Lady Musgrave Island to Pancake Creek
We probably would have liked to have stayed at Lady Musgrave
Island for a further day or two.
Certainly the weather conditions are forecast to remain quite benign out
here for at least several more days.
However I have a very hard deadline to meet. About a week before I left Sydney the
Australian military announced their intention of staging training activities
around the Shoalwater Bay area, a little to the north of Rockhampton. I’ll quote from the relevant Notice to
Mariners issued at that time:
The Marine Danger
Area will be closed for access from 0001 hours Sunday, 23 June 2019 to 2359 hours Saturday, 27
July 2019. All waters, creeks, beaches and other areas within the declared Marine Danger Area
are not available for access throughout the above times. Pursuant to section
53 of the Defence Force Regulation 1952, any person or vessel found within the Marine Danger
Area of the Gazetted Defence Practice Area commits an offence subject to 5 penalty units or imprisonment for 3 months, or both.
In the words of the immortal Colonel Blimp, “war starts at
midnight”.
When traversing this stretch of coast, there are
three key anchorages within the Danger Area that break what would otherwise be
a 90 mile non-stop passage. For most of
us that would be a very long day with many hours of night sailing. So, we really need to get to the north of the
specified area by the evening of 22 June.
Spencer and I have scoped out a rough plan that will get us through just
in time. This plan requires us to leave
Lady Musgrave and push on now.
We’re heading for Pancake Creek on the mainland, almost due west of us. Winds this morning were almost
20 knots from the south west, so the day began with us sailing upwind with a
double reefed main and the headsail half furled. Even in the slightly lumpy seas the boat
adopted a pretty smooth motion and the helm felt very nicely balanced. By about the halfway point the wind and seas
began to moderate and we cycled through having full sails up, to motor sailing
and then to just motoring the final bit of the way.
Entering the anchorage requires us to follow a twisting
channel through the outer reaches of the creek.
Once inside, the water was still and the sounds of birds were clearly
audible from ashore. The location
consists of quite a broad expanse of water, ringed by a series of hills in the
distance.
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| Spencer cooking BBQ sausages for dinner |
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| Another sunset |
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