Hinchinbrook Island trip - Southern channel to Dungeness, road trip home (Day 5)

 Mon 28 Sept 2020.

After a good sleep and morning coffee, departed Haycock Island about 8 am. The early morning conditions were nearly flat calm, so the southern channel proved to be easy motoring at hull speed (in total contrast to the 25knot SE er the previous evening) timing the seabreeze/landbreeze-calms is essential up here.

Southern channel - Early morning calm, Lucinda ahead

Hilly forested shoreline and clearing skies seaward

Tides are the other thing. it was high tide at 8am so they would be falling on approach to Dungeness harbour entrance. A grounding on the falling tide would mean being stuck for 4-6 hours until it rose again, so extra care needed.

The southern channel shores of Hinchinbrook are also spectacular. Allot of fishermen's speedboats were making the most of the flat conditions too. Teria's GPS showed 6.5 knots over the ground, the falling tidal current was running with us.

Fishing "tinnies" heading westward along the southern channel 

Reached "The Bluff" which protected a mangrove creek which a few tinnies were fishing in. From there was a course change toward Lucinda wharf.

The Bluff - the estuary opens up here and becomes more exposed to seaward

The Easterly seabreeze began to increase around 10 am, reaching 15-20 knots quickly. The outgoing tide against the wind and seas created uncomfortable short steep choppy waters. So throttled back to do about 2 knots and not ship too much water over the bow. Too busy with spray flying to take any photos.

It took awhile to reach the Dungeness channel markers, skirted around river mouth sandbanks, there was one area of muddy water where depth was impossible to see visually, so crept forwards with the centerplate fully lowered and it never grounded.

Once inside Dungeness harbour the water is deep again. Temporarily anchored among the boats near the ramp and resort facilities, as some were away from their moorings. Time for breakfast and do some road trip preparation, removing sails, lashing the bimini down, stowing gear securely and emptying full fresh water containers over the deck to wash it down (also reduce road trip weight)

Entering Dungeness

Dungeness Harbour - final rest stop

Dungeness Harbour - boat ramp area to right

The ramp retrieval went well. Tied up at the end of the ramps floating pontoon while bringing the car and trailer down (Fisho's tinnies could easily go around, they are far faster than a solo TS to launch/retrieve also most had several crew as well. School holiday volume traffic)

A nice wash-down bay had a good freshwater hose. so gave boat/trailer her a quick squirt down. Boat trailers were queing, so out of there fast and into the long spacious de-rigging laneway to get the mast down and secure for the road.

Rigging down lane - Dungeness

The road trip home was fairly good. Stopped in Halifax a small cane farming town (with sugar mill) about 10 km from the ramp for a rest and final check over of the trailer. Halifax also has a good petrol station. Took different back roads through the cane fields at 40-60 km/hr where there was no traffic and emerged at the sugar cane township Ingham (pop about 10,000) which has many repair and other facilities etc for visiting trailer boaters if needed.

Halifax

The Bruce Highway to Townsville had holiday traffic, and the first 50 km had allot of roadworks with red light stops (manned by traffic control contractors). My cruising speed was about 90 km/hr so a tail of cars would develop, but i simply pulled over at roadworks red light and let them all overtake when it went green, then be the last vehicle in "the convoy". Several of these roadwork stops occurred upto about 50 km's south of Ingham. After that it was ok because many overtaking lanes are located on the final stretch. Once in Townsville city's outer limits there was far less traffic than usual and better multilane roads kept traffic flowing.

The boats supplies lasted well. 

Fuel: Used about 25% of the petrol carried. Only 10 litres used out of 42 litres aboard. (Good thing about 4 stroke outboard fuel, no oil mix, so it could be poured into the towing car after trip and consumed fairly quickly.  Next boat trip the fuel is fresh from the bowser. Not really a possibility with 2-stroke fuel, it's likely to just get stale fuel/oil mix for the next trip)

Fresh water. About 25-30 liters out of 60 litres was used on the trip. A good safety margin. Also carried "Aquatabs" (chlorination tablets) for emergency purification (eg creek water) to extend if town-water supply ran out.

Food supply.  About half of the regular dry/tinned food was used. (also had some rice in-case of a several week forced outing). The Trangia alcohol stove used about 0.5 litre of fuel with 1 litre spare (30% of supply).

From a supply viewpoint, the Investigator 563 is probably capable of doing even 10-day unassisted cruises with 2 crew, providing its well stocked up, there is enough stowage room aboard.