Just for the heck of it, I thought I'd start a blog. Aussie is for sale and looking excellent, if I do say so. She  sails fabulously, is great to be aboard and we are out and about on her as much as possible. Anyone notice the sales pitch ? :) Sometimes we sail out from Mooloolaba for a couple of hours, heading for Noumea, New Caledonia- eating crousants and drinking wine. After a couple of hours we reluctantly "go about" and head back to the breakwater before we consume too much wine/ beer. Often the lee of the rock wall off the Mooloolaba beach is a pleasant picnic spot. We frequently finish work early on Friday afternoon, head down to Moreton Bay and spend a weekend behind the wrecks at Tangalooma. The sunset from the bar at the resort is something else. Therese likes to take photos using her new Galaxy S2 smartphone.



We are on holidays at the moment- Thank God ! And we have just returned from a week sailing up to and around Tin Can Bay and Fraser island. We left Mooloolaba midnight on Saturday after watching the Wallabies get beaten by the Irish in the Rugby World Cup....sigh. It's about a 9 hour sail to arrive a couple of hours before the high tide at the Wide Bay Bar. It is a great coast to sail along at night. But the wind dropped off early and we had to motor through he night and early morning. The bar crossing was flat, calm and just the way I like it. 

                                                                                  

We anchored off Elbow Point and commenced an excellent week in the Sandy Straits. Therese caught a sting ray, fishing in Kauri Creek. It really freaked me out -all I could think of was Steve Irwin. Therese calmly pulled it onto the boat, held it down with one hand, smartly pulled the hook out of its mouth with the other and slipped it back into the water. The Crocodile Hunter would have been proud.

We spent a day in Tin Can Bay township. Aussie ghosted down the inlet in a light nor-easterly and we had delicious steak sandwiches at the Tin Can Bay Yacht Club. They have the most refreshing, hot showers possible for only 2 bucks !

To Therese's disgust, I brought some paint with us on our holiday - so we could run Aussie up on a quiet beach and give her a coat of antifouling. With our shallow draft (about 75 cm) we were able to tuck behind Moonbeam Island further up the Straits and at high tide we gently bumped on the bottom at about 5.30 in the morning.  Once we propped the floats up and supported the keel with some pieces of timber, we followed the tide down scrubbing and painting. We spent the rest of the day on the job and using a stiff broom found the hull cleaned easily with few barnacles. It was steady but not difficult work until I realised that Aussie was settling into the sand inspite of the timber support. I frantically excavated around the keel and just managed to remove enough sand to give the keel area a coat of paint.                       

                  

We were totally exhausted at the end of the day but we had time to clean up, wash down in the warm shallow pools and sit back and enjoy a quiet beer or too before the tide overtook us.



We finished off our holiday in the Sandy Straits with a beautiful sail back to Mooloolaba, a 15 knot northerly escorting us home in very smart fashion. The icing on the cake was the show three sets of whales put on for us as we romped along the coast.

And we still have a week of our holidays left.....yeh !  What's next ?