Friday 29 May 2015

The birds and the...


 We had only just bought the classy Metung fridge magnet featuring these two, when we spotted them posing near to our boat...


So, we sat down for a while and watched what they were up to and... let's just say there isn't going to be much need for sex education classes (and this is stuff you can legally post on YouTube!). Here's one for the ornithologists amongst you. It was all I could do to hold the camera still and suppress my laughter...!


 My favourite part? EV's comment near the end: "Man, I'm glad I'm not a swan!". Oh, I don't know EV, looks OK to me...

The latest plan...

OK, so following our return crossing of Bass Strait, which took us to some great places but which much of the family felt that they endured, rather than enjoyed, we have done some thinking about what we're trying to achieve with this trip and therefore what we should do with our time.

What we've decided is that, especially with the kids on board, it really doesn't matter where we are exactly, as long as it is pleasant and interesting to explore. It also seems to us that exploring takes place on many different levels of detail. Some people come and visit Australia for a week or two and go home having "explored" the country. Others take several months to explore the east coast of Australia by boat (or car). We know others who have done this for several years and still don't feel like they have run out of places to explore. Ourselves, we have just spent 8 weeks on the Gippsland Lakes and have only just started to feel that perhaps we have pretty much "been there, done that, and got the tee shirt" and perhaps it is time to move on...

What I'm trying to say is that we have found that we don't have to travel very far to find plenty to explore and, seeing that some of the family finds the longer coastal passages unpleasant, we really have to ask ourselves why aim to travel long distances? Sure it would be nice to get up to Queensland and soak up the sunshine, but Queensland is a long way away and it looks like if we were to get there then it would be by "delivery" voyages there and back - much as we did when we first bought Meander up in Brisbane. We considered this for a while but decided that no, we have other ideas that we think will achieve our original aims (spending time together as a family) just as well, or even better...

So, what we are planning on doing is to leave Meander in a borrowed pen in Paynesville for 3 months over the depths of winter. During this time we will head over to New Zealand and spend time with the kids grandparents who we see all too seldom. It will be nice to have an extended visit without the complications of Christmas and other family. We will then return to Meander in September and carry on "around the corner" to Eden and the NSW coast. Our rough plan being to spend October, November, and December exploring the NSW coast including Port Jackson (Sydney), Pittwater/Hawksbury, Lake Macquarie, and Port Stephens. 

Our impression is that there are plenty of nice sheltered waterways and interesting places to explore in NSW to keep us busy, and the weather should be improving, so why not do that? With a bit of luck we may get to see the Sydney-Hobart yachts leave and get to spend New Years Eve in the craziness of Sydney Harbour before bringing (delivering) Meander back to Melbourne in January. We'll save Queensland for another time...

So, that is as the plan now stands. Although, as we all know, plans aren't worth the paper they are written on, and this one isn't even written on paper! Just today a friend from HBYC was trying to convince me that we should head over to Vanuatu ("just a few 2-day hops"...). Sounds lovely, but I suspect that might also need to wait until "next time". Maybe we could do that "on the way" to Queensland... 

To illustrate what you can find without going very far at all, I leave you with a few photos from our last few days on the Gippsland Lakes. After 8 weeks were still finding new things to do...!



 
 
 



 

Thursday 28 May 2015

Nautical maths challenge

As you may have gathered from Lauren's post, I had an excellent birthday today. I'll post more about that later, but for now I wanted to give the mathematically inclined of you a little challenge. I dreamed this up for the kids, but it was a little too challenging for them. See how you fare. Feel free to post your answers as comments to this post. At some point I will post the correct expected answers...

This challenge pretty accurately reflects what I spent the last morning of my 45th year doing:

The situation:

Giles goes for a row up the Mitchell River. In still water Giles rows at a speed of 2 knots (=2 Nautical Miles per hour), however the Mitchell River has a current with a speed of 1 knot flowing downstream. Giles rows for a distance of 1.5 Nautical Miles upstream (from the point where we got stuck due to shallow water to the point we expected we would get stuck due to low power lines crossing the river). He then returns to Meander (which remained anchored throughout this exercise).

The questions:

a) If Giles rowed continuously, without stopping, for his entire trip, how long did it take him?
b) How far, through the water, did Giles actually row?
c) If Giles stopped rowing (and drifted) for 30 minutes taking photographs, how long did the trip take him?
d) Does the answer to c) depend on whether he took the photos during his upstream or downstream journey and, if so, how much difference does this decision make to the duration of his trip?

Ahh, the things some of us think about while we row...

I'll finish with a couple of the photos that I took while drifting back down the river and, no, that is not a hint, other factors are far more important to photography, such as what the sun and wind were doing at the time, than the possibility that the rowing time might be increased. I actually spent about an hour taking photos, half an hour on the way up, and half an hour on the way back down again...

And, yes, thank you, I did have a very pleasant row.

Looking up the Mitchell River

The Bluffs on the Mitchell River.

Happy Birthday Giles or How to Celebrate on a Budget

Giles turned 45 today, our first birthday on board. 


The kids and I enjoyed the challenge of keeping  within the $50 gift budget while making sure the purchases stayed relevant to cruising and/or were useful on board. 

So how did we do it? 

Evelyn spent some of her pocket money on party hats and candles for the cake. 


Handmade cards including an ipad card featuring a Probe Droid (commissioned by Arthur made by Katherine)  and Imperial Shuttle wrapping. 
Dad's very own i-pad
Probe Droid game pre-installed


'Crossy Road' inspired card or did the Origami paper decide the theme?
Happy Birthday from Evelyn & Meander

The Music: Star Wars, Passenger, Midnight Oil...

The gifts: a second hand book, sparklers, (to use tonight after our pub dinner), the Loot card game (regifted via the HBYC Santa), a mandarin, the latest issue of Cruising Helmsman (which prompted rethreading  the main sheet before breakfast) and a Gippsland Lakes teatowel (only 6 places left to visit before we can move on).


The food: 
Breakfast -  cerealalous borrealalous (the Lesser known 'Dutch' name for boring cereal) with canned fruit (dropped on the table, Evelyn & cushion prior to serving) & fresh yoghurt. 
Lunch - pies from the Nicholson General Store (voted by the whole crew as the BEST pies in the world!) pre-ordered to make sure we don't miss out!  
Dinner - Metung Pub
Cake - to be made... by Arthur & me at some stage during the day. 

The entertainment:
Three dolphins just swam past Meander to give us a show

What more could a guy want? 

His own Imperial Shuttle perhaps??

Wednesday 27 May 2015

Where are we Wednesday? #12

Silt Jetties, Mitchell River, Gippsland Lakes, VIC
Beautiful views, still waters, worthy of a sketch book & earthy toned colour pencils...

Thursday 21 May 2015

Where were we Wednesday? #11

Oops! Another week has raced by and Wednesday has slipped passed before we realised.
Yesterday found us in Loch Sport, Gippsland Lakes, VIC
On Tuesday we took advantage of the Marina Hotel located at the end of the public jetty for a pub dinner in front of a log fire and trash tv. Wednesday downed sunny so we had a lovely walk along the foreshore. It almost felt like summer! In the afternoon we set off to see how far west we could get before we ran out of water. We got to the entrance channel leading to Lake Wellington before a turn to starboard was required.
We anchored off a quiet bay just past Storm Point and Evelyn & Arthur rowed ashore to check out the beach. They were driven back to Meander before we could finish our evening beer. The famous Loch Sport mosquitoes seemed to had followed us.!

Wednesday 13 May 2015

An awesome week in the parks

OK, so this is slightly delayed news, but it was such a glorious time that it really must be reported. The problem with having really lovely, or busy, times is that we don't find the time to blog about them until later.

 Fortunately, this last week has been absolute rubbish weather (think full gales with gusts to 40 knots and daily highs in the vicinity of 13-15 degrees). The Bureau of Met. described this as "a deep low over Tasmania" with a "series of cold fronts passing over Bass Strait" which would "maintain a vigorous westerly airstream across Bass Strait". When the Bureau says "vigorous" they mean vigorous. Between 8am and 4pm yesterday the Hogan Island weather station was reporting sustained winds in excess of 60 knots with gusts to 79 knots. These kinds of winds would be classified as a category 3 cyclone in other parts of Australia! so lets just say that we were very glad not to be out in Bass Strait and were reasonably content with our 30 knot winds and 40 knot gusts...

Anyway, I digress, this post was supposed to be about the week we had on the Lakes before the "vigorous westerly airstream" made its presence felt...

 

Sperm Whale Head

After re-provisioning at Paynesville we made our way approximately 2 Nautical Miles due South to the public jetty at "Sperm Whale Head" which lies at the NE corner of the Gippsland Lakes National Park. There we tied up for a couple of days of glorious sunshine and light winds during which we did some walking on the tracks around this corner of the island and played in the massive "sandpit" at the head of the Jetty.

Aside from the fairly extensive and smelly collection of bird poo on the jetty and the impressively large and deep pitched mosquitoes (which actually feature as notable fauna in the park description) this was an idyllic spot to spend a couple of days.
Sperm Whale Head
Tied up at the jetty at SWH. We had the place to ourselves, of course.
 
Panorama of the spit very popular with the birds near the jetty.
 
Early morning panorama from the end of the jetty.

Miniature garden crafted beside Katherine's "den".

Katherine in her den. Is it just me, or is she doing that Charlie's Angels thing again?
Arthur banished (for some crime) to eat his breakfast amongst the guano.

The guano creaters at dawn.

EV dressed, as only EV could, for a walk in the National Park.




 

Steamer Landing

After a couple of pleasant days at Sperm Whale Head we moved another couple of miles due East to Steamer Landing on the Bool Pool Peninsular. This is another public jetty, however it is located on the inside of the barrier spit which separates Lake King from Bass Strait. This means that we could be tied up in complete tranquility on the inside of the peninsular and listen to the surf crashing (and take walks and gather shells) on the ocean beach less than 100 metres away. Again we stayed for a couple of days and nights, until it got busy (two other boats showed up) and we decided it was time to move on and look for greener pastures...

Sunset from Steamer Landing

Beach West of Steamer Landing

Tied up at Steamer Landing - it was getting busy...
 

"Sundowners" at Steamer Landing

Looking North East from Steamer Landing down Bunga Arm.

Giles attempting to learn Python (the programing language) the hard way, at Steamer Landing.
Another sunset at Steamer Landing
An Elephant Shark caught by fishermen casting into the surf near Steamer Landing.

 

Bunga Arm (Egret Camp)

The greener pastures to which we headed were further North-east up Bunga Arm, the narrow waterway trapped immediately inside the Bool Pool Peninsular. This is a fantastically unmolested strip of water - to the extent that there are no channel markers, a meandering channel, and no chart. Satellite images on Google Maps were pretty useful for anticipating where the shoals were, as was a lookout. We even had to drag out the good old lead-line as the depth sounder couldn't always be trusted as there was quite thick weed which seemed to confuse it at times. Combine that with channels that shelve so steeply that we could actually put the bow on the beach without grounding the keel and you'll get some idea. A lot of fun! and once again we had the place to ourselves. I think we saw 2 other boats in 2 days - and then only for a few minutes as they passed by...

Part way along Bunga Arm. There is plenty more to explore.
Some idea of what navigating the arm is like. The width here is something like 2-300m. Depth in the dark areas is about 3m and in the light areas is less than 1m. There are no charts...
Anchored off the "Egret Campground" area. We have run a stern line to a post ashore.


Morning fog clearing in Bunga Arm

Dawn at anchor in Bunga Arm.

Ashore for a picnic lunch at Egret Campground
Over the dunes are 90 miles (literally) of beach and almost no people.
I got in trouble for saying I thought this was "Devil K(atherine)"

Lauren's shell art.

Is that a koala up the mast? no, it is one of the kids!
This is a really brave move 16m above the water! Good on you Katherine!
Evelyn made it to the top too.

OK, so by this time we had used up all our fresh fruit, veges, and bread and the weather forecast was starting to talk about "several days of vigorous westerly airstream" so we figured it was time to head back to "civilisation" to wash our clothes and ourselves and stock up for the coming weather...