Year 2 – 17 March 2025 - Frazer Island – Travel through the Sandy Straits

If anyone reading this and is free from late June to mid July 2025 to come to Australia then do contact me as I am short of crew during this period at present.

We woke at about 6.00am and planned to leave at 6.30am to get through the Sandy Straits – being the inside passage of Fraser Island which is about 46nm long in total and would save us having to go back through the West Bay Bar and round the outside of Fraser Island which would probably be about 130-140nm instead. The straits were formed when Fraser Island was formed as set out in yesterday’s blog. It was a beautiful morning and there was no wind. Everything was still and quiet and we felt guilty disturbing the silence by upping our anchor at 06.35am. However, we did it quietly and no one seemed to wake up.

The difficultly of the Sandy Strait passage is that you have to take a particular route through creeks and between sandbanks and islands of mangroves and there are many shallow passages so you need to calculate and get the tide right so you pass the really shallow parts on a rising tide otherwise you run the risk of going around and then being stuck as the tide then starts to go out. In a large monohull like Stormbird this would not be good news.    

The Great Sandy Strait is a strait in the Australian state of Queensland of 70 kilometres (43 mi) length which separates mainland Queensland from K'gari (Fraser Island). To the north of the strait is Hervey Bay. The Great Sandy Strait extends south from Hervey Bay to Inskip Point (Tin Can Bay is just South of this). The Mary River enters the strait at River Heads. It covers an area of 932 square kilometres (360 sq mi). The southern entrance to the strait is about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) wide.

There are numerous named and unnamed islands in the strait. The named islands are from north to south: Big Woody Island, Round Island, Little Woody Island, Picnic Island, Duck Island, Walsh Island, Turkey Island, Bookar Island, Thomas Island, Slain Island, Tooth Island, Round Bush Island, New Island, Garden Island, Dream Island, and Stewart Island. Most of the islands are low and sandy in character. Only a few have significant elevations, e.g. Big Woody Island rises to 50 metres (160 ft) above sea level. Lieutenant Joseph Dayman was the first European to navigate through the Great Sandy Strait on 10 November 1846 in a small, decked boat called the Asp. Its area is a complex landscape of mangroves, sandbanks, intertidal sand, mud islands, salt marshes and seagrass beds, the Strait is an important habitat for nature.

We got under way and had about 22 nm to the shallow and difficult patch which we had to pass through where the depth was about minus 0.1 or 0.2. We needed really 2.5m of water to be able to pass through. High Water was 3.02m at 10.50am so if we got there about 9.50 onwards we should have enough. We therefore aimed to get to the difficult bit about 10.15-10.30am leaving us some further tide to come in. At this central point you have tide coming in from the North -Hervey Bay and tide coming in from the South and West Bay so two tide systems meeting.  We calculated that each hour gave us 0.5m of water. We headed back up Tin Can Creek which has been a lovely home for a few days and were punching the tide so we were making about 6.5 kts into the tide. We had a cup of tea to get us going and then some breakfast followed by a cafetiere of coffee.   

We made reasonable progress and marvelled in the beauty of the creeks with their mangrove sides and little islands here and there. We saw a lot of fish life: some coming to the surface with a ripple and the ring of water spreading out. There were others that literally jumped out the water no doubt trying to escape larger prey. Otherwise, it was like a millpond and when you looked back from Stormbird you saw her track like a roadway in the water with a little ripple of her wavelets going away about half a mile. We motored on and after about 45 minutes came to the entrance to Tin Can Creek and we were back into the large entrance from West Bay. We could see the ferry we had taken the day before to Fraser working away and taking visitors across the channel.

We then motored on North and then began to pick up the North channel markers which are red buoys for those you normally keep to port (left) and green for those you keep to starboard (right). We were going the opposite way so the red were to our right and green to the left. The chart plotter has a helpful line of route which we followed. Trevor and I passed the buoys and noted the number of buoy and then were on to the next and it was a question of concentrating and checking where we were, orientating ourselves with the buoys and plotter and ensuring our depth was as expected. I had not only my normal depth gauge but also my forward-looking sonar which looked ahead about 80-90m and gave me depth information and could give me the line of the bottom. It was reassuring to have both and they were very consistent.

We carried on through lovely creeks and passages always following the channel. There was one catamaran about 1,000 feet ahead but we did not follow his track but went on our own. Otherwise, we were in the middle of nowhere. I should say at this stage that we had contacted Sandy Straits VMR (Voluntary Marine Rescue) whom we had contacted a few days before and who had sent me some navigation information and some pictures around buoys 21, 24 and 27 and a particular shallow patch which means that only one boat can pass at any time. They had given us weather information and tide information so we could check it against our own information. We called them on the radio and explained our planned passage and they made a note of it and said they will be monitoring our progress and to let them know when we were into the deeper water the other side of the straits. They were very helpful.

We continued and monitored and adjusted our speed to get is to the shallow part about 10.15am -10.30am. There were times when the depth dropped to 5m with about 2m of tide -so at low water it would only be about 3m. We continued to follow the channel admiring the lovely scenery which we pretty well had to ourselves. The sun shone and we could see the lines of where sandbanks would be and the odd tree growing out of the sandbank. After about 3 hours and 45 minutes having travelled about 22 nm we approached the difficult part. I was concentrating on following the line on the plotter and Trevor had eyes and we went over the patch and the depth dropped to 3.7m, 3.2, 2.8, then 2.4 and then 2.2 and I expected to come to a grinding halt but then it rose back to 2.8 and then 3.9 etc and we were through. There were some more shallower parts but not like that section and we never went below 4m again.

We motored on and for another 10nm or so and came to try and anchor at what they called North Cliffs. We tried near the old Mckenzie jetty (the lake we swam in yesterday was named after him) but the anchor dragged when we tried to bed it in. We tried again off the jetty of Kingfisher resort but it dragged again. Third time lucky after the jetty it bit. I bed my anchor in and I wonder how many other boats do not do this and then may drag if the wind gets up.

Once settled we had a rest and then a light lunch. We were off some sandy cliffs on Fraser Island and it was a pretty quiet spot. I then did quite a bit of planning for my Indonesian part of my trip. We had an evening drink and had cassoulet for supper. We had made it through which was good. We may go to a different anchorage tomorrow before we got to Bundaberg to meet new crew. It had been a good passage and we had executed well and had judged the tide to ensure that we were in the right place at the right time.

The picture of the day is at anchor looking toward the Fraser Island cliffs with trees and bush on it.

Need/Opportunity Year Two

I am in need of more crew from late June to Mid-July so if of interest do email me at  hine.nick9@gmail.com  

In year two I will be going from New Zealand to Sydney and hen up the Eastern Australian Coast, Indonesia and then through Bali, Singapore and on to Thailand to end year two about the end of November 2025.

The blog will continue as we continue the journey. If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog then do email me on hine.nick9@gmail.com