RQ Sail Cruising Group – June 15 & 16, 2019  “Show Your Colours”

Our preliminary plan was to invade the Brisbane River, use the new floating dinghy dock and anchor at Hamilton Northshore. This was thwarted as so many itinerants and more permanent vessels, have taken a fairly static presence.

The next possibility was to recreate a cruise from recent years and go to Redcliffe. Whilst the forecast was for light winds, a forecast weak seabreeze on Saturday put paid to risking a joggly anchorage! So, the fallback of reliable Canaipa came to the fore.

Following on from the Friday briefing which included the final presentation by Imoogi of their epic journey back to Aus, the Cruise Captains announced an early (pre 0700) departure to take the remnant of the flood tide and hopefully use the katabatic morning breeze. They proved to be the only ones up early and managed to sail a third of the way to Canaipa.

There was an amazing cloud formation that morning which several participants were fortunate to see.

Around Cleveland the wind went up in the air and provided ideal power boat conditions for the fleet to reach Canaipa without incident.

Through the course of the afternoon, the fleet began to fill Canaipa Passage, with the early arrivals sneaking into the creek.

Most of the participants took the opportunity to dress in their “colours” – being sporting or otherwise.  Congratulations to Paul & Helen from the Bavaria 41, Sonja, on winning the multiple choice quiz. Their superior intelligence was demonstrated by successfully returning from the ‘dark side’ as power boat owners. A few fell short on the final tricky double points question – that a sister ship to Joule won her division in a 284 nm ocean race between Florida and Cuba in March.

Sunday morning saw the group awake to a thick fog that took several hours to lift – quite unusual for the Canaipa visitors.

With the fog lifting, an energetic group had a lovely walk to Aunty Alices coffee shop in the Russell Island township, for a cuppa and to get their 10,000 steps for the day.

By the time the walkers made it back to Canaipa, most of the fleet had left. The rest of the fleet motored / motor sailed home in near calm conditions, some of the stragglers getting tucked up in their berths, not long before a brief, but intense out of season thunderstorm came through Manly.

The Fleet

It was great to see frequent participants from near the start of this decade, Molokai and Octet make a rare appearance. The weather was kind to us and it was a really easy low key enjoyable weekend.