January - August 2001 Life in Manly - Brisbane

We arrived in Manly in November 2000 at settled into berth M18 at Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron Marina. The marina is slightly south of the Manly shopping district and just north of Lota, where the nearest train station and school was.  All these places, and the larger shopping centre of Wynnum, were accessible by cycle ways.  Bicycles and trains (and later on Don & Nancy's car)  were the transport methods of choice.

The girls went to Lota State School til July 2001.  This turned out to be a great school with both girls having teachers they enjoyed and made good friends.  Col went back to Newcastle and worked back at TAFE for 2 months before getting a contract with Tarong Energy in Brisbane.  The work involved being out at Tarong Power Station during the week for the first 4 months of the six month contract.  This made getting work done on the boat hard but the money was good.

We were all together in Newcastle for Christmas and New Year, having the luxury of Col's sister Wendy's house, as they were on holiday in Europe.  For Courtney's birthday she received a digital camera.  This is a tiny thing that takes fairly low quality pictures but is still great for school projects and these web pages.  (Dad would love a good quality digital camera for his birthday)








Both girls had tennis and swimming lessons and also went to the local youth club for trampolining and gym lessons.  Courtney had flute lessons at school which have continued on the boat and Anna does keyboard.

Anna played soccer which was a focus point for the weekend.  The Dinosaurs is the name of her Under 7 team. They played each weekend at the local soccer ground at Lota which was a short ride on the bikes. Anna's friend at RQYS Marina, Sean, was on the team and his father John was the coach.

We were lucky to meet Helen, John and Sean who live on Spion Kop at RQYS.  Sean was seven and the girls spent many hours playing with him, scooting around the marina, kicking a soccer ball and playing on each other's boat.





During our stay the major jobs that were done on the boat were:

Stainless steel frame over the stern to hold solar panels.

A sail bag and lazy jack system so the mainsail falls neatly into the bag when dropped.

Second hand HF radio that has the full frequency range. This means access to weather fax and longer range.

Second hand Aries wind-vane that steers the boat on a consistent course relative to the wind. This device is purely mechanical and relies on no power to work.

A frame over the cockpit and covers that zip in to completely enclose the cockpit.

The cockpit frame and covers effectively give us another room.  With the addition of mosquito nets we can sleep out here on hot nights.  During passages life is much more comfortable as the elements are kept out and generally making life more comfortable.  The best thing we ever did - designed and overseen by Liz.



Col finished work on June 30 and the intention was to leave Manly in July. We left on August 9th.

On a fine Wednesday we finely said our good-byes and motored out of Manly into Moreton Bay. As we cleared the harbour I took the steps away to check the engine and drive shaft were running well. Liz brought the motor up to full revs and things didn’t seem quite right. The was a knocking noise outside the hull and the prop shaft wasn’t spinning true.

The prudent thing to do was to wheel around and check it out. We had had the shaft and propeller checked when the boat was slipped and a new cutlass bearing installed. The propeller expert came down and deduced the shaft had not connected to the V-drive in proper alignment. He re-connected the shaft and after a test run the shaft seemed to be running true.

On the test run Col thought that only himself and the mechanic were aboard as the girls had gone for a walk.  While motoring along Liz  and Courtney put their heads up on deck and said 'Where's Anna?'.  Meanwhile Anna was staring at the empty berth with Dad's shoes on the jetty.  We called June and Stuart on Opthomist to go and check on her and when we returned, although distraught, she said she knew we were coming back as dad's shoes were still there.

We then went back out with only enough light to anchor in Moreton Bay for the night. The motor / shaft appeared to be OK but the knock noise did occur a couple of times.

Next morning the day started early at 5:30 am when a southerly change came through. We lifted anchor and motored out into Moreton Bay. The wind was strong at around 20-25 knots but behind us so we headed to Mooloolaba. The trip up was lumpy with seas short from the shallow water of the bay. We sailed with just our headsail up and cruised along at 6-7 knots.

The drive shaft still didn't seem right so at Mooloolaba we lifted the boat out of the water, checked the propeller shaft and then replaced the V-Drive mounts.  After a week we were on our way to Bundaberg.

The next page is:

Sept 2000 - More of the Whitsundays

Sorry about this page but I lost the text. If anyone happens to have a printout of the page I'd love a copy!

From what I can remember we went into Laguna Quays and collected a friend, Darryl, and then did a four day trip around the islands and then deposited back at Laguna Quays. The V-drive bearing collapsed on the way in and we ended up sailing back to Brisbane with a short stop over at Great Keppel, rode out a nasty squall there and then sailed onto Brisbane. We stayed at RQYS at Manly for the summer.

August 2000 The Whitsunday's

Original Website Menu for 2000

Technically speaking the Whitsunday Islands are the five or six islands around Whitsunday Island.  The larger group shown on the map is really the Cumberland group.



Enough of that. We left Mackay and this started our cruise through a wonderful group of islands that really are all that they are cracked up to be.

 This photo really belongs  back a few pages as it shows the GPS readout as we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn.  Two points to notice is the speed and the accuracy.  The boat gets along at 8 knots whenever there is a reasonable breeze behind us.  The accuracy of the reading is thanks to the US turning off a jamming thing called Selective Availability, which allows the accuracy now to be as good as 5 metres .


We left Mackay after resupplying and enjoying the company of Lorraine, Russell, Travis and Reid (friends that go back to pre-natal classes for when Courtney was born).  A short sail to Keswick-St Bees Island, one of the few islands that have large slices of freehold land that are being subdivided so that you can buy your own slice of Whitsunday.

 After anchoring for a few days off Keswick we continued along in classic sailing conditions, 15 knots of south easterly and sunshine and came into Brampton-Carlisle Islands.  We found the north-western side of Carlisle met our criteria, sheltered from the breeze, not too much swell rolling in and a little beach to take the girls. We left Mackay stocked up with new fishing gear and Col determined to catch a fish of substance.

We got lucky there with a Queenfish caught of the back of the boat and a nice array of reef fish, including a Red Emperor, from one particularly successful morning on the reef edge.  While out in the dinghy Col had a close encounter with a humpback whale.  A mother and calf cruised past only 20 metres away. A magical sight.  The fishing over the next few weeks improved with regular meals of mainly reef cod on the table.  One night at Lindeman Island we were able to show the girls why we don't let them swim off the boat, especially at night.

From Brampton-Carlisle we moved on to Thomas Island. On our way there we had a great display from a pod of whales tail-slapping and generally having a great time.  While anchored there we were treated to another display.  From Thomas it was on to Lindeman and we were able to stretch our legs here as there is an excellent walking track to the top of the island.



From Lindeman we went on to Whitehaven beach off Whitsunday Island.  This a lovely place but suddenly we found people - by the hundreds.  There was easily 50 yachts anchored off the beach and a couple of hundred people come over for day trips each day.  We moved to Haslewood Island after two days which offered good snorkelling and a somewhat less hectic white silica sand beach.

From there we ran south to Shaw Island and then west to the mainland to Laguna Quays.  This is a resort/marina complex which was an excellent place to have a holiday from cruising.  We were able to swim, play tennis, walk and generally enjoy the resort for the price of our marina berth.  What better place to have Anna's 6th birthday and watch the Olympics.  Here we met up with Bill, Kerry, Joanna and Mark who we met while on our trip three years ago on Team Spirit.



After three weeks it was time to move on, and after encountering the roughest patch of water yet off Cape Conway (short and steep two metre seas and 25 knots on the nose, waves constantly washing the decks and the boat sea-sawing over the short waves) we turned and ran down wind to Cid Harbour.  On our way we found there was a large amount of water in the bilge.  This turned out to be a leaking propeller shaft seal which had come loose during the pounding sea.  We decided it was prudent to get to a slipway just in case so we sailed on to Airlie Beach (checking the bilge about every two minutes!).  The repair went well and we decided to stay anchored there and check out the tourist ghetto that is known as Airlie Beach.

From there it was out to Hook Island.  We first anchored at Stonehaven harbour for a couple of days and then on to Blue Pearl Bay off Hayman Island.  This was a particularly great with the best snorkelling yet.  During the middle of the day the place filled with day-trippers and the odd guest from Hayman Island (conspicuous by the blue esky, designer swimmers and Moet).


Interspaced by snorkelling, swimming and fishing life aboard still goes on as usual. The cat, Tiger, lays around and schoolwork goes on.

After a stopover at Hamilton Island (busy and expensive sums that place up) we are now off Lindeman Island and after a few days around Shaw  we will go into Laguna Quays to collect our mail and also our first visitor aboard - a friend from work Darryl.