Start Loc: Burnett River, Bundaberg (24o 45.69’ S, 152o 23.17’ E)
Narrative: The last two days have seen the aft head restored to full working order, and the teak toe rails sanded back and two new coats of stain/protection applied. I will do a third coat when the opportunity presents.
The entrance to Round Head Creek has an LAT depth of 0.6m. Low tide at 10:04pm tonight is 1.3m, so the combined 1.9m of water is enough for us to get in. That said, I don't know the entrance and the sand banks are constantly moving, so I wanted to get here closer to high tide (2.1m at 2:13pm) than low, and definitely before dark. I applied the usual conservative figure of 5kts as a planning speed for the 50nm or so trip, and hence disappointed Heather by saying I wanted to be underway by 6:00am. We went to bed last night with water tanks full, all rechargeable things on charge, and brews pre-made (just waiting for hot water and milk).
I got up at 5:00am and started the final prep (including boiling the billy and making brews) before waking Heather at 5:20am. We cast off and were motoring out the channel by 5:40am. Two miles out we turned NW on to course. We had winds from the SW at 14-18kts. With one reef in the main and full head sail (130% genoa), we made 6.5-7kts on a beam reach. The max boat speed recorded was 7.5kts. With a knot of favourable current we had a speed over ground of 7.5-8kts, so I was pretty happy with the progress we made. After 25nm or so, the wind started to die off and by the time we had done 35nm it was down to about 8kts from the SE. With any sort of NW headway, the apparent wind was not enough to fill the sails, so we dropped them and motored for a while. It gradually picked up again and we progressed from motoring to motor sailing with the genoa, then with full sail, to just sailing.
Just after 2:00pm we came abeam Round Hill Head and got the latest off the local VMR. After swinging around the head, we approached the starboard lateral on 170o magnetic and the came in 25mins after high tide (2:38pm). The lowest sounding we got was 2.5m with 2m of tide, so I now know exactly what tide we need to get out of the creek again. We had the anchor set by 3:15pm. All in all, a good day's sailing with glorious weather. The next stop is Pancake Creek.
End Loc: Round Hill Creek, Seventeen Seventy (24o 09.82’ S, 151o 52.86’ E)
Distance run: 53nm (cumulative: 309nm)
Engine hours: 3 hr, 25 min (cumulative: 29 hr, 11 min)