Mooloolaba to Mooloolaba to Great Sandy Straits

All the talk on marina, is about the bar. Unfortunately, not the bar that you go and grab a drink at, but the sand bar you have to cross to get into The Great Sandy Straits, the waterway that runs between mainland Australia and Fraser Island (the Southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef). We chat to people from all walks of life and from all sorts of boats as they passed by, and everyone has different tips.

Between the tips, weather forecasts and a highly informative visit from our new friend OJ, who has an amazing knowledge of the waterways of Queensland, we plan to leave Mooloolaba on Wednesday morning. On the Tuesday morning one of our neighbouring boats leaves to head north, and we go across to the beach to watch them go through Mooloolaba Bar. The seas were still higher than we were comfortable with and watching them go through the swell confirmed our decision.

We prepped the boat, all the safety gear back on deck, all the halyards in place and sails ready to hoist on Tuesday night and settled down for an early dinner. With alarms set for 4am we headed to bed. I got some sleep, but Stuart was up checking the weather regularly. When the alarm sounded, I was greeted with “we are not going”. 

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The swell had not dropped enough across Mooloolaba bar and the notorious Wide Bay Bar, though forecast to have wave height drop, it was still too high for safe crossing. The day was certainly tense on board, had we made the right decision?  Had we just lost our window of opportunity?  After hours (and I am not exaggerating) of reading weather forecasts, comparing the different models we walked up to the marina office and could luckily extend for till the following Tuesday – just had to move Pyrenees to a new pen.

A distraction was needed, as the obsession with weather, the East coast lows and predicted dangerous surf conditions was not healthy. Friends to the rescue with a drive through the hinterland on Friday with our old mate Sandy. It is such a beautiful area up through Maleny and the Glasshouse mountains and we will certainly come back to explore more. We ended up in Brisbane and stayed with Sandy and her hubby Rob, who went to university with Stuart.  Very relaxed evening at a local bar (the right kind) a few drinks and some live music. Next day, we were dropped off at the Westcott resort for our next sleepover with Greg & Vicky. Another relaxed day and evening, with good food and wine. They kindly drove us back to Mooloolaba on Sunday night and could not resist the opportunity to take them to our favourite little restaurant Riceboi!

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Staying in Mooloolabah also meant we could watch the Lunar Eclipse and I could get the tripod out to capture the event, which would not have been possible for the boat. We froze on the beach , but the photos were worth it!

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All settled back on board and really need to make a decision. With swells still predicted over 2m at Wide Bay bar crossing was not possible as above 1.5m waves may break across the entrance.  We head to the beach and watch a swell that is not abating, so we walk to the marina office, who we are sure are tired of seeing us but after some chatting get approval to stay till Wednesday. We made contact with two other boats (Bella & Happy Hour) headed north and chatted with them re plans and all agreed Wednesday was it.

Tensions were back on Tuesday, lots of walks to the beach to watch the surf, including one at sunset – which had the same tide as what we would be going out on the next morning. We counted sets, we counted waves, we watched how they wrapped around the entrance, and I of course got some great pictures of guys surfing and waves off the break wall!!! Oh, and we watched Daisy the dolphin have her evening patrol of the entrance.  With dark falling we went back to the boat and prepped her again – 5am alarm.

We have left the pen; 6am and we are heading back down the Mooloolah River, light is just breaking, and we know Bella and Happy Hour have already made it through the bar. We are in a small run of boats headed out. The power boats have a great advantage of being able to sit, wait and gas it out between the sets. Pyrenees is only doing 9knots at absolute full throttle, so we must time it right.

Edging towards the entrance, we have the marriage savers on (Bluetooth headsets) and start to move through, I make the call to slow down as there is a set starting to come through, we count and wait for the washback which last night indicated a break – we start again and again call to stop another set, then the wash back.  We head out as quickly as we can, veer towards the beach to follow the back of the last wave then 500mn out turn east.   Relief one bar down, one bar to go!

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There is a steady stream of chatter over the radio, and a steady stream of boats heading north – all going to the same place Wide Bay Bar.  We contend with some decent swell, manage to sail for part of the trip and make good time.  We reach Double Island Point and decide that as the swell has started to drop off, to make straight for the bar and not overnight at Double Island Point. High Tide is at 3pm so any time from 1pm should be okay and the wave buoys were showing wave height reducing

Wide Bay Bar has 4 waypoints that are issued by the Coastguard, and they are your path in and out of the Great Sandy Straits. At Waypoint A (Alpha) you log on so the organisation can track those going through.  We arrived at Alpha, logged on and had a few boats in front, but we could not see a gap in the breakers. You are meant to be able to see breaking waves to your left and right at Waypoint B with a path through – this path was not visible. We watched as the boats ahead started turning back including some large cruisers and our friends on Happy Hour. At 13.35 we aborted our attempt to cross and back tracked to Double Island Point for a rolly night.

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Its Thursday, the sky is so blue, and the sands of Rainbow Beach are just beautiful in the morning light.  High Tide is at 4pm, so it is a waiting game for the 35plus boats in the anchorage. The swell is dropping! 12noon comes and the procession out of the bay starts as its an hour back to the bar for most of the yachts and catamarans.  We join in.

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Coastguard is flat out on the radio, logging all the boats in – nonstop one after the other we reach Alpha and call in. Quite orderly I must say as you know the name of the boat in front and once, they call in, you take your turn, no queue jumping! Just as we approach a squall is developing out to sea, we do not get rain, but it whips up the wind to 20 knots and the waves.

At Alpha and heading to Waypoint B I watch a large steel 70ft yacht have waves break in front of it and then behind it. It then gets skewed sideways by a wave, which was quickly corrected by the helmsman – I know Stuart saw the waves break near it and I am hoping he did not see it go side-on to the waves.

The next 45 minutes go so slowly but at the same time seems to race by. The squall had caused havoc with the wind and picked the swell up, so we were being pushed around quite a bit. Stuart did an amazing job steering Pyrenees to the match the swell and to keep us on our route through the waypoints.  It was a constant watch for waves behind, making sure none were breaking, watching the plotter to keep course and watch the boats in front for any indication of what we were going towards.  Delta – the last waypoint was a welcome point and a huge tick off the list. We had finally two weeks later than expected crossed Wide Bay Bar.   I also know why there is hardly any photos of it – you just do not have time to take a shot – your far too busy holding on and assisting in navigating through.

With so many boats we moved quickly up to a place called Garry’s Anchorage and were surprised to be one of the first boats in for the night. We dropped anchor right off the beach and then heard the call from Happy Hour for Sundowners! A toast to the crossing, with each our own stories to tell and a very peaceful relaxed night (after we evicted the mosquitos)

I can not tell you how nice it is to sleep knowing that crossing is behind us – we had a nice bottle of red to celebrate and both slept so well. A little explore around Garry’s in TT and a visit to a few boats for a chat as that seems to be the norm, before a walk through the bush. Coming back to TT there is a congregation on the beach, all discussing how long they will be staying, where to next, and when did you “cross”.

We decide to leave that day, to follow the rising tide to Yankee Jack Creek as we have many shallow spots to navigate through and we have already heard that a boat was aground around the corner. That boat, happened to be the same one I saw go sideways and it was high and dry as we passed on the way to Yankee Jacks.  It was two and a half hours run, with 26 reference points on our route to ensure we did not hit bottom. I spent most of the trip sitting in front of the chart plotter directing 2 deg. to port, or 20 deg. starboard or any variation of such.

Rocky the anchor was deployed and before we knew it, we had been invited to Cat Magic for Sundowners, as had the other 2 boats anchored here Happy Hour and Summer Breeze. They are all long term; long distance cruisers and it was a delight to sit and hear their tales.

This morning, it is beautiful weather, just like a brochure. This area is also called South White Cliffs, obviously due to the sand dunes on the banks and everyone raves about it. Its nice and we are bit perplexed till the tide drops.  As the tide ebbs, the sand banks and island appear and the whole landscape has completely changed from one covered by water.  Soldier crabs run everywhere, including over each other as they race to get out of your way whilst you walk over the islands.  The sand is so soft you often sink up to your calves making walking a workout.

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A few more boats are coming in, some have left including our friends on Happy Hour and as Sundown approaches it is our turn to host drinks….

Stuart …..

Mooloolaba is a great place, but we were delighted to see a weather window opening to continue north as the effects of a deep low off New Zealand started to reduce (large swells). Our departure Wednesday morning was stalled as we waited for a couple of little breakers across the Mooloolah River bar to pass. It was an uneventful trip to Wide Bay but despite falling seas, the bar was breaking heavily, so we anchored overnight at the spectacular Double Island Point. It is an open roadstead anchorage so open to the ocean and the swell and accordingly we rolled most of the night, but it was so good to be back at sea!

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Thursday saw a beautiful day and low swells so about 40 boats made their passage across the Wide Bay Bar on a rising tide in mixed conditions. We were middle of the flotilla and crossed the bar just as a 20 knot squall from a storm sitting offshore arrived that caused breakers in the channel about 100m ahead of us which thankfully were gone when we crossed that shallowest section. We still surfed down a couple of steeper waves but no white water. A hard 100 degree turn to port saw us traversing the “mad mile” between breakers to seaward and on the shore of Fraser Island in quite deep water so safe, but certainly lumpy seas but no problem for Pyrenees. 

We continued up The Great Sandy Straights to our first anchorage on the inside of Fraser Island at Garry’s Anchorage which was delightfully calm. Friday morning saw us launch the dinghy and a trip to shore for a walk and meeting some other boats …. It’s all very social and I’ve surprisingly been leading the way 😀 The afternoon saw the last of our serious tide gates with a 13 mile passage to South White Cliffs having us cross over Sheridan Flats where the deepest point is only 0.9m. Pyrenees draws 2.35m so we needed to wait until the tide was over 1.45m high … at 3pm we crossed this spot with 0.9m below the keel and with our track from this passage, we now have a successful route to follow on our eventual journey home ….. almost like bread crumbs! Saturday has seen walks on the massive expanses of sand banks that appear here at low tide and a spot of fishing. I caught 2 but not keepers 😣 So from here on, we are now less restricted with passages as there are no more bars to cross and it is all about picking nice anchorages to suit how far we want to go in a day if at all, and what strength breeze we want to sail in. 

A few more nights off Fraser Island including Sunday off the Kingfisher Bay Resort where cocktails will be de rigueur before a quick reprovision in Bundaberg …. we might just need to visit the distillery to avoid a calamitous rum rebellion !!

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