Just on noon, I noticed this storm dumping columns of water close by and coming my way
I’m on my own on SeeBeeZee. Birgit has caught a bus out to Lightning Ridge, and I’m just hanging around the mangroves between Moreton Bay and the Gold Coast, working the tides and winds to move around the channels. Without a second hand on board, tacking in the narrow channels is too stressful, so I have been just ghosting along under genoa alone when the winds are in the right direction, and just sitting at anchor doing maintenance when they are not.
And that is why I am anchored in the channel between Tipplers and Jumpinpin. Early April is still a bit too early in the season to start moving too far north along the coast, as a cyclone could be possible, but I have been considering getting into Hervey Bay.
While doing some cleaning, I noticed this storm moving north along the hinterland, and it looked pretty severe. All I could do was to let out a little extra anchor chain and ensure it was properly secured to long bridles. Then it was simply monitor it on radar, both on board and at the BOM, and enjoy the view of nature at work. I grabbed some great photos as it moved close past me.


These two images are photos I took of our chartplotter with the radar overlaying the chart. You can see my location, shown by the black arrow symbol a bit to the right of the centre of the images. The pink shading is the image picked up on radar. On the left, with the time at 12:38, you can see the radar picks up the trees along either side of the channel I’m anchored in, but the large blob of pink is the rain coming out of the cloud. By 12:54, you can see in the image on the right that the storm has moved to the NE and has past over,




Leave a Reply