In Foodie Heaven...

So, we sailed overnight from North Keppel Island past Cape Capricorn (so named as when Captain Cook was here back in 1770 he found it to be on the Tropic of Capricorn – however it has since moved, or the Tropic of Capricorn has – I’m not sure which but now the Tropic of Capricorn is slightly to its north !!!) and at 9am we were anchored in the Burnett River clutching a cup of coffee, too wired still for sleep even though we had been up since leaving North Keppel at 7am on Thursday.

Another sunset, beginning our night sail

The wind was perfect and the night sailing went without a hitch. We had a great run with the screecher out for a couple of hours, taking it down just before dark and continuing with genoa and main.  

It took nearly two hours to pass all the large ships anchored outside Gladstone waiting for their turn to be loaded with various goods – primarily coal, and it was a huge relief to see the lights of the last one fade behind us.

There is something about an overnight sail, the quiet is even more quiet at night!! The moon was just two days short of full moon so was huge in the sky, the stars were out – I even saw a shooting star at about 230am!!

We stayed in Bundaberg Marina on a “pay for 5, stay for 7” deal for a week, doing the usual few repairs – this time the starboard water pump seals needed to be redone and the anchor light had decided in North Keppel to no longer work which meant a trip up the mast for Jamie to remove it so we could fix that as well. They do say BOAT = Bring Out Another Thousand and it sure seems that each time we go in to reprovision we must repair something or other.

My birthday lunch - crab, prawn and a glass of white - what more could a girl want!!!

For my birthday - on the Saturday night, we had a fabulous meal out at the Baltimore Restaurant and it turned out to be a superb food filled week. Sunday morning, we took the marina’s free bus to the Shalom Markets where we loaded up with fresh fruit and veg – pineapples, avocados, passionfruit as well as the usual. Then to the fish market just beside the marina to purchase fresh prawns and spanner crabs which we devoured for lunch along with a glass of white. In fact, that became the pattern each day, up to the fish market for the days fix of prawn and crab and to pick a nice piece of fish to cook for tea. Life is good – we are in foodie heaven!!

A fishing boat leaving Bundaberg with entourage of following birds

The marina berth we had been allocated was right beside the fuel dock so we had a constant stream of boats coming and going beside us and mostly we jumped up and offered to take the incoming boats lines, (it is always nice to have someone to take your lines and as I say, mostly we did – sometimes we hid though!!! Hahahaha). Turns out it is a great way to meet a lot of lovely people. One night we were fortunate to take the lines of a power boat with, shall we say, slightly inebriated deck hands – it was the night of the rugby league State of Origin and looks like the boys had started early!! Anyway, we took their lines, chatted while they refuelled, then just before they left, one of them says – you like crabs, do you?? Then he raced away, came back and presented us with an armful of freshly caught blue swimmer crabs – YUMMO – Thank you, Ted.

Blue markers each 5 metres, 1 red at 10m, 2 reds

at 20m, 3 at 30m etc. Lovely new galvanised chain

Having heard that Kenco Galvanising in Bundaberg is the place to go we took the opportunity to regalvanise the anchor chain, no longer do we have a rusty mess in the chain locker but now we have a bright, shiny 60 metre length, newly marked every 5metres so we can easily see how much we are letting out and more importantly, how much we still have to pull in when we are raising the anchor. We had organised to hire the ute from the marina on Tuesday to do this and the nice man in the marina office also suggested to someone else who wanted the ute for the same purpose that they get in touch with us and share the loads, consequently we have met Robert and Sylvia from “Phoenix X”, an absolutely beautiful Cole 43, which they showed us through, and enjoyed their company at the free cruisers bbq held on the Friday night at the marina.

 We also had the genoa and storm sail restitched while we were here - the sun and sea are not kind to the stitching and over time this becomes fragile and this is not ideal!!! Now they should be good for another three to five years, we hope. Certainly something that needed to be done before any blue-water (offshore) cruising was undertaken.

We will be back to your foodie heaven, Bundaberg.