As usual I was up at 5:30 at the computer attending to Mulligan Geo requirements as the morning dawned into a beautiful day. It was flat and calm in the lagoon.

The only down side to this anchorage was an Osprey attempting to make a nest on the top of the mast. He dropped his rather large stick onto the top of the saloon which made me realise he was up there. A quick duck outside to shoo him away by rattling the shrouds.

Ten minutes later he was back trying to continue to build his nest on the top of Eva Louise mast. This went on for a while, everytime they landed us and Eva Louise crew would go out and shake the shrouds once he arrived. Doug and Sandra had quite a collection on the top of their mast.

Doug hauled Sandra up their mast so she could de nest it, I know thats not a word , Ive just added it to the Mulligan dictionary. There was a large collection of heavy stick Sandra needed to throw off.

Its a long way up when you have a 21 metre mast.

Ovive from the top of Eva Louise mast Photography Sandra Jenkins

Once the nest was removed we went ashore for a walk, not much to see as its mostly sand and vehicle tracks other than millions of soldier crabs. A second lagoon is forming on the outside of the current lagoon, its too shallow at the moment and diffcult to get into.

Soldier crabs marching along

As soon as we reckoned there was enough water to motor out of the lagoon we left with a lot of trepidation after our close encounter with the sandbar yesterday. There wasn’t much water but enough to get us all through without touching.

Because the wind and sea state was very mild we figured instead of crossing the notorious Wide Bay bar the recommeded way, we would try the fishermans gutter an alternate where obviously the fisherman go through the majority of the time. We had no track through, so Nyeki led following another cat which had gone through earlier than us. The water became choppy and rough as we crossed into the channel of the bar. I stood up front on the bows to keep an eye out for shallow water however it was difficult to see as the water was so choppy. At one stage John yelled out .5 depth , lucky the waves wern’t any larger or we may have touched bottom in the trough. The depth increased as we headed further into the channel between Fraser Island and the mainland.

Morgan was the only one who put her life jacket on.

I saw recently Fraser has had its name changed to K’Gari, with a silent K, I think i’ll still be calling it Fraser.

There was little wind so we motored up the inlet to Tin Can Bay. The tide was high so it was difficult to find a place to anchor that wasnt going to dry at low water. We anchored not far from a boat that hadnt anchored at the right depth and keeled over. I am sure we were deep enough.

A call from Doug had us dinghying over to Eva Louise for happy hour before returning back to Ovive for poirk steaks apples and steamed vegies.

Watched another episode of Arnold Schwarzenegger on Netflix.

Calm waters of Tin Can Bay Inlet