Year 2 – 2 April 2025 – Bundaberg-Gladstone
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 3.45am, had a quick cup of tea and upped the anchor in the dark. The navigation lights and steaming light went on and we used the deck lights to see what we were doing whilst upping the anchor. There was little wind and no one out and about. We motored into the channel and headed out of Bundaberg hopefully for the last time !! The leading lights were blue and we looked down the channel markers which spread out for a mile or two in front of us and with their flashing it looked like a runway spread out before us. We had some coffee and breakfast en route.
We did not motor the full length and turned off the channel about half-way and headed North. David had shown me how to auto build a route, a function which I have not used properly on the plotter before as I always plan my route and put in my own waypoints. This function requires you to put in a start point and a finish point and then it provides what it considers the best route. It was interesting to see and created 27 waypoints between here and Gladstone. I did not like where it was taking us on a few waypoints and I moved those waypoints manually to where I felt it was safer and more appropriate. I thought we would try it and asked the plotter to follow the route. What the system does is that at every waypoint it asks you whether you want to go to the next and when you confirm it then sets and tracks a course to the next. You can review the route and it will tell you the time you will reach the waypoints based on current speed and the distance between each waypoint. I think it is a useful tool but I will always do my own planning and check it and use this tool as an aid.
We motored about 7-7.2 kts and initially had a bit of tide with us. The wind stubbornly stayed about 4-8 kts most of the day and we resigned ourselves to the fact that we may have to motor all day. There was another trough coming in and we decided it would be good to get to Gladstone and then we have some days to play with before Paul Hardcastle, the CA rep for Sydney joins us.
We motored along and played with the plotter and chatted. I mentioned about dimming the screens at night and David said you can link the screens and when you change one of them you do them all. This would be very helpful as it is a pain to change the auto pilot when in use as you have to turn it off and dim and then put it back on auto and in those few seconds it can take you off course and can cause an accidental gybe. We googled and played and I then created a group and linked each screen I wanted into this group and it worked so now I can dim all the small instruments by doing it on one. Technology hey- funny how I have had this boat for some time and did not know you could do that. We all have electronic gadgets and we do not use half of its features.
We took shifts of an hour on and hour off. The rain did come late morning and it was the wet drizzle again. The wind did not increase and we made good progress crossing a massive bay up to Round Hill Head. There was a beach all the way and I suspect was a sand dine behind. We saw lots of birds fishing and at time fish jumped whole out of the water. We rounded Round Hill Head which had various rocks off its end and you could see the water crashing and washing over them. The next headland was Bustard Head which has a prominent Lighthouse on it.
Bustard Head Light is an active lighthouse located on the southeast tip of Bustard Head, a headland, about 20 kilometres (12 mi) northwest of Seventeen Seventy (a town), in the Australian state of Queensland, within the Eurimbula National Park and locality of Eurimbula. Built in 1868, it is the second-oldest light station in the state, following Cape Moreton Light, and the first to be built in Queensland after its formation in 1859. It is also one of the first in Australia to be constructed using bolted prefabricated segments of cast iron, and one of only two such lighthouses in Queensland, the other being its sibling, Sandy Cape Light. It serves as the central relay for Dent Island Light, Pine Islet Light and Lady Elliot Island Light and as the radio check post for Cape Capricorn Light, Sandy Cape Light and Double Island Point Light. Bustard Head was named by Captain James Cook in 1770, in honour of a bustard (a bird) which was shot and eaten by the landing party at the location.
We seem to be following James Cook on a regular basis. Behind these heads are anchorages which we could have stopped at but they are shallow and would be exposed to the swell. We continued round Bustard Head and imagined Cook sailing round it into the bay with no charts or map to guide him. The next head was Rodd Peninsula which looked quite a nice bay and there was a catamaran anchored there. We continued in the rain along Rodd’s Bay which ultimately leads to the long cargo ship channel into Gladstone. The wind by this time had increased but it was on the nose.
Gladstone is a coastal city in the Gladstone Region, Queensland, Australia with a population of 45,185 people. It is 517 km (321 mi) by road north-west of the state capital, Brisbane, and 108 km (67 mi) south-east of Rockhampton. Situated between the Calliope and Boyne Rivers, Gladstone is home to Queensland's largest multi-commodity shipping port, the Port of Gladstone. It is one of the largest, bulk commodity ports in the world.
In May 1770, HMS Endeavour, under the command of James Cook, sailed by the entrance to Gladstone Harbour under the cover of darkness. Matthew Flinders, during his 1801–1803 circumnavigation of Australia, became the first recorded European to sight the harbour in August 1802. He named the harbour Port Curtis, after Admiral Roger Curtis, a man who was of assistance to Flinders a year earlier at the Cape of Good Hope.
Nevertheless, in 1847 the British attempted to establish the new colony of North Australia at Port Curtis. Colonel George Barney was chosen to lead this experiment in colonisation and his expedition was eventful. On 25 January 1847, the Lord Auckland, carrying 87 soldiers and convicts, arrived off the southern entrance of Port Curtis and promptly ran aground on shoals off the southern tip of Facing Island. The settlers spent seven weeks on the island before being rescued by the supply ship Thomas Lowry and delivered the intended site of settlement, the region now known as Barney Point.
We had originally planned to go North of Gladstone beyond the port area and to anchor in a creek. However, the creek was about 6nm from the town. I therefore decided to see if we could get into the marina as this would make life easier and especially if this front came in and we could not reach the creek before it got dark. They had a space on a hammerhead which was great and so we decided to book it.
We motored on and began to see lots of cargo ships, carriers and oil tankers anchored off Gladstone and ships entering the channel on AIS. We had to call up Gladstone VTS – to ask permission to enter the harbour and to inform them of our intentions. They informed us about various ship movements and asked us to listen out on channel 13. I had already looked at a guide and we had to keep out of the channel on the west side and then at a certain channel marker cross over the channel to the other side and approach the harbour on the east side of the main channel. The rain by this time was heavy so out came the heavy wet weather gear – twice in two days!!
We crossed over the channel and I could see on AIS a 1,000ft bulk carrier coming out surrounded by 4 tugs. The rain got so heavy I could only see about 150 ft in front of me and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open in the rain. We were effectively like a pilot running on the instruments. I had to be wary of depths as well so we both looked and compared the instruments and kept to our planned course watching out for our next buoy to follow. The bulk carrier appeared out of the rain like a ghost ship in the mist and was massive. It disappeared again quickly with its 4 tugs like bees around a queen.
We continued with the rain really coming down hard and we did not see any other vessels other than those moored against various wharves. As we continued up the channel the rain lessened and we could see further and after about 30 minutes we came level with Auckland Creek. We had to turn across the channel into the creek and the marina was in its own pool on the right-hand side. We edged in slowly as we were at low water and we had worked out from the marina plan which hammerhead (end of line of mooring pontoons) we were on. We edged forward and it was almost dark but not quite. We found the Hammerhead and eased on toit and moored up with the rain still falling.
Once we got out of our waterproofs we celebrated with a beer and had motored 96.07nm in 14 hours. We were here. We had a fish supper with vegetables and headed to bed at a reasonable time. It had been a good day on the whole and we had succeeded in our plan. We look forward to exploring tomorrow. The picture of the day is part of Gladstone’s port in the rain.
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