Tuesday 16th August
As night fell the winds increased turned easterly (in our favour). Which pushed us along at 7.5kts as we navigated through the small recreational boats out fishing at night. Being small they often didn’t show on the radar till they were very close.
Once past the fishermen (fisherpersons) along the sunshine coast, there was the cargo boats queued up to enter the Brisbane shipping channel. We reached the entrance to the channel and there seemed to be a gap in the queue, so we went in.
Two hours into the channel and no cargo boats followed us. That’s when we discovered two things. One our AIS works and Two the reason there were no boats behind us was there was a tugboat towing another boat coming our way.
That’s when it was confirmed that our AIS was transmitting. We had seen the tugboat on AIS and no problem we could both fit in the channel and we would meet at the intersection of a bypass channel. We couldn’t see on AIS that he was towing a boat and needed all the channel to maneuver.
We got a call on the radio from the tugboat “Imagine, Imagine this is tugboat we are towing a vessal in the main channel. What are your intentions?”. For a second, I thought he was proposing. Then I realised he wanted to make sure we were going to take the bypass, which we had already started to turn into.
We arrived at Tangalooma on Moreton Island (just out of Brisbane) at 5.30am cold and tired (overnight temperature was 4°). We dropped anchor and went to bed under 4 layers of blankets.
By lunchtime Andrew had got out the dive gear and headed over the side to unblock a saltwater inlet and check the hull was still clear enough for the NZ biosecurity. At a cool 15.5° water temperature he wasn’t in too long. The water is normally fairly clear but currently it isn’t and lots of rubbish floating in the water. The helicopter base is just along from where we are anchored so we have a lot of sightseers having a gander at Imagine as they take off and land.
As night fell the winds increased turned easterly (in our favour). Which pushed us along at 7.5kts as we navigated through the small recreational boats out fishing at night. Being small they often didn’t show on the radar till they were very close.
Once past the fishermen (fisherpersons) along the sunshine coast, there was the cargo boats queued up to enter the Brisbane shipping channel. We reached the entrance to the channel and there seemed to be a gap in the queue, so we went in.
Two hours into the channel and no cargo boats followed us. That’s when we discovered two things. One our AIS works and Two the reason there were no boats behind us was there was a tugboat towing another boat coming our way.
That’s when it was confirmed that our AIS was transmitting. We had seen the tugboat on AIS and no problem we could both fit in the channel and we would meet at the intersection of a bypass channel. We couldn’t see on AIS that he was towing a boat and needed all the channel to maneuver.
We got a call on the radio from the tugboat “Imagine, Imagine this is tugboat we are towing a vessal in the main channel. What are your intentions?”. For a second, I thought he was proposing. Then I realised he wanted to make sure we were going to take the bypass, which we had already started to turn into.
We arrived at Tangalooma on Moreton Island (just out of Brisbane) at 5.30am cold and tired (overnight temperature was 4°). We dropped anchor and went to bed under 4 layers of blankets.
By lunchtime Andrew had got out the dive gear and headed over the side to unblock a saltwater inlet and check the hull was still clear enough for the NZ biosecurity. At a cool 15.5° water temperature he wasn’t in too long. The water is normally fairly clear but currently it isn’t and lots of rubbish floating in the water. The helicopter base is just along from where we are anchored so we have a lot of sightseers having a gander at Imagine as they take off and land.
Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.
