On Our way to Bundaberg

    We left Mooloolaba at about 5:30 pm after an early supper.  I took half a sea sick pill and Dorothy a whole one just in case as neither of us had not been out to sea for over a month and we were going from a dead calm marina out into full-on open ocean sailing.
     It turned out to be a fairly pleasant sail over the night.  Winds 10 to 20 knots from East.  I had to reef and unreef the main several times as the wind came up a few times along with a brief rain shower.  But we had almost a full moon which always makes for a nicer night sail.
  We arrived at the Wide bay Bar about 2 hours before high slack and went on through into the Great Sandy strait behind Fraser Island with no problems.
We anchored later in the morning at the popular Garrys anchorage and went ashore for a walk and found we could not stop as the sand flies and mosquitoes were terrible.  We did a fast walk for an hour and then were back on the boat for some sleep.   We were both tired as had not got much sleep the previous night and I had not got much sleep on my 24 hours of travelling from Vancouver to Mooloolaba 2 days earlier.  That evening just at dark we had to rush around and put all the bug screens on, as suddenly there were mosquitoes everywhere, even though we were almost a 1/4 mile off shore.

  The next morning we rode the tide up to the center of strait where it gets very shallow and you need high tide to get through  and then continued on to anchor at King Fisher Resort at about 2:30pm. This was an easy enjoyable day with some easy sailing and some motoring.  It was the start of Easter weekend and quite busy here. Lots of boats anchored, but still lots of room for more, and lots of people coming over on the ferry in 4 wheel drives to drive on the sand beaches and back roads on the island.  We rowed ashore in the dinghy for a stroll around the resort and then a short hike up over one of the ridge lines on the island.  Hardly any bugs here.  A great day.  We are now only a days sail from Bundaberg with the hardest parts behind us, but we may stay here another day or two.
INFO
  For navigating this coast everyone uses the Alan Lucas guides, for Queensland to Darwin it is called "cruising the coral coast"  

Set to leave Mooloolaba

     I am back on the boat and it looks good, Dorothy has been hard had work polishing up the Stainless steel and doing some re staining of some of the inside woodwork.   We moved the boat from the anchorage to the marina the day before I flew home as our 10 day limit was about up for the anchorage and also it would make it much better for Dorothy being in the marina.
    Yesterday when I arrived here it was cloudy, cool and on/off drizzling rain.  Apparently there has been a lot of rain here lately and a number of rivers flooding again on the flood ravaged Queenslanders.
    Had a busy day today getting some shopping done and the boat ready as we are planning to head out to sea about 6pm tonight and do the 55 miles as an overnight sail.  We want to arrive at the optimum time to cross the wide bay bar which is about an hour before high tide.  Hopefully we will have an easier time of it than the wild ride it was when we crossed it going South back in November.  This time we will have the wind, tide and swell direction with us.  The day started out with more rain but by 10am the sun was out and turned into a nice warm day.  If the weather is good will take our time going up to Bundaberg and explore sandy straits a bit.