Left Anchorage at Rainbow beach at around 12:45pm to time our run to the East Bay Bar at the bottom of Fraser Island. Advice is to cross 2hrs ahead of high tide. As it was going to be a high high tide, we planned to arrive at around 3:30pm To give us enough time to get in and anchor before dark. The bar runs all along the bottom of the island and takes about 40minutes to cross. There are virtual markers that come up on the ais, and lead lights that were bright enough to see during the day. It is very ingenious with the virtual markers marking the entrance and waypoints. Once you have hit either a port of starboard waypoint you will see a solid red lead light. You turn the direction indicated by the virtual marker, as you do this the light starts flashing red and continues to do so until you hit the right course and then it shines white. It is a bit of a crooked course in so there are two different lead lights. When you hit the fourth virtual marker, the first lead light goes back to red and you turn to line up the second one using the same process.
There was a lots of swell and breaking waves coming in but the leads were amazing in guiding you in.

Upon getting into the channel we headed south to Tin Can bay and after about an hour dropped anchor in 2.7m across from town. There was quite a strong current running but the anchor held well on a muddy bottom.

QLD25 13. Rainbow Beach to Tin Can Bay

Crew: 2

Crew Logs

Comments (0)