What's going on here skipper? On this episode we're multitasking.
What sort of fish did you catch?
While sailing to a luxury resort that's now completely abandoned.
So crazy. We get the shock of our lives.
Learn about a murder mystery and drench our dinner in coffee.
Yours is a single shot. And yours? Is the double.
And I also share with you how we earn a little extra coin while living on board our floating home Tucana.
This is Amelia Cooper.
And at the end we discuss docking and the old bow thruster debate.
I feel most nervous when we are docking.
If you've been following our sailing journey we're down under
in Great Barrier Reef territory.
Today we're heading to Brampton Island which is only accessible by private boat.
We've heard a lot about this place - good and bad. And plan to anchor near a spot known as the fishbowl.
And on our way there... what's going on here skipper?
Oh my bicep is killing. Really is it a good one or a bad one?
Another mackerel tuna. Our third in a row.
I did count my chickens before they hatched. It was another Mackerel Tuna
and it's a lot of effort to clean that type of fish, for a real strong flavored fishy fish so
we just put him back. We might have to get ourselves a different lure because we seem
to only be catching Mackerel Tuna's. Bugger.
As we pull up to Brampton, we anchor on the northern side of the island
just as the sun decides to show it off in all its glory.
Wow, this is magic!
You're multitasking babe.
I'd like to say this place has come a long way since 1916, when a Maltese couple leased the island
to breed horses for the Indian army. But as we walk around we realize there's just one resident here
and an empty resort left in ruins.
So I just spoke to the caretaker who just lives in that
little hut over there. She's just there to make sure that everyone stays on the beach and doesn't
enter the abandoned resort, which she said closed down in 2011. We were under the impression that it
closed because of a cyclone that swept through but she said that wasn't the case.
And from what I can gather United Petroleum purchased the resort more than a decade ago.
It intended to build a seven star resort but it never eventuated
and now the pool looks more like a science experiment.
when one of them was a child he used to come here with his family, and he remembers
going on the train. And the first tourists arrived here in 1933. In the early days food was kept cold
with blocks of ice packed in sawdust brought in twice a week from Mackay.
And before phones, homing pigeons delivered messages to and from the mainland.
It's hard to believe almost a century later and this Great Barrier Reef haven is deserted.
Belongings left behind untouched and this paradise is simply abandoned and the Government hasn't intervened.
That's so crazy.
What the heck? Is there someone living in there?
Oscar the grouch!
Just as we're about to go for a hike, I got a message, so it was back to Tucana.
I've just got a gig come through which is pretty cool. Um so we're just going to quickly do it now
and then we're going to go for this walk that's going to take two hours.
One way that we're able to make a little bit of money on the road is through voiceovers. So i kind of convert our...
You can't see it. You honestly you can't see it.
Okay I'll quickly clean up.
I convert the v-berth here at the front into like a makeshift voice studio.
So what I do is, I get a couple of pillows and I put them up here.
This gig is asking me to put on a news voice and given that I was a journalist for 10 years, this is my bread and butter
and so I just have to pretty much read it in a reporter's voice.
It's a commercial release and it only goes for eight seconds which is a breeze
so we can get this out the way and go for this walk.
Oh let's just give it a crack.
This is Amelia Cooper with the Hoolie News Network. We'll just do it one more time.
HNN is pleased to bring you the world exclusive premiere.
So we'll quickly edit this up for them and then i'll flick it off to them via the internet
which is great because we have on board the mast -- when we got it taken out in Melbourne
we got a booster put on there, which John calls my....
Your Instagram antenna.
But it's also a great way for us to utilize it while we're out in the water for business purposes.
That actually sounds like I'm plugging it for taxation purposes but... we're not...
John can we claim that on tax? What? The booster, I just thought of that then.
Possibly. No but I'm just saying like I'd never thought about it before until then.
The booster on board the mast allows us to get reception when a lot of other boats around us can't.
So our mast is around 19 meters and it sits on top of that and it's fabulous.
We need to go on this walk so we'll quickly edit this and we'll send it off to them and hopefully they give it a big thumbs up.
This is Amelia. I don't like that one.
While it helps pay the bills it's not stable work so your support here on YouTube and Patreon
where we post all our behind the scenes content, helps us immensely.
Let's call it Hoolie News.
Technology has come a long way since pigeon post.
With our work done, we're going to go test our luck and explore this national park.
We're going to be hiking to the peak where the view is supposed to be insanely beautiful
and worth the risk of pounding through the overgrown bushland
John thinks there'll be snakes in here so I'm gonna let him go first.
It's very overgrown. It actually reminded us of this song you might have heard of it...
Come to Australia you might accidentally get killed.
Do you remember it? So what do we do if we get bitten by a snake?
Usually you just um...
get your belt put it around your leg and then you just cut your leg off.
No, no what's in your bag?
Some nuts. A can of tuna.
And there is also a radio, so John and I just did a little brief to one another...
that if anything happens, we have an EPIRB.
We have our radio. Just go straight on to channel 16. Make a mayday call.
Pan pan pan? No you're not on a boat. Oh.
Can you see him watching us? See him?
We made it.
Wow.
See the runway.
I wasn't expecting that. I thought it'd be overgrown.
There have been a few disasters on Brampton. A plane incident,
the abandoned resort and a murder mystery.
For almost two decades police tried to hunt down the holiday maker who killed waitress Celia Douty
in 1983. They eventually arrested businessman Wayne Butler.
He was the first person in Australia convicted of murder using DNA profiling.
John's cooked dinner on board and he has marinated these wonderful steaks.
He's got the barbie on.
Smoking up here. What is on them? Coffee. And? Tumeric. Smoked paprika,
pepper, salt, cayenne pepper.
Which one's mine?
Yours is a single shot. And yours?
The double.
We rarely eat steak but when we do...
Mate just give me five minutes will ya?
It seems we draw a bit of an audience.
How good does that smell? Like a latte. Mmmmmm.
But birds on boats aren't toilet trained.
So he had to go.
Thank you Dan and Alyssa for this recipe. We have half an avocado, with a big dollop of butter underneath.
Oh my gosh they look pretty burnt. They are very burnt.
They've been in there (the fridge) for like two weeks and so I think John wanted to cook them up good
so we wouldn't get sick.
It actually tastes really good.
Like really good.
Coffee makes everything good. Not bad for 'off' steak.
It tastes amazing. Let's just hope that we can sleep tonight.
Because tomorrow we finally sail to Airlie beach -- The Whitsundays.
We're heading to town as we're fast running out of supplies.
Guys, I just want to do a massive appreciation message to you all to say thank you for being here
through this entire journey. We have officially made it to the destination that we dreamed about.
Airlie! We're here in the Whitsundays and my gosh this is just a spectacular day.
Oh my lordy lord.
We're just making our way into the marina. We haven't provisioned for a couple of weeks
so we need to restock the fridges. We have a heap of stuff that's also been delivered to the post office
so we're gonna get all those jobs done over the next two days.
Another thing that we're doing is getting our freezer fixed
so we can add extra veggies and more food into the freezer so
that we can spend more time out on the islands and less time having to come back here to replenish our stocks.
We'll get in we'll get the work done. We'll scrub the boat down.
What a splendid day. Wowza.
But as you guys know we like to give you a balanced view of what it's like out here.
So we're about to get honest about docking.
So it is currently low low tide. Our draft is 2.2 meters.
As we enter the marina we're told to stick to the middle of the channel.
There is a lot to think about.
So we're going downwind so because I'm going to need quite a bit of speed on and then reverse pretty hard
to keep steerage. We'll just see how we go.
We dread docking. Obviously we're still learning and there's a lot of pressure being so green
on an enormous boat like Tucana particularly when we're broadcasting ourselves online
for all to see and judge.
Like imagine what it must be like for them trying to park in a place like this?
I'm on the lines for now because the thought of parking without a bow thruster scares the
bejesus out of me. But I am practicing and I'm sure with time we'll both become proficient.
We are extremely green. We haven't had that much experience in docking at this stage. I don't know
how you feel about it but I feel most nervous when we are docking. I was talking to someone on
Instagram the other day and they were telling me how nervous they were. I'm not talking about
all the people out there who have years and years of experience. I'm talking about green
yachties like we are and we're at the start of our journey, who are scared of getting behind the helm.
I'm still very nervous about doing it. What advice do you give to those people who haven't
been behind the helm yet? Get someone who knows what they're doing to give you some
instruction on your boat. Read some books. Get a pen a piece of paper and consider
how you would dock your boat for your birth or the birth you're going into with the wind coming from
every point of the compass and if you can come up with a strategy for each one you're going
to be covered for most scenarios but every scenario is different. Either there's an obstruction in a
different place. The space between the boats is narrower. You know you've got
strong wind or strong current or the together or opposing or you know your boat prop walks
one way, but you've got the wind coming from the other way. Your cleats are in different positions.
Yeah the points that you tie the boat up to a different. There's always going to be something
different so you've got to be able to be a little bit dynamic in how you approach things.
That person shoe just fell in. And you've got to work out what works for your boat as well. So for
some boats um you know that the prop walk can be used very effectively if you've got a full keel
you might go about it differently. If you've got a fin keel you'll have a different technique so
yeah for us reversing in works quite well. We've got a spade rudder and a fin keel so
that works really well for maneuverability for us to reverse in.
Is it still floating? Nah, it's gone.
Sorry, I didn't have time to get it. Yeh it's alright.
Some things that might not be completely obvious which might just help you understand the challenges with parking
a boat is: A) the boat pivots around the keel and also if there is no water flowing over the rudder
you can't steer the boat. So if you bring the boat to a stop, you know turning the wheel does nothing
because there's no water flowing over the rudders.
But then you add like current to the mix, so if you... I don't want to waffle but the point that I'm trying
to make: If you're coming into a berth and you have the wind and current behind you
the boat might still be moving through space but it is not moving through the water so you might be moving into
a bay at quite a high speed and have absolutely zero steering if the current is going with you.
So these are the sorts of things that you really need to think about and it's amazing the difference
that a small change in current will have to your steering and you know things like speed
and that sort of thing so you really need to take all these into consideration
when you come up with your plan. We purchased Tucana, it doesn't have a bow thruster
anyone watching considering buying a boat... should they try and buy a boat with a bow thruster?
Oh if you've got the option to have one it's it's nice to have it's definitely not necessary. A lot of people told us
"oh, on a boat over 40 foot you've got to have a bow thruster" and I don't know I just wouldn't agree
with that. I think it's nice to have, it'll make your life a lot easier and less stressful and
it'll give you more options and you can probably dock under more challenging conditions with a bow
thruster, but it's definitely not necessary. We love Tucana and it wasn't a deal breaker for us. Yeah it
wasn't a deal breaker for us. We were worried about it. It was, um you know, because we we hadn't never
parked a boat like and then you buy a 50-footer with no bow thruster, so people think you're nuts!
And maybe, maybe we are.
But to be fair we've met people along the way who have installed a bow thruster
for seven thousand dollars. Uh yeah. Ten thousand dollars. Something like that they're not cheap. Five thousand.
They're not cheap. But, so you know you can always get one installed after the fact if you have your
eye set on a particular boat. You know a few things that we do is use spring lines a lot and also
just uh yeah lots of fenders! We do we always cover the boat in fenders. Someone told us that very
early on didn't they? Yeah it's your last line of defense if you if you do like lose control of the
boat and it drifts into another boat or something if you've got fenders out it's going to save you.
I mean we could talk about this for ages. Let us know your thoughts on this in the comments below.
Thank you so much for watching this episode. We really hope you enjoyed it. We could have literally
spoken about mooring for a long, long time. Yeah you could, it's a whole another topic, yeah, but you
know what it's very interesting. It's like, it's one of the hardest things that I find to do with the
boat but it's also the most satisfying when you get it right. Really? Well yeah because it's like,
it is stressful when there's like a sense of relief once you're all tied up.
There is, we always high five don't we. Yeah there's always like.. Well usually we high five as
long as we haven't had like an argument along the way.
Tensions are usually a little bit high when you're parking. Yeah they are aren't they. Yeah but it's just
nervous energy. But you know what? Like we've done
pretty well. I don't think we've had any really hairy moments since leaving Melbourne.
We did have a hairy moment in Melbourne. We had a hairy moment in Melbourne.
Everyone's had a hairy moment. Thanks for watching guys.