The weather seemed to start to turn, with high winds & messy seas expected over the coming days. As we wanted to spend some time out at Great Keppel Island, we wanted to make sure we had some nice days ahead. We decided to wait a few days & when the winds were coming down we would make our way through The Narrows and head up to GKI.

While waiting out the weather we road our bikes around town up & down some big hills and out to the main shopping centre.

View from lookout

We had a beautiful dinner on Jumping Jack Frog and lots of snuggles with Cara Mia. It was sad to say goodbye to them as they are now slowly making their way back south to Tasmania. We look forward to visiting them in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

Gladstone Marina has a courtesy bus which takes you out to the local shopping centre for a 3 hour return trip. A great service offered daily. We were able to do a big provisioning trip to Dan Murphy’s as the boat was becoming a little too dry.

We visited Gladstone VMR/Coastguard to discuss the logistics of navigating The Narrows. The Narrows is a stretch of water between Curtis Island and the main land. At low tide parts dry completely and is otherwise very shallow. As high tide can vary by time & depth you need to calculate this to avoid running aground.

As the weather was starting to look better over the coming days, we would make our way further north through The Narrows which would shorten our trip to GKI and also have us move further north in calm waters. We chose to head to Grahams Creek (11 nm from Gladstone) for a night & then onto Black Swan Island a further 6nm . Doing this cuts a few hours off getting to start of The Narrows and on time for the tide.