22 May - Great Keppell Island to Yeppoon

Beautiful one day - perfect the next.  Stick to your promises Queensland.

Keppel Bay Marina was a lovely haven after the blustery sail from Great Keppell Island.  This headland is Yeppoon. 

Yesterday, in fact the last week or more, has been lovely weather.  Well things changed last night.  Rough, raining and blustery - so we had a wild fast sail into Yeppon to the Keppell Bay Marina.  It was only about 10 m to Yeppoon from Great Keppel Is.  So we left at 8 am and arrived in the Marina, after pulling down the headsail and attaching the buffers so we could pull into the marina pen.

The wind was blowing against us, so it was pretty hairy getting the windChalmer into the right place without ploughing into a flash cruiser. 

Most marinas have lots of live-in boaties. 

We noticed that it costs about $6000 a year to park your boat in a marina.  That works out to about $18 a day which is better than the $50 that they charge us.

At Bundaberg, there were quite a few cars parked near the pen where we were.  In the mornings couples went off to work. (Leaving the cat to fend for himself in the boat).   Some are sailing around Australia and live on the boat while they work in the towns.  

The main reason we came to Yeppoon (well I tell a lie, we did want to get out of the blustery conditions) today was to see our friend Kevin McKay and his wife Thelma.  Ian worked for him when we first moved to Sydney and then to Lake Macquarie.  He was a great mentor and we just love his zest for life.  He isn't well, but the spark is there.  He told us a joke he used to tell us on his farm in Uralla, which I thought was wonderful as he could remember it!!

So we were back to being urban dwellers today - riding around in a car, visiting the shopping centre for lunch and then stocking up the larder.

Ian said that I had an enormous amount of food on the boat when we left home - I said it was in case we ended up in South America.  The 10 kg of rice from Aldi might last a while LOL. 

The worst job while sailing is getting the washing done.  We can do this while in a Marina.  But we do have the washing machine bucket.  So stick the clothes in with the soap powder and it washes while we sail!!  We look like really cruisers as we have washing pegged to the rails!!  We do have very good pegs.

Ian is sound asleep.  I am nodding off.  Will be nice to get a good sleep.   This life sure is challenging.