Overnight, at times it was a bit loud and the boat rolled uncomfortably, but nothing like we had seen previously, maybe a 3 out of 5. On my 3:00am watch the wind was up to 18 knots, so off went the engine. Our speed was bouncing between 5.5 and 6.0 knots, which would be fine. Continuing my podcast listening kept one eye on the speed. The trend was more down than up and about forty minutes later I conceded defeat and restarted the engine. Damn!
We had a nice sunrise and soon Roxy spotted land. It was still a long way once entering Moreton bay, which is larger than San Francisco bay. Well marked channels led us through the shallows and near the outer shore, there were lots of 4×4 driving on the sand and guys fishing. About this time Carl received an email from customs, they were tracking us on AIS and our PredictWind account. We confirmed our expected 1:30pm arrival on the dock and continued on. The 36nm leg from the open ocean, through the bay, and up the Brisbane river to RiverGate marina took over six hours. Finally, we tied SkyPond to the quarantine dock and could exhale, we had arrived!
We didn’t know when customs officials would arrive, but still opted to enjoy our arrival celebration champagne. Ah the taste of victory. The timing was great and awhile after downing the flutes we noticed two customs officials taking pictures of the boat. I’ll do a separate post on the customs and biosecurity process, but we lucked out as the biosecurity officer (second part of checking in) finished his day on Sky Pond while two boats that entered near Gold Coast were stuck aboard all night with no food (they had tossed everything overboard) – that would have sucked big time.
All checked in we finally got off the boat and took a walk. This walk happened to be to a brew pub for dinner. BrewDog was a cool space but the food was just so-so. Still after cooking every night for over two months I greatly enjoyed the night off. It felt good to be back in civilization and while I had planned on more than one beer, sleep was calling. A long shower at the marina and right to bed at 7:30pm. Yep, definitely sleep deprived.
No Comments