Day 35
A little bit of backtracking:
While we were in Sydney in December, we found an ad from a gentleman who owns a boating company in Cairns. He does half of his year offering tours up there, and the other half down in Sydney. He needed someone to come help him sail from Cairns to Sydney in 3 weeks (so slightly rushed) and help pay for fuel and food. Of course, we jumped at this opportunity, quickly giving him a call to confirm that he had availability still. He did. And he wanted to leave in two days, meaning we had to book a flight for tomorrow, fly to Cairns, and immediately set sail. This is when things got overwhelming.
Our first issue was that we didn’t know the guy, or his boat, and that always adds an element of fear. The second issue was the money, he was asking for $60 a day, plus the cost for the flights. We just didn’t have that kind of cash. The last problem was how last minute it was. It was overwhelmingly rushed, and set us into an instant panic. We weren’t ready to leave Sydney, we didn’t have everything organized. So after long discussion, we stayed. We turned down the offer. We didn’t sail the east coast.
It was the right decision to make, I got a job right after, and we started raising funds for our future travels. Still, a part of me always wished we could have gotten onto that boat, as the adventure would have been epic.
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Fast forward to last night, I was in Mcdonalds browsing the various Facebook backpacker sites, when I noticed an ad requesting crew. I clicked. It was from a guy named Ian, offering two spots on his boat in exchange for assistance sailing from Brunswick Heads (Byron Bay Area) to Airlie Beach, with no fuel costs only food. I messaged him. I texted him. I called him. I left a message.
When he finally called me back, he confirmed that no one had taken the spots, and that he would love to have us on board. He wanted to leave within the next two days just like the last guy, however this time we didn’t have to pack or fly. Brunswick heads is a 5 hour drive from Rainbow Beach, so we didn’t feel as rushed or as nervous. Plus, since we were driving, we had the ability to check out the boat, and if we didn’t like it, simply drive away. Everything clicked into place. We were going to sail the East Coast of Australia, or at least part of it!
Now back to today:
We wanted to stretch out the drive down south as much as we could, taking it slowly over the next two days so we had plenty of energy for our boat ride. This meant sleeping in this morning, slowly making our way south stopping wherever we felt, and taking lots of breaks along the way. Nothing interested happened along that drive, however we took it so slowly that by the time we made it to Brisbane the sun had already started to set. We were determined to find an Ikea in Brisbane for supper, so we pushed onwards, attempting to get into a tunnel allowing us to completely bypass the city and pop out right by the Ikea on the south end. And everything seemed to be going as planned, until we noticed that the tunnel was a toll road. I don’t do toll roads.
In an attempt to avoid toll roads, we ended up adding approximately 1.5 hours of driving time to our evening, and navigated our way through an incredibly complicated city in the dark. On the plus side, being back in a city in the dark felt so good, as I am such a city boy. On the negative side, we almost died as we passed right through the heart of Brisbane, making wrong turns and getting onto cramped, rushhour-packed overpassess. Finally, we made it to Ikea and enjoyed delicious dollar hotdogs! From there, we headed to our campsite and passed out.
Day 36
Only 2 hours from our destination now, we planned on making a day of it, our last day on dry land, and headed slowly down the coast, once more making a couple stops along the way that aren’t noteworthy. Finally, we decided to go to Mcdonald's one last time to use wifi to download movies and music before heading out on a boat with no hope of wifi.
After spending our afternoon in Mcdonalds, we said bye to the internet and completed our trip to Brunswick Heads in the dying light. We made it just after dark, and promptly informed Ian of our arrival. He gave instructions to his boat, and after searching for a while we finally found Kristy Lee, our home for the next few weeks.
We clambered aboard, and met Ian, an 18 year old Aussie from Perth, who had flown over to buy Kristy Lee and sail up to Airlie Beach, where he hoped to find work. That evening we discussed the details of our upcoming voyage of some burnt chicken and potatoes, and got to know each other a little better. We left after a couple hours excited for the voyage, and while the fears of being kidnapped and murdered on a boat were still there, I think they lost some of their strength that first night.
Day 37
We woke up incredibly early today, and made our way to where the boat was beached so we could begin the process of readying her for a voyage. The first task: cleaning the hull (bottom) of the the boat. We went down with brushes and began scrubbing the built up algae off. As Ian explained, this build up along the bottom of a boat can slow down boat considerably, so it was important to remove it all.
Several hours of hard work later, we were finished and moved onto phase two of our morning: learning some basic boating skills and safety. This went smoothly for a while, until it became time to learn how to steer and use the dingy (a small boat that we tow behind us as we sail, and us to go to shore from an anchored position, or as a lifeboat in an emergency). Caroline went first, leaving me to watch the boat as they zoomed off to practice using the motor. 10 long minutes later, they came back and it was my turn. I climbed into the dingy, and twisted the throttle so we began to speed up the river. After exploring upriver for some time, we headed back to the boat to discover that we had a guest.
It turns out that scraping your hull in rivers is illegal, and someone had phoned the maritime police. So Caroline and I stood by while Ian received a lecture from the officer, managing to squirm himself out of a $7000 ticket for polluting the water. An uncomfortable amount of time later, the maritime officer was satisfied that Ian would follow rules in the future, and were cleared for phase 3 of preparation: Shopping and Laundry.
Phase 3 took most of the afternoon, as we drove into nearby Byron Bay and picked up some last minute supplies/food and did our laundry. 4-5 hours later we left Byron and headed back to Brunswick Heads to pack a few things into a bag and head onto the boat. We said goodbye to Ol’ Bessie and headed onboard.
Days 38 - ?
The next several weeks will be written in a slightly different style, and features our boating adventures as we make our way up the coast. Over the next couple weeks we get to see incredible islands, feed wild dolphins (and sorta swim with them), and have a generally cool time floating on the ocean. Check back here for those adventures, I’ll have them up as soon as I can!!
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