We're here!

Remember the famous expression "don't count your chickens before they hatch"?  I'm glad I said 'almost' in my last entry when I said we were in Brisbane as our last little stretch was not exactly smooth runnings.

We got up early, moved our dinghy from the front deck to the stern davits and had an absolutely brilliant sail across the bay to the entrance of the channel leading up to the river which, in turn, was to take us to the quarantine docks and then on up to Brisbane city.  

But……after only a few short miles up the channel, at the mouth of the river, we ran aground well inside a starboard channel marker.  To make matters worse, we got stuck on a falling tide and simply couldn't budge.  A water police boat with two 140hp outboards came along to tow us out but they, too, could not budge us.  A second water police vessel arrived but still, nada.  We had no choice but to sit it out and wait for the tide to start coming back up again – another five hours!  So much for getting through the formalities early to avoid overtime penalties.  

No point getting uptight so we sat there on a 45º angle passing the time reading, playing Sudoku or just watching the water disappear behind our stern.  On the positive side, it was soft putty, nothing hard and nasty to damage the keel.

Eventually the waters began to return so we got into the dinghy to drop the anchor 50 metres in front of the bow in the hopes of using it to help pull ourselves forwards.  Shortly thereafter, the water police returned and, this time, Paul attached a line halfway up the mast so that he could tip us over thereby lessening the depth of the keel.  While he pulled us over, Paul winched up on the windlass and I gunned the engine from the helm.  Suddenly we popped out into deeper water like a pip from a squeezed lemon.  We were finally free!  And, to top it all off, despite the fact that we still had 7 nm to go to get to the Q dock and the afternoon was rapidly coming to an end, we got there just in the nick of time that overtime charges weren't levied.  In reality, I guess they should have been but it was, after all, Christmas Eve, and the officials had listened to the Calypso saga the entire day, even watching us on the channel cameras.  Sympathy and the Christmas spirit seemed to have worked in our favour on this occasion.  The officials were absolutely wonderful. 

Then, to top all that off, Terry and Marjatta, Australian ex-cruising friends, were waiting for us at the quarantine dock from seven in the morning after driving 10 hours all the way up from Newcastle to meet us.  What a surprise and how absolutely wonderful!  We had planned to spend New Year's Eve with them aboard their boat down in Sydney Harbour and they were there to make sure that we made it.  They even arrived with beers and champagne on ice to celebrate.  Wow, what a welcome.

By the time we finished off all the formalities, it was too late to continue up the river to Brisbane, so we motored up early on Christmas morning alongside Troutbridge who had arrived safely about the same time.  The main task was to find a safe anchorage for Calypso so that we could leave her for the time we'd be down in Sydney, pack everything away and shut off all systems as Terry & Majatta wanted to drive back down that afternoon.  

Peter (Troutbridge) is near to where we anchored and will keep an eye on her so we were able to do the necessary and leave just after lunchtime.  So, Christmas dinner wasn't quite as bad as beans on toast as I'd predicted but rather a chicken burger at a MacDonald's petrol stop on the way down.  What amazed us was the number of people, families included, who were also seemingly having their Christmas dinner at MacDonald's, and also the amount of traffic on the highways.  Why aren't all these people having dinner with family and friends?

Just going back to the issue of the starboard marker buoy that caused all the problems in the first place, we later discovered that it was, in fact, a buoy marking a second channel coming in to join the main one that we were following.  Guess we're supposed to be psychic but, fortunately, no harm done; just another story to add to Calypso's ongoing adventures.

For years now, we had heard nothing but negative reports about the officialdom surrounding yachts entering Australia, especially Brisbane.  Most cruisers clear in at Bundaberg because of this.  This was one of the reasons that we had, at one time, decided not to visit Australia.  How wrong could we have been?  The reception was just so welcoming, friendly and efficient; vastly different to anything we had expected or anticipated.  Such a pleasant surprise.  We've had several friends avoid Australia because of this which is sad that such misinformation is out there.  Obviously there must have been good reason in past years but this is certainly not true today.  Hopefully we can help to spread a positive word.