Since our first sail went off without a hitch (ie, we didn’t sink), our confidence was boosted a little, so we decided to head off for 2 nights at Moreton Island. We set sail once again, but once again, the the wind abandoned us and we were left with no choice but to motor over to the island. We made it to the sand hills without any trouble and practised our anchoring skills in shallow waters. The water was so beautiful and clear we could actually see the sandy bottom!
To say that there is an abundance of wildlife in Moreton Bay would be an understatement. On our way over, we gate-crashed hundreds of Blue Blubber parties. They are everywhere, covering every square metre of water – some quite big, and some teeny tiny babies who tumble in the teeny tiny waves of our bow.
Once we were anchored, we hopped in the dinghy and went to shore with many sightings of starfish below along the way. We went for a climb up the small sand hills and made it to what we think was the top, feeling as though we’d just run a marathon. Sand dune climbing is hard work, so we decided to forego the big sand hills. At the top, we had a full 360 degree view. It was gorgeous. It was a great feeling to look out to Moreton Bay and see our boat anchored there alone (it was winter) and to realise that we OWNED her and that this was only the beginning of our “cruising holiday” careers.
On the dunes looking to our boat, we had seen an unidentified object go quite close to our boat, and then kept going. We had no idea what it was, so on our way back to the boat, decided to go and investigate. Someone nearby must have been celebrating our 50th hour of boating, because it turned out to be a bunch of floating pink “50” balloons. We tied them to our dinghy and continued on back to Makroro.
Wow, what a night we were in for. Another boat had come in by this time and anchored not too far away, and we were 1 of only 2 boats in the whole area. Amazing! I couldn’t believe it, a year ago we lived miles apart (Tom in America, and me in Australia), and now we were together on our boat at a gorgeous island with dolphins and turtles swimming all around us at sunset. Seriously, life just couldn’t have got any better. Tom said it could, and I thought he was getting out our bottle of red wine. Now it CAN’T get any better I thought, until he proceeded to produce what looked like a ring and not a bottle of red at all. Things got a little hazy around this time, but I’m pretty sure he asked me to marry him. I thought for sure this wasn’t real, and kept asking him if he was serious, if this was actually happening. It was just too good to be true. But it was, so we cracked open the bottle of red after all and let it slowly sink in…. We’re engaged!
What a perfect day. Until night fell. Remember that I’m not a sailor (yet), so when the swell started to pick up a bit and the boat started rocking I felt rather out of my comfort zone and was convinced I’d be sick. I ended up sleeping hugging a bucket, instead of my new fiancé – though thankfully didn’t need to use it. After hours of me trying to get to sleep, I hear alarm bells ringing. What the hell is that? It’s the anchor alarm, we were dragging! Tom is sound asleep and hasn’t heard a thing, but I had no idea what to do so I had to wake him from his slumber to investigate the emergency. Phew, we weren’t dragging at all, we’d just been a bit late to set the anchor alarm so it wasn’t set in the right place. Never mind, let’s just widen the radius for the alarm and go back to sleep. Twice more this happened, and each time I woke in a panic and Tom completely slept through it. We did survive the night though, and I woke up almost forgetting about the engagement. I was tired and cranky, and just want my damned coffee!
After some brekky and a much needed coffee, we set out for the Tangalooma Wrecks. We had some good sailing weather this time – not too light but not too strong to alarm me. Great, it was a nice easy sail, I could get my camera out and take some photos. To see the dinghy trailing along behind us with a bunch of pink balloons attached was a pretty funny sight. I was just about to press the shutter button when I see the rope fluidly slip away… “Shit! Tom. Our dinghy!”. I grab the boat hook while Tom turns Makroro around. We do a loop around our dinghy but don’t get anywhere near it. We do another loop around our dinghy and I think we’re going to go past it on our starboard side but as we’re almost there I realise it’s going to be on the port side. It’s not easy for me to get from one side of the boat to the other because there’s a beam in the way, but from memory I do a triple somersault backflip over the beam and get there just in time to hook the dinghy so we can drag it onboard. We managed to recover our dinghy, but we lost the balloons in the process, so sadly we weren’t able to save the Moreton Bay sea life from that piece of celebratory debris. We tried.
With an eventful night and day behind us, we anchored inside the wrecks and went to shore to have a look around. It was all very touristy, but it was still very nice nonetheless. We had a quick dinghy ride around the wrecks and saw many more turtles with their little heads popping out of the water to watch us go by. We had a quiet night at the wrecks and sailed back for the marina the next morning. The sail back was a little slow, but we could see some dark ominous clouds in the distance and were glad that it was raining somewhere else and not on us. We had a gorgeous sunny sail back, but just as we got to the entrance of the marina that dark ominous cloud closed in around us and started pelting down with rain. It made berthing a little difficult but we managed without any serious damage (just a little scrape on the side of the boat against the pontoon). Ahhh, back safe in the marina. If only we hadn’t left the hatches open and had a boat full of water from the downpour.
In the following days, Tom discovered that the coupling something something was about to break, and that there was a huge crack in the backstay. We had planned to take Makroro down to the Gold Coast, but thought it best to leave her in the marina a while longer until we got those things fixed. At present, we’re still waiting for the rigging to be replaced, and are absolutely itching at the bit to get her home with us in Newcastle.
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