After a good nights rest we awoke to a beautiful view of a protected bay and a handful of boats who had arrived immediately prior to us the night before or who must have arrived overnight. The car barge was at work loading 4WDs of the beach not 500m away from us to take them across to Fraser Island. We launched our tender and headed over to a nearby small sandy island (a sand flat at low tide with no more than 100m across in any direction). We quickly discovered it was covered with small crabs who were extremely fast, and a bit cranky as the kids said. We caught up with one and it reared up and pointed it's nippers at Daddy. We left them alone and went for a quick swim.
We rested up waiting for the rising tide. We needed to time our arrival at the low water points up the strait exactly so we could pass over the shallow points, which at low water were only 90cm deep. Taking some advice from some friendly boaters from the Gold Coast, we downloaded the Navonics Chart App for the ipad/iPhone. This was particularly helpful as this chart includes comments from the public on shallow points or rocks others had encountered. A quick calculation and we determined that we needed to leave at 2.30pm to arrive in time for high water.
We departed on time and within 300m of our overnight anchoring point we encountered a massive pod of dolphins unlike anything we had so far encountered. There were at least 40 dolphins and at one point everyone was yelling out and pointing in every direction, they completely surrounded the yacht. We circled slowly and they stayed around us, completely unphased at such a stranger in their midst. What was unusual was these dolphins were extremely small, all of them! They seemed more like babies as we had seen previously in pods offshore, but these were no babies, they also a far lighter grey and many had patches of white or were entirely off white. Their dorsal fins were small as well, as though the fins had been sanded down so they were only a small hump rather than the larger fin of their cousins. Extremely unusual, and clearly a totally different breed from dolphins we had seen before... something to research at some stage in the future.
We couldn't wait unfortunately, and had to head off to ensure we were on time at the lowest sections of the Sandy Straits with high water. The currents in some sections can flow as much as 4 knots, which is very strong, so missing the tide can not only risk a grounding, it can make it extremely difficult to make headway (our cruising speed being 6 knots on the motor left only 2 knots to spare).
We headed up the straits and ... they are beautiful and calm. On either side we see sandy beaches, sandy flats, the occasional palm tree and mangrove and many small gums and paper bark trees. It reminded Daddy of the Myall Lakes in NSW. Occasionally we passed a small tinny or sports fishing boat, but otherwise we had the waterway mostly to ourselves.
We passed two extremely shallow points on the trip where the depth alarms were sounding and we had to slow to just a couple of knots so that Daddy could throw the yacht into reverse if required. One was the 'narrows' which is on the chart and well know to the locals, the other was not on the Garmin chart, but was marked on the Navonics chart thanks to comments from the public. Both had the depth below the keel, even at high tide dropping to 80cm, a very tight fit, but manageable. The channels are reasonably well marked. One disconcerting point to note, was that the sand bars are always moving so it is difficult to rely on the charts and you have to keep your wits about you. At one point, according to the Garmin chart, we had deviated over 30m out of the channel and were passing way outside the channel marks and in fact we were apparently travelling over dry land, the Navonics chart had us on the edge of the channel and almost hitting the channel marks. Taking into account some comments on the Navonics chart and the references inserted by members of the public, the latest channel marks, which are often moved, were correctly shown. All a bit disconcerting, travelling (correctly) between channel marks we can see with our eyes and in a 4m wide channel with 3 knot currents, and charts that are not entirely reliable over this particular area; all part of the adventure!
We arrived at the North White Cliffs at the top of the Great Sandy Straits for the night after a wonderful journey over beautiful waters at about 7pm in the dark and dropped the anchor in about 7m of water. In the dark across the water we could just see the lights of the Harvey Bay. Well protected we had a pleasant night ready for the trip planned to Bundaberg in the morning behind Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world.