Aussie Day Weekend @ Pancake Creek 08Jan 29, 2008
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Thursday, January 24th 2008. Carnelpya is dry docked waiting for the courier to arrive with the repitched props. Kimbo my mechanic tells me that these will make all the difference to power and fuel usage. I am sceptical. How can you decrease pith and diameter of props thereby increasing RPM and still expect better speed and lower fuel consumption? More on this later.
Saturday: January 26th. Australia Day.
Arrive at the Gladstone Marina at around 8am. Jason and Danielle arrive at 8.45. Pack up boat and set sail at 9am for Pancake Creek. Into the tide and the 15-20kn wind, loaded with 7 people and a heap of gear and food, I manage 15kn in the harbour at 2600 RPM with the new props. Smoothe trip until we hit the south channel and headed west for Pancake. Winds still about 15-20 but seas pretty smoothe with only a little chop of about a metre to contend with. Carnelpya sailed through with no problems. Wind and seas picked up with about 7 miles to go to get to pancake. Constant 20kn now and about a 1.5 mtr sea. Still no problem until we turned south to enter the creek. Mellissa (my wife) is not a great sea goer and I could see her grip on the poles tighten with every sideways rock of the boat. Thankfully we only had a few hundred meters of it and we were safely into the channel that runs down the side of Bustad Heads and into the creek.
Arrived at the anchorage at 11.08am after an uneventful trip.
Drop the pick, set the boat up, unpack and get the dinghy off. Get all the rods set up for the kid to fish with. get bait out. get the pork belly strips marinating for diner. Make up what seemed like 200 sandwiches to feed the hoards. ( only 12 really) and then at 1pm, Jason (The brotherinlaw) suggests adrink. A bit early for me usually but what the hell, I am on a break for a few days. Kids start hooking into all sorts of small fish and plenty of happy moments that only I am allowed to release due to their poisonous spines. A few good runs. Jason hooks a trevally and the local reef shark says "I'll have half" and Jason pulls up a head with some body left on it.
Another jacks and coke. More bloody happy moments to release. Sit and relax. Gotta love Pancake Creek. So quiet and relaxing.
Jason decides to take the kids over to the sand bar for a run around and chase the millions of soldier crabs.
5 pm and dinner is cooking. 6pma nd all over and done/ A few more drinks, a shower and hit the hay for the night. Bloody hell, its only 9pm. But I did sleep well.
SUNDAY JANUARY 27th.
Up with the sun about 5am. Coffee and more coffee. Olivia (daughter) gets up at about 5.45 which is the earliest she's got up in years. Mellissa get up at 6 with Joshua and Justin also stirring and straight into the fishing rods. Bloody hell, more happy moments.
7am, "WHERES THE BLOODY DINGHY"? Ya gotta be kidding me, during the night, the rope snapped on the tender and $4500 worth of tender and outboard have floated away. We scan the creek for ages with the binoculars trying to see it and eventually, we spot what we think is the dinghy and Jason decides to do the triathelete thing and swim across the raging channel, run to the other side of the sand bar, get in the dinghy and bring it back. Now all that is good if it is indeed the wandering dinghy. So, Jason dives off the boat and starts to swim across the channel to the sand bar. The tide is coming in so by the time he actually gets to the sand bar he is actually 400mtrs further down than expected. Then the 1.5klm walk to the other side of the bar. 1/2 hour later, he turns and starts to walk back. i thought that we were mistaken about the shape in the mangroves being the dinghy but when he got back he explained that there is another channel on the other side of the bar and that he could not get across that one. Bugger. So I call up oldmate Terry on the sailing cat SAN E T and ask him to run us over in his tender. An hour or so later, Jason returns with the dinghy and were back on track for a stress less weekend.
Sunday arvo and Rocky Mets sends out the weather report on the VHF. All looking good for tonight and tomorrow although our 10-15s for the trip home have gone to 15-20s with a 1.8 sea. 5pm ish and some fella calls up VMR Gladstone and asks about possible severe weather warnings that he had heard about. 6pm and we find out there is a severe weather advise for Gladstone with high winds and hail. Bugger. 6.15 and the storm is going to miss us, thank god. 6.30pm and John from the Pelican calls me up. he is watching another storm on the internet tracker that is approaching us from the south. BUGGER. 7pm and the sky's are darkening somewhat. 8pm, everyone is in bed and Janson and I have battened down the hatches. 9pm Jason goes to bed after a good downpour of rain. 11pm, bugger this, i am tired as hell and all we have had is rain with a bit of wind. I am going to bed.
MONDAY: 28th JANUARY. Wake up at 6am. Get up. Coffee coffee and more coffe and start the packup for the trip home. Winds are gusting over 20 and looking out to sea it looks fairly lumpy. I can only think that Mellissa is not going o be impressed by the trip home with a following sea. 9am an we start the trip home. As the nose gets out from behind Bustad Heads, the old girls starts rocking and Mellissa starts hanging on. Another boat, a 5.5 mtr something or other with 5 POB also logs into VMR form Pancake and on hearing that a boat 1/3rd the size of ours is going out in the same conditions, Mellissas death grip on the framework of the fly bridge canopy eases somewhat.
Now on recent trips, a following sea would make the berty look drunk as it gets picked up and thrown around and the speed goes from 20kn surfing down the face of a wave to 11kn as we fall in the valley between 2 waves. This trip was certainly different though. The repitched props had done their job and we powered over th top of waves rather than falling off the back of them and for once we went in a straight line. I could only think how much more fuel the old girl would be using.
11.30 and we turn out of the harbour and into the marina. Straight to the fuelling berth to see how bad my fuel economy is now with the higher revving props. I fill her up. WOW I have dropped about 25% OFF my fuel usage. I am wrapped.
Back into the sea pen and shut her down. Another exciting and eventful trip over. Cant wait for the next one.
