Leg 69 - Crossing The Sheridan Flats

Tide, Tide, tide. You don't always want to love it but you do need it and you can even use it. There is no escaping Garry's Anchorage for a keel boat unless you wait for high tide. Meantime you're locked in.  Interestingly, the flooding and ebbing tide in The Great Sandy Straits meet at the Sherridan Flats and if one manages the timing, you can catch the ride up to the crossover and get sucked out the other end. That was the Blokes grand plan and we were not alone in dreaming of it.

Some holiday homes on the top end of this island.

Vessels of all kinds were on the move.

 

The 28' Horse'n Round. 

An example of a single-hander with big dream and little boat.

   

 Here comes trouble! A powerboat headed for our convoy of yachts.

Starship showing the way. 

Very relaxed customers with lots of experience.

The crew of Bilbungara hadn't planned to come through the Great Sandy Straits, preferring instead to take their deeper 2.4m keel around the outside of Fraser Island. Seeing as they'd changed their minds and depth of water was an issue, they followed behind us (and our 1.6m) with Channel 77 open so we could report on depths as we went along.  A naval background and easy familiarity with radar enabled the skipper to lay a plot of dots every time we reported a depth. Bulbungara then just used those points as waypoints or stepping stones to follow us, especially after another couple of boats filled the gap between us! Everyone was anxious to maximise the use of that tide and never mind the manners!

Starship on autopilot. COOL CATS...! 

After crossing the shifting shoals at the Sherridan Flats we sensed that there was a miniscule weather change and for the better. Perhaps we were leaving the cold and bad weather behind us!