Wind Forecast 10 – 15 SE
Going ashore for coffee was first on today’s agenda. The little pop-up van just back from the jetty was open as it’s a weekend and serving coffee and mexican snacks. We all sat round a low table and ordered coffee and fish tacos, the latter being very tasty morsels so much so that we ordered a second round.
Back on board the three crews pulled anchor. By the way our remote anchor control stopped working with all the rain in Hinchinbrook it must have a short. I am now using the foot controls; we will have to get it fixed in Cairns.
Wayne found a dead sea snake washed up on the shore, he left it in our dinghy hoping to give me a scare, well it worked.
On a heading of 0° we sailed on the jib out around the Barnard Island. We weren’t watching the rod as often as we should, and a large fish took all the line off the reel and Johns favourite lure with him. We saw the rod bend but by the time we got to it the line had spooled off. Man was there some colourful language from the skipper.
After putting new line on we were in business again, this time with 60lb line. No fish though. A large tanker was sitting off Moriliyan waiting come in and load up with sugar.
The hidden entrance to Moriliyan was shrouded by low cloud hanging over the rainforest bordering the marked channel, its always special going through here.
Nyeki had anchored near the boat ramp just outside of the swing basin. A large freighter was tied up to and after completing its loading was due to leave that evening for foreign shores. We headed in to anchor just outside the swing basin but ran aground as the sand bar shallowed abruptly. Five minutes later Beach Bum did the same thing, he got off pretty easily however it took us about 30 minutes to get free with John revving the engines and the rising tide helping.
With nowhere to anchor close to the swing basin we made our way between the pile moorings and dropped anchor at the end of them. The chosen spot wasn’t much good as we were swinging too close to the fleet of other boats. John deployed the dinghy and took his portable sounder and went to find a suitable place for us to anchor. He came back happy with a location in a good depth of water and plenty of swing room for Ovive. We motored Ovive up to the spot where there was plenty of room and dropped anchor in 3 metres of water.
The anchor drag alarm went off at 3 am however on charging upstairs naked we checked our position, shone the spotlight around and decided we had just moved to the extent of of anchor chain on a changing tide. Back to bed.