back to the bossa

It’s 2023 and our sailing season on The Bossa has begun. After our special time at Wakatobi I am now looking forward to returning to the Great Barrier Reef and playing with my cameras in the Queensland waters.

This will be our ninth year on the water, eight cruising the Queensland coast (New Caledonia and Vanuatu in 2017).

So it was back to The Boatworks for the usual maintenance – antifoul, polish and a few odd jobs.  Neville had spent some time working on maintenance earlier in March so our list was not long at all. There’s a strange comment. A boat is always a boat!

We have stored our boat in the Boatworks dry storage area in the off season since 2015, but unfortunately, not again. We’ll continue to use their workyard and trades but we are looking for a new home as Boatworks has replaced the dry storage yard with more sheds and trades.  So watch this space.

Thankyou Ben from Ultrashine who has looked after The Bossa every year and always makes her look so shiny.

This year we returned to the water via a travel lift, rather than the sea lift.

We are now northward bound! The anticipation of some warmer sunny days, and nights, along with some snorkeling is very appealing.  

After catching up with our friends on Skedaddle at Peel Island (with 150 other boats!), we then passed Waterfront motoring south.  It was a ‘goodbye’ too as Waterfront was on their way to Southport to check out from Australia. Their next stop will be New Caledonia after five days at sea. We will miss them this season.

We’ve had a terrific run of calm sunny weather over the last few weeks.  Also some great sailing conditions too. We had a long spinnaker sail to Mooloolaba where we caught up with friends from home, Terry and Lorraine.  After fish and chips from the seafood co-op it was an early start to make the high tide crossing at the Wide Bay Bar at the Sandy Straits. (See the sunrise photos below taken leaving The Spit, Mooloolaba.)

It was also an opportunity to catch up with Carmen and Shane who are building their Fusion Strait Lines in Tin Can Bay. Great progress!

While the sun was shining it was all about the sky!  We saw some truly amazing skies. These three photos were taken with my iPhone 11 too.

We’ve spent the last week or so enjoying Scarness in Hervey Bay and Bundaberg on the Burnett River.  Rain arrived earlier this week so hiding out in Bundy was our plan. I think this region missed most of the rain, but even so, we enjoyed our few days in Bundy.

While anchored off Scarness, in Hervey Bay, we drifted around in the calm conditions, only to look over the side and spot our anchor at our transom. Took us by surprise. It was shallow and the water so clear. Quite a funny sight really.

Not a very eventful post this one, but nevertheless, all you readers out there now know what we’ve been up to.  

We will have guests on board now for a few weeks. Next stop Lady Musgrave!  

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