Year 2 – 18 March 2025 - Frazer Island – A wet, grey day
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.
It rained hard in the night and I had to get up to close the hatches and as the wind strengthened I put on the anchor alarm. We woke at a reasonable time and it was a wet, grey day and stayed like that most of the day. We had thought of going to a different anchorage but there seemed little point going from one wet one to another and we would not enjoy it. In addition, this would mean about 26nm extra and not toward our next destination. We therefore decided to stay put. The doghouse window had leaked a little from a different point so we will need to do some more on that when dry. We had a number of jobs to do but we cannot really do it in the wet. We have been lucky with the weather and if we had today’s weather yesterday or when we went to Fraser Island it would not have been good so we are thankful that the weather was kind for those days.
I had a lot of planning to do for Indonesia as time was ticking on and I needed to firm up on crew and to get my head around where we were going in the rally and beyond. This is the second part of this year. I have 3 books for this section of the trip and got them out. I made a plan of the Indonesian Rally with the places we were going and dates with Lat and Long coordinates and potential crew and a note of the relevant from the books. I studied the map and got my head around where the places are. Since I plan to go on to Singapore, Malayasia after the rally and end up in Phuket, Thailand at the end of the year I needed to work out when we would leave the rally and the places we would go to on the way to Thailand.
This process took most of the morning and by lunchtime I had a good idea in my mind. I sent the plan to the potential crew members so they could view it and confirm whether they will still come and to where and so they could work out the logistics of getting there and also to those who are coming with me to Thailand. I then looked at Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand and filled in more detail and page numbers from the books.
By lunchtime I was a bit brain dead and we had lunch sitting in the cockpit. It had rained on and off all day and showed no sign of improving. Trevor tried to fish off the boat but did not catch anything. As we have sat here we have regularly seen fish jumping out of the water as no doubt they are being chased by larger prey. We also saw dolphins swimming slowly by who may have been the cause of some fish trying to escape.
We read and rested in the afternoon and then I looked further at the Whitsunday Islands and where we should go there when we plan to do this in April/May. At 5.00pm there was a zoom seminar on the Indonesian Rally and they hold one every 3 weeks on various aspects. This seminar concentrated on what you need to bring in terms of spares etc as it will be difficult to get things in Indonesia itself. It was very interesting and gave a lot of useful information. This seminar and looking at the books had made me feel excited about sailing in those areas and it should be a great part of the trip.
We had a chicken supper and decided to watch a film. We proceed to Bundaberg tomorrow which is about 48nm and we hope to anchor in the harbour. We have new crew members arriving on Thursday and Friday which will be exciting. It is a chance to see another city after Brisbane and to provision.
The picture of the day is looking at a drab grey Fraser Island.
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