The weather finally moderated enough for us to hit the road again so it was an 0800 departure from the marina - destination Great Keppel Island. We had a great SE breeze with reasonably small swell which led to some great times until we were abeam the township of 1770. Not sure where it came from but we then got thwacked with the SE building to just under 30 kts. That was just a tad too fresh for the full main so we threw in 2 reefs and found the ride to be much more pleasant and almost as fast. One trick I have learned is to get the autopilot to steer by wind direction rather than course direction when going down hill. It sails a much tighter course and works much, much less. This is good for both of us as some of the previous slaloms down the bigger swells were rather 'exciting'.
Suffice to say we had a uneventful trip working our way around the ships anchored off Gladstone and arriving at Great Keppel just on dawn to help us find an anchorage. We almost had it to ourselves as two yachts left soon after we arrived. They were keel boats so it was probably a 'cat versus keel' thing.
The stats for this leg of the trip:
Duration: 22 Hours; Distance travelled: 135.4 NM, Average Speed (from the log): 5.8 KTS and top speed (from log, GPS was higher): 11.7 KTS. The majority of this was done on a double reefed main and no headsail.
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