It's a new year and a new adventure

A new year, in fact New Year's day and we are back on board, we being Peter and myself, readying K'Gari for the next phase  of  the adventure.

This time K'Gari is heading to Tasmania for the what remains of the summer, to participate in a circumnavigation rally of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania, for anybody overseas who might be reading this).

Prior to participating we have to get there, a wee jaunt of  1800 miles down the East coast of Australia just to reposition to commence  the rally- why ever  not?

Today its just the usual pre departure routine, checking and starting the engines, checking the obvious, rigging, sheets halyards, blocks and shackles,stowing everything that we brought with us, a quick washdown to remove what I thought was ash from the recent bushfires but has a much more tarry consistency and I suspect might have more to do with fall out from the trawler fleet which berths just to the north of the marina and with the recent wind being from the north I think its possibly exhaust fall out. Bugga that is going to need more work than we have time to dedicate to it.

To leave Tin Can Bay and head south we need to cross the Wide Bay Bar , best accomplished during the last two hours of a rising tide. The weather report is looking good. The high pressure system has moved across and is now east of us which means we will be able to "ride the high" down the coast.
Riding the high, means that the winds will be from the north or north east or even east depending on the exact position of the system.
The high tide is just after 0700 tomorrow, so we need to leave the marina by 0430 to cover the distance required to cross the Wide Bay Bar  .