Crossing Wide Bay bar

crossing John Tylor recalls a treacherous sideways, and while asleep-on the tropical Queensland coast with his good friend Don

- John Tylor

Crossing dangerous coastal bars asleep and sideways is certainly not a habit of mine, but strange things can happen on the water, and like many incidents they often happen slowly and start long before the final event. So, here we go!

When I was retrenched from my job as a communications engineer, my friend Don Dunn, a retired bank manager and wartime intelligence operator spying on the Japanese invaders just to the north of Australia, decided the time was right for a cruise to see the old Commando Base on Fraser Island, north from our home in Sydney, Australia. He was at an age when long trips were becoming more difficult so, with the blessing of our wives, off we went for the trip of our lives on his yacht, a locally-made Phantom 32. Don had been sailing the vast coast of Australia for more than 60 years and knew it well. Although my knowledge was less comprehensive, was given the job of navigating; Don thought would benefit from the preparation. studied the charts, guides, tide tables and the Australia Pilot and prepared a comprehensive passage plan.

Sowing the seeds

All went well until the navigator or lookout missed a crucial port-hand mark in the Gold Coast waterway, just south of the city of Brisbane. It was a long way off and directly in the setting sun; the glare completely obscured it. We ran silently aground. The soft sand held us gently but firmly and all attempts to re-float failed until a catamaran appeared, blithely motoring over the sandbar, and offered to tow us off. It quickly became obvious they had no experience extracting hapless sailors in a heavy displacement yacht from a grounding. It’s a long story in itself but resulted in us losing the main anchor and many metres of anchor rope and chain.

Not to worry... we had spares so we continued north towards the tropical coast. This little event would come back to haunt us many miles later.