Going North with help from friends

22 March – 9 April 2026

With Sanna being away in Sweden I (Niclas) took upon the task of getting the boat to a suitable location from which we could easily sail her to Whitsundays when back from Europe.

With Dallas and David to Southport

The initial leg from MHYC to Port Macquarie was done in varying conditions, but mostly reaching or downwind. I think we made two tacks near Broughton Island. The East Australian Current was quite strong at times, with up to 3kn against us, and we hence ventured quite close to land to reduce the impact. We did use the motor for maybe half the time.

We spent a couple of days in Coffs Harbour waiting for the ocean swell to subside (a strong low pressure system NE of us was bringing this on). The Coffs race was actually abandoned as the BOM was forecasting up to 6m swell for the day the racers would likely arrive. In the end it wasn’t that bad, but better safe than sorry I guess. Due to the Iran/Israel-US conflict there was no Diesel to be had in the marina, and we had to take the courtesy car a couple of trips to fill up jerry cans.

Once leaving Coffs we had a fantastic 24 hour passage to Southport with clear skies, and not too bad swell. The wind was at times getting up to around 30kn, so we had to reef the sails quite heavily for a gentle ride.

Reefed sails a lot of the time, especially at night.

The headsail UV cover took some beating, mostly due to the threads being dissolved by the UV, and needed repair in Southport. Who do you find at a weekend when the one and only sailmaker is closed? We found a marine trimmer operating out of his garage a short Uber trip from Southport Yacht club, a very nice guy who did a stellar job at a very reasonable price (Tim Simmons, 0410 848 851) – recommended if you need any canvas work done!

Single handed sailing to Moreton Bay

As David and Dallas had to fly back home, I continued the trip solo – I quite enjoyed seeing how I could handle it on my own and the wind was mainly from the south, 10-20kn, so I could sail most of the way from Gold Coast to Moreton Bay. It was enough wind for headsail only, which felt comfortable since there’s quite a bit of navigation to do. A first night stop was made at South Stradbroke Island, and then I continued past Jacobs well and anchored at North point of Mackley Island where I found some shelter for the fairly strong SE. Drizzly rain most of the day.

1 April. From Mackley Island I continued to the Big Sandhill on Moreton Island, which although this was coming up to Easter was almost empty – I guess the weather was a deterrent. I had a quick swim followed by lunch, but didn’t feel like venturing ashore in the wet weather.

The morning after I sailed on to Newport Marina north of Brisbane where I met up with Phil & Julia on their Catalina “Catch The Wind”, and they kindly treated me to dinner Thursday night.

Last leg to Hervey Bay with novice crew joining

The original plan was for Gerald to join me Friday morning to do the sail on to Hervey Bay, however, with a forecast for 2.5-3m swell and over 25kn SE at Wide Bay Bar I decided to delay this part of the trip waiting for a better weather window early the week after. Gerald unfortunately had to work the following week, so I had to find another solution as I didn’t really want to solo sail 24 hours and go through Wide Bay Bar alone. Hence I posted an ad in a Facebook crew group, and found a very enthusiastic and willing young english bloke, George, who wanted to join me. The only slight problem was that he had no previous sailing experience.

In order to ‘try him out’ I brought him and his lovely girlfriend on a cruise Easter Monday to the Tangalooma wrecks on Moreton Island. We had beautiful weather and good wind, and George learned the ropes very quickly (and didn’t get seasick). Decision was made that the two of us would continue the day after and do an overnight sail to Inskip point. On Tuesday morning when we left early Moreton Bay was dead calm, but soon the wind filled in from SE, enough to put the sails up and turn the engine off. We continued sailing all through the night and went through a very calm Wide Bay Bar Wednesday morning. After a quick swim at Inskip we slept most of the day.

Thursday morning we continued north, again sailing, and timing the tides to reach Sheridan flats at high tide. This meant we had the current with us all the way. We even managed to sail through Garys Anchorage, which I think impressed some of the anchored boats there. It was rather shallow at some spots.

When passing the Sheridan Flats we used the new “shortcut” route which is also recommended in Navionics. The depth was fine all the way through.

We reached Great Sandy Straits marina in Hervey Bay by sunset after another beautiful day of sailing.

I’m pleased to say we only used around 25 litres of fuel from Coffs Harbour to Hervey Bay.

After a few days of hanging out in Hervey Bay, packing the boat up, I flew back to Sydney. We plan to be back end of July to continue north.