop in there again on our way home late this year, or early next year.

It was fun motoring out at midnight. It was a very quiet night on the water (another reason we chose to up anchor with short notice), very little wind and no one else was silly enough to be out and about at that time of night. The moon was up...giving great visibility, and we only found one channel marker that was definitely NOT where it was marked as being. All the rest were where they should be, and flashing as they should flash (the various markers have different coloured lights on them (port, starboard, cardinal marks etc) and flash at different intervals, so you can easily tell which one you are looking at (when you compare them to the ones listed in your chart). We even had the current coming out with us, and it turned our 6 kts of boat speed into 8+ kts over the ground (such hoons)!

Out on Hervey Bay it was very peaceful sailing. I stayed up with Nick for a while, fed Eric and then went back to bed until about 6 am as we were approaching Bargara (where we called Nick's parents and made them come out onto their balcony so we could wave hello). We entered the Burnett River at 08:00, and we were all tied up at Bundaberg Port Marina by a little after 08:30. Gotta love a smooth night sail where no one chucks :-).

Today has been a quiet day here, just wandering around working out where everything is. Nick's parents stopped by to say hi then went into town and picked us up some fresh bread, chicken, Bonjela (the first class passenger is having a hard time with his erupting teeth...) and TWO peach blossom cakes. They are a different texture to the one I made with Emma's recipe, but still delicious. If I remember, I will take a pic tomorrow and show you what the store-bought version looks like.

ETA...this is a Peach Blossom cake from Lushus Cakes in Bundaberg...

I have a mountain of washing to do tomorrow (it is truly never ending), and Nick is going to have another try at fixing a leak on the dinghy as the patch he applied in Tin Can Bay is lifting up again :-(. We plan on staying here for about a week. In that time we hope to do the Distillery tour, have a look around at some of the places Nick remembers from when he stayed here as a child, then stock up on food, fuel, gas etc etc etc. I also have a list of random things we need to get for the boat...just bits and pieces we keep finding we need, but don't have on board (like a nail brush, a wooden spoon, another bean bag and some Aeroguard to name a few....). We also have to pick up a few parcels that we had directed to Nick's parents' place...stinger suits and Emily's NSW Distance Education packs for weeks 3 - 6 of term three.

Our next stop after this is Lady Musgrave Island, and I am really looking forward to getting there. I am hoping it will be warm enough to break out the hookah system we got at the Sydney International Boat Show last year. That is going to be LOTS of fun, and hopefully there will be plenty of pretty underwater pics coming this way as a result.

I'll leave you with one more pic taken at North White Cliffs...(there are more, but I am still not in the mood to fight with this Mac...so I am trying to take it easy, and not fry its little brain)...

... BTW, yes, she did survive this flight. It's not as high up as it looks ;-).

Bye bye for now...
:-)