Chesterfield Reef to Bundaberg

Three days is barely enough time to spend at Chesterfield Reef. We were prepared to linger a week but missing this weather window would mean a stop of 10 -14 days. Many of these would potentially see us confined to the boat while sitting out 30knots. We’d be safe enough inside the lagoon but probably a bit uncomfortable and frustrated. We chose instead to head off and would have a 24 hour period of grace at the Bundaberg end of the passage before we’d need to brace for a substantial southerly storm. Too bad if we were about to arrive on a weekend and have to pay for Biosecurity overtime. We’d ascertained that an average, well prepared vessel, would take about 1 1/2 hours to be cleared by Biosecurity*. The added cost of $120 over and above the $310-360 was inconsequential in the general scheme of things. Some people slow down as they approach the mainland in order to avoid week-end rates thinking they would be whopping, but that has changed in recent times. We were not entertaining any such malarky and in light of the impending bad weather, getting ‘IN’ was a priority and an additional $120 a drop in the ocean as compared with the excess on an insurance claim and a proper fright!

Where is this reef exactly?

We updated our ETA with Australian Borderforce by email** before departure. We’d already sent our pre-arrival notification before leaving Luganville and had a case number. No way were we going to create a problem by failing to provide 72hours notice! Compliance failure could mean fines plus the prospect of being met at the dock by 10 or more officers in black uniforms, packing glock pistols + wrangling sniffer dogs. No thanks! Customs and Immigration are now a combined organization and are a Force as distinct from a service: serious business for which we can probably thank people smugglers!

The specks show some of the low, low cayes at Chesterfield Reef and our exit gap.

We left the lagoon via a gap in the reef as recommended by other yachties. The Bloke had captured a outbound track via our AIS during the departure of a small Aussie vessel the previous day. A sneaky tactic that saved us 5nm! We motored out after sun-up in plenty of water both beneath our keel and through the gap.

  

What followed was 18 hours of the best sailing we’ve every enjoyed. SE trades in the low 20 knot range with seas under 2m. Zofia was in her most perfect slot and rushing along with speed over ground (SOG) reading between 7-9 knots. For the 24 hours we logged 170nm. We’ve never achieved that before. We thought we'd grown an extra hull. For the first 18 hours our average was 7.6 and several 1 hr sessions of 8+knots !! Unheard of. Perhaps that's what can happen when the wine locker is empty? We knew this couldn’t and wouldn’t last. On that basis, we chose to keep the mainsail up rather than ‘put it to bed’ at dusk, as is our usual practice, and put as many sea miles ‘in the bank’ as possible while we had such fabulous conditions. We altered our usual watch-keeping pattern for the duration too knowing that we’d have plenty of opportunity to ‘catch up’ on sleep during the calm weather to follow.

 

When the wind died we were then committed to motoring and motor sailing. It was essential to keep moving. We expected to encounter pre-frontal rain on Day 3 day but miss the building wind. ETA Sunday - really early. Josida, Heemskirk and Navigator 1, who'd followed us out of the lagoon only half an hour after us where behind somewhere but too far to pick up on AIS, proof that we were absolutely screaming along! As it happened we reached Bundaberg at around 10pm on Saturday night. We knew we were in range as soon as we began to get welcoming text messages from family.

    

Swapping the French courtesy flag for the Pratique/Q flag.

While we obviously did expect to motor sail for Days 2 and 3 we hadn’t really guessed we’d encounter a current providing 2knots of hurt. Luckily we reached a counter current that gave us some assistance for a while too. What a relief. It was like sailing into mud when we first encountered it.

Our AIS was at last showing the outline of the Australian coast rather than just ‘blue’ ocean.

The first of the pre-frontal rain bands announcing land.

As we approached the continental shelf, The Bloke suddenly realised that the chart detail was a somewhat 'lacking' and remembered we'd need to swap over the SDK card back to Aussie charts. We recalled how we had crossed the Great Australian Bight only to discover our chart details stopped at the West Australian border and had to rely on the Navionics on the iPad to navigate into a very shallow Streaky Bay. We had only noticed that oversight at the last minute. The depth sounder had a 5 day holiday while there was 5km below the keel during our Bight crossing. While there was plenty of depth crossing from Vanuatu back to Australia we did need to avoid a bit of 'seabed furniture' like reefs and sea mounds. The currents we'd experienced were largely an expression of these.

 

The Bloke was thrilled to be eating up all our fresh supplies with extra helpings.

During our passage home we decided to join the GoWest Rally; not for help getting home, we were almost there, but we thought there were sufficient benefits for us with discounts and events thrown in for it to be cost neutral, so why not?  Maybe we just didn't want the fun to be over!

Home, just over the horizon and we could smell it's eucalypts and dampness before we could see it.

* The Biosecurity overtime fee as it turned out, amounted to merely $80. We didn't have any exotic timbers and refits nor was there any fresh food left. Perversely we ate much more than we would normally just to get rid of it. We didn't really need to do this, we could have just handed it over. Just one of those weird psychological things - the thought of somebody 'taking' your food and then just throwing it away was unbearable!

** For information about arriving yachts see:- https://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Ente/Avia/Maritime/Requirements-for-yachts-and-pleasure-craft/Important-Information