Spray flying everywhere

Hi all,

Wow yesterday I had some fun!

I slept on Bruce’s boat overnight but bright and early (around 6ish!) jumped out of the bunk and headed over to Steve’s catamaran. Steve’s is kind of an extreme 40, just with two hulls and designed to go offshore! He raced it across the Tasman earlier this year. Bruce, Suzanne, Steve and I are taking the two catamarans up the coast to Hamilton Island so we’re hopping up there in little stages.

Steve and I were the first to get out of the marina and so headed off with the aim to get to Fraser Island first. It’s not a race but when you pit two cousins against each other in similar fast boats, it kind of just turns into one anyway!

We headed off into a very horrible lumpy sea which slammed the girl all over the place as we had the wind behind us but as we rounded a headland after a few hours we sailed into a very squally area. As we did so, the wind swung around to being right on the nose and increased a fair bit which was very very welcome as it meant that all the slamming was over! We tacked off shore for around two miles and then tacked over to head north.

It was great fun sailing now pretty powered up and we were making a happy 8knots which I was very happy to see! After a couple more hours of this we rounded another headland and we were able to bear away and head for the bar off Fraser Island around 15miles away but that wasn’t going to take long as we were now totally trucking along at 13-14knots steadily! I haven’t been that fast sailing a big boat since I had my open 50!

Spray was flying everywhere and it was fantastic to constantly have water everywhere! I was glad that it was warm water! Very very exciting sailing that’s for sure and to top it off we saw some whales!

We passed over the bar with a nice smooth crossing and then ghosted into the straits waiting for Bruce to catch up, as we had no idea where we were going to anchor.

A great dinner and then a great night's sleep followed!

Today it looks as if we’re going to head north just a little more to find a better anchorage.

Mike