Gypsy Cruising

7 June

Tangalooma to Mooloolaba

Had a very broken sleep last night.  To begin with, since the beach was so close to leeward of us, I set three different anchor alarms - two phone apps and one on the boat's chart plotter.  All these systems essentially just track our GPS position and, should we move outside a specified radius, they light up a noise like it's World War 3.  I'm pretty confident with my anchor's ability to hold us in most conditions, but I was also conscious that waves were breaking on a beach only 50 meters downwind of us.  If we dragged, we'd be on the beach within minutes.  Of course, the tide turned during the night and took us outside my set radius (which, given it's me, was set pretty conservatively), and it was World War 3.  In addition, as the tide was then ebbing, it pointed the boat's stern into the oncoming waves, which proceeded to slap mercilessly against the hull only a few inches from where I was sleeping.  I woke about 11pm, and counted the minutes until the tide turned again so the bow was pointed back into the waves.

In any case, we woke about 7am and decided it was an excellent time to leave.  Tangalooma is a handy place to spend the night but I think it's not a great anchorage in the SSE conditions we experienced.

There's a bit of fiddly navigation involved to avoid the shipping lanes coming out of Brisbane's port but we were out into clear water soon enough for the 35 mile passage to Mooloolaba.  As we'd experienced for almost the entire trip, we had both the wind and current behind us for a pretty easy sail.  What stuck me most strongly was the contrast between the flat water, clear sunshine and easy conditions of today, on the inside passage, with the hard slog that I'd experienced on both my previous passages north of Brisbane out to seaward of Moreton Island.  The approach we'd adopted for this trip lent it such a different complexion to those other trips and is one I'd very happily try again.

Rain had been forecast for today, and it finally hit just as we were approaching Mooloolaba.  It continued on and off during our final approach but we made our way through the harbour walls and to the marina without issue.  It had been a nice day's sailing.

Tomorrow was going to be a 55 mile stretch, with a hard deadline of 12:15 to cross the Wide Bay Bar at high tide.  We'd be leaving at 3am, so we had a pleasant meal at the Moom asian cuisine restaurant, about a 20 minute walk away, and got to bed early.