But in fairness to myself ... I've been busy. (I'm going to break this up into a couple of separate posts, as trying to do it all in one is what has prevented from doing it at all.) Here's what happened:
After I landed in Bundaberg, I stayed on one of the local marinas for a couple of weeks, while sorting out the importation paperwork and what have you. Then I decided that perhaps I should go home to Stawell and check the mail, hack down some of the more rampant weeds and so on. After all I hadn't been there for 6 months. But rather than leave the boat in a $210 per week marina berth, I hunted around and found a mooring on the Burnett River at $140 per week. Still not cheap, but better.
For the non-sailors amongst you, a 'berth' is where you tie up alongside a structure, like a wharf or pier. A mooring is where you tie up to a permanent anchor. The main difference is that in a berth you (usually) can step ashore straight off the boat, while a mooring is out from the shore some distance, so usually you need to use another boat (often a small dinghy or 'tender') to get ashore. Because they have the step-ashore convenience, berths cost more.
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| Hellcat on a mooring in Bundaberg, close to town. What could go wrong? |
So home I went, planning to be back in 2 weeks ... ish. All was going well until one night on the TV news they mentioned that tornadoes had done some damage in Queensland, and particularly mentioned Burnett Heads. "Burnett Heads?" I said to myself ... "I know that name." Burnett Heads is a township next to Port Bundaberg. I had walked there several times to buy food etc at the supermarket while I was staying in the marina. This, I realised almost immediately, was not a good thing.
So I started paying attention to the news, and went a bit pale as they reported that south-east Queensland was experiencing major storms and flooding because a tropical cyclone that had hit north Queensland had moved south as it wound down. That is, it was no longer classed as a cyclone, but was still a large storm system. Over the next few days I watched the news and it became apparent that the Burnett River was in major flood. 9 metres (30 ft) worth of flood, in fact. News footage showed, to my dismay, several boats that had broken their mooring lines and were floating away from the area where I had left Hellcat. It was obvious that my boat was going to be one of them, even though I didn't see it in the TV footage.
I decided that there was no point flying back to Bundaberg straight away. Much of the town was under water, people were being evacuated, and Emergency Services had enough on their hands without me running around saying "where's my boat?" The best part of a week went by, and the flood waters were receding, and I still had no idea what had happened to Hellcat. The marina office that operated the moorings weren't answering the phone, which is hardly surprising as the homes of the staff, and the office itself for all I knew, were probably flooded.
I started making phone calls. The Volunteer Marine Rescue people said that they didn't have Hellcat on their list of 'found' boats, so they added it to the list of missing boats. I wasn't sure that this constituted progress. They also gave me a phone number of some-one from one of the local yacht clubs who was performing a sort of un-official co-ordinater role in regard to locating lost boats. She hadn't seen or heard any news of Hellcat either. Then I received a phone call from one of the staff at the Marina where I had stayed when I first arrived. "Do you know where your boat is?" she asked. "No, do you?" I replied. "Yes. Go onto Facebook, and do a search for "What happened to my boat". There's a picture of Hellcat there, and it gives a location.", And it did!
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| The Facebook image. |
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| From the air during the flood. |
This is a good thing, because what looks like a line of waves parallel to the power lines is another embankment, a drop of about 2 metres (7ft). If Hellcat had gone over that I suspect she would have rolled over and dug the mast into the ground as it went. That would have broken the mast. So what looked like a terrible place to end up probably wasn't the worst that could have happened.
Here's a map showing where Hellcat started from and ended up. The river (and floodwater) flows to the north (towards the top of the map for the cartographically challenged), and the scale on the map suggests a journey of 5 - 6 kilometres 'as the crow flies'.
Well it's after midnight, so I'll leave the story there for now. Don't fret though, I'm writing this from a cleaned out and floating-again Hellcat. How that came about in the next installments.
