Insufficient UKC (twice)

OK, so I have a couple of issues to cover in this post:

1. The weather.

It occurred to me that all the photos we've been posting show beautifully fine weather. I would just like to point out that this only proves that people don't tend to carry phones/cameras around in the rain, or if they do they don't often bother to use them. For the first couple of months (in Port Phillip and on the Tamar) we were extremely lucky with the weather. I probably have a selective memory, but I don't remember any rain. There must have been some, but I don't remember it. This run of luck ended when we arrived at the Gippsland Lakes. The locals say that we have been extremely unlucky, but in the 3 weeks we've been here we have suffered through 2 significant East Coast Lows, which haven't created a lot of wind here, but they have certainly brought rain - some 200+mm I reckon. Here are a couple of photos I deliberately took, just so you could see what rain looks like on the Gippsland Lakes - pretty exciting, eh?

This isn't half-hearted Melbourne rain, this is the real deal!

Did Noah have windows in the Ark? if so, he would have had views like this too...

It doesn't matter how wet or cold it is, some kids just don't get it.

Now, rain for a few hours, or even a day, if you are by yourself or with one reasonably relaxed adult on a boat can be a wonderfully relaxing experience - like the pattering of rain on a tent, only with less stress about leaks and no worries about touching the walls. The perfect time to snuggle down and read a book or catch up on all those blog posts you were meant to be doing... however, with 3 children on board a 36 foot boat it is a different story, especially once you are into your 3rd day in a row of rain. Aaaaaah! There is nothing more annoying than knowing that you could relax but instead you have to spend your time intervening in one fight after another, or dreaming up the next activity to keep 3 bored young minds busy, because if you don't then they'll come up with some creative new way of making someone else scream...

OK, enough about the weather. The next few days look much more promising. Fingers crossed.

2. Under-keel Clearance (UKC)

OK, so it had to happen, we had 2 groundings in the last 24 hours!

The first wasn't particularly concerning as it involved a radio-controlled model yacht built by Richard's father. There was also a keen young man (remarkably keen, given the temperature of the water) who was happy to paddle out and get the boat moving again. Thank you Robert!

Robert fixing UKC problem #1

The second UKC problem was on a larger scale. It was a beautiful day for sailing today, with 15 knots of westerly, so we thought we'd beat up into it from Metung to Paynesville to reprovision before heading off in the direction of the barrier for the next few days. However the sailing was so nice that we decided we'd sail a little further, up to Eagle Point to have lunch before returning to Painsville. This was fine until we decided we'd tie up to the Eagle Point Jetty to let the kids run around ashore...

We haven't had any problem with water depths at Jetties anywhere else in the Lakes however at Eagle Point we came to an abrupt halt about 3 boat lengths short of the jetty. This did reconfirm that our depth sounder is accurate - it read 1.9m as we came to a halt. It also confirmed that getting un-stuck from a firmer (sandy) bottom isn't as easy as the mud we had in the Tamar. Full revs in reverse didn't do the trick. OK, so we wait for the tide. Oh, that's right, there is no tide. OK, so what next? Suddenly, 7 tonnes of boat is looking pretty damn heavy and, hell, 1.9m is over my head.

Evelyn knew what to do. "Get out the spare anchor Daddy, we'll put the dinghy in the water and we'll winch ourselves off". Yep, that is the right approach, but man it sounded like a lot of work. So as a first attempt we swung the (heavy) boom out to starboard and got the whole family on the starboard rail. I was going to climb out on the boom, however this did the trick. With the engine running hard in reverse the boat gradually gathered speed and eased herself back out into deeper water. Yay! We finally got rid of those pesky barnacles from the bottom of the keel (I hope).

Meander anchored a respectable distance off the Eagle Point Jetty (in about 3m of water).

Eagle Point Jetty - nice looking place.

Another view of the Jetty. The scene of our grounding was just on the right of this photo.

Eagle Point looks like such a nice spot, and the wind is forecast to remain in the W to SW, that we have decided to spend the night here. We'll head around to Paynesville tomorrow. We hear the GLYC has Tuesday afternoon races that visitors are welcome to join...