The Narrows is a stretch of water running between Curtis Island and the mainland, providing a shortcut and calm passage between Keppel Bay and Gladstone. It is world famous for the remarkable cattle crossing half way along, where the sandbanks can dry as high as 2 metres. Until 2014, it was used to drive cattle across, but that has now stopped. The short video below shows the last cattle crossing.
To travel this section safely, it’s important to plan your route and ensure you have enough tide to safely navigate and not get stuck! A year ago when we were travelling north, the tides weren’t in our favour and truth is, I was also worried about taking this route.
However, as we were heading south from Keppel Bay to Gladstone, we planned to finally traverse The Narrows. We knew that when we left Keppel Bay, we would have a spring tide in the next couple of days, which it happened to be in the morning, making it perfect timing for us. We had also learnt a lot in the last year, making us more confident to do this.
Calculating tide requirements for The Narrows
There are different ways to calculate your tide requirements to traverse the Narrows. Two are explained below:
- Gladstone Marina has a simple formula. They suggest you add your draft (1.4m for us) plus 1.5m and make sure the tide is high enough tide to cover this.
- In his book Cruising the Coral Coast, Alan Lucas suggests you add 20% to the Gladstone tide, then subtract 2m plus your draft plus a margin for safety, e.g. 0.2m.
I used both of these formula applying the Gladstone high tide of 4.2m with a result was as follows, meaning we would be safe:
- Using the Gladstone Marina formula, we needed at least 2.9m water depth.
- Using Alan Lucas formula, we would have at least 1.4m water depth underneath.
Keppel Bay to The Narrows (north side)
We left Keppel Bay marina in the morning of Wednesday 13 April, for about a four-hour trip to anchor north of The Narrows. We also chose to leave Wednesday as the weather reports were slightly better.
We anchored for two nights north of The Narrows, between Mosquito and Badger Creeks, as shown in the map, waiting the Friday high tide for our crossing.
Due to strong current, we basically swung from North-West when the tide was coming in, to South-East when the tide was going out. However, initially we put out too much chain for the anchorage area, and found ourselves sitting on the bottom on the first low tide, so we brought in about 10m of chain and we never touched bottom at the anchorage again.
To occupy ourselves, we started waxing and buffing the fibreglass – for the first time ever!
Slide show of our cruise from Keppel Bay to The Narrows.
Traversing The Narrows (Friday 15 April)
I was very excited that the day had come to go through The Narrows. We planned to leave our anchorage about an hour before the high tide at Gladstone, allowing time to reach the shallowest part of the crossing, with knowledge we still had more incoming tide (in case we got stuck!). The Narrows is lined by mangroves and some people say that you can reach out and touch the mangroves. From the photos, you can see we were certainly close.
I planned the route following the preferred track shown on our charts and we were going to use the autopilot, of course keeping a close eye on the route, and enjoying the scenery. But unfortunately, our autopilot kept taking us off course (for details see Lesson learnt) so Robert steered the boat, allowing me to take lots of pics. And as it turned out, we never saw less than 1.7m of water under our keel.
Slide show of our cruise through south The Narrows.
Some video footage through The Narrows (no sound).
There were a number of fishing boats, as well as a small cruiser and couple of catamarans doing the crossing, but mostly heading north. If you could look it up on google maps, you might see something like ‘busier than expected’!
Because we were heading away from Rockhampton/Port Alma – considered the major port – when navigating we had to keep the starboard markers (green) on our port side, and the port markers (red) on our starboard side. Here are some more photos with captions.
Graham Creek
We arrived at Graham Creek, towards the southern end of Curtis Island, about 2 hours after entering The Narrows and found ourselves a good anchorage for the next few days, as our booking for Gladstone Marina started Monday 18 April.
We also met up with some other cruisers, who we’d only previously communicated with via social media, and I had a walk on the island with Glynda who was on her yacht, Raven Song.
Once again, the sandflies were ferocious and I had to keep my levels of antihistamine up. Photos below of Graham Creek and my walk on Curtis island. It looked so far from civilisation, yet you could here the hum of industry in the background.
Graham Creek to Gladstone
Over the Easter weekend, the marina was host to the boats that raced from Brisbane to Gladstone yacht race, which saw line honours gong to Black Jack and race winner named as Ichi Ban. While Black Jack were leaving Gladstone just as we arrived, I did briefly see Ichi Ban.
When we arrived at our berth, our neighbours were running two of their lines across to one of our cleats on the dock, making it a little more challenging for us to get secure in the berth, as it was the cleat we were going use our spring line on for docking. Luckily Alex from Perseides II, was standing by to give us a hand.
At night, the trees at nearby Spinnaker park are lit up, making for a very colourful view.
Lesson learnt (about our autopilot)
So what was wrong with our autopilot?
Remember when we anchored on the north side of The Narrows, to occupy ourselves we started waxing and buffing the fibreglass – for the first time ever?
Well, when we packed the electric buffer away into a bag, we put the bag on the floor of the pilot house in front of the cupboard. Yes, we realise that magnets affect compasses. But what we hadn’t considered was the autopilot compass being just inside the cupboard, and the strength of the magnet in the buffer. Our autopilot (a year old now) has never missed a beat… but when going through The Narrows, you really can’t afford to be too far off course.
Where to next?
We’ve extended our stay in Gladstone for another week (to 2 May) because wind and swell is not conducive to travelling. We’d hoped to go to Lady Musgrave Island, but unless the weather improves considerably, it looks like we might head straight to Hervey Bay via Bundaberg.
7 Responses
Pam, really enjoyed your blog and found it helpful in planning our passage!! See, polishing your boat just a causes trouble!!
The cattle crossing video was interesting, but kind of sad as it was the end of an era. Loved the “Moonrise” photo.
A wonderful adventure!
I love your blogs Pam You present them so well with Photos, videos, and music – I feel like I can almost smell the salt water. Great trip
Thanks Pam …. as always really interesting with some great photos and vids.
You really do do a wonderful job.
Cheers,
Kaye & Pete
I really like hearing of your adventures and challenges & the crossing of the NARROWS seems one of them. Interesting about the magnet effect and that you figured the problem. Great photos of different ships – eg. the giant bulk of the LNG vessel. Best wishes for your next adventure.
Yay! That Music is back (first video) great read as usual, hope you get to Lady Mulgrave x