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Back home. What can I say, but very variable weather conditions wind wise, and a raging current.
For those crossing the 4 mile, watch the western end as it has shallowed up considerably (1.5m at low tide). The sandbank on the south western side of the crossing has moved slightly north of the mark I posted earlier, the rest of the marks are fairly spot on.
A very sad sight to see the upturned hull of the cat lying on the beach just south of the lighthouse on Monday afternoon. It was not there today, so I assume they arranged for its salvage.
Tuesday was a beautiful day on the water. glass out conditions and not a lot of current in the morning. When it came through in the afternoon, it roared and we were drifting at 2.7 knots. Decided to stay outside on Tuesday night as there was another boat up there who had fuel issues and had arranged for Bundy VMR to deliver more fuel out to them, so we stayed close by in case they needed assistance. VMR boat arrived at 9.30pm, delivering 5 jerries of fuel for them and standing by while they got the motors running to ensure that there were no other problems. The crew then had a 4 hour run back to base estimating their arrival back in Bundy as 3am.
Had a miserable night anchored at Sandy Cape Shoals as the north easter got up to around 15 knots, and the current held the boat side on to the waves so we rocked and rolled for most of the night.
There are plenty of spanish mackerel at the shoals, and we watched a very large GT smash through the fusileer schools on low tide Tuesday afternoon. Plenty of reef fish east of the shoals. Bagged on over 40cm venus tusk fish in just over 2 hours fishing. Also got 1 red, red throats, moses perch, and brown maori cod, plus a fair few odds and sods that were all returned as we did not want to bring a huge amount of fish back.
The northerly got up a fair bit on Wednesday afternoon. We came back in through the bar at 2pm, and ran down inside Roonies to catch up on the lost sleep from the night before. Spoke to some blokes on a nice Cabo called ###### who had been up there for 5 days and had caught 7 blues in that time. They were planning another 3 days of fishing before heading back to the Gold Coast. Left Roonies at 6pm, got back to the ramp, packed and on the road home just on 8.30pm.
Boat can wait till later today for a wash down.
Good luck to any Ausfish crews heading up. Hope the weather holds and you get onto some nice fish.
cheers
Jeff
Originally Posted by peterbo3
