The Quest for Freyja: exploring the waters around Gold Coast

We went to Gold Coast for a very short holiday to test our new boat – Quest, soon to become Freyja. To experience its full potential, we slept on the boat in the marina where we bought it from – Alexander Marine, on Commera River, next door to the Riviera and Maritimo factories and not far from the famous Sanctuary Cove.

The area going down Coomera River from the marina is basically a Mandurah on steroids, with canals, mansions and lots of beautiful boats, but also the occasional permanent boat dweller who must have been displaced from The Spit. In some parts the navigation channel is quite narrow, with the shifting sandbanks quickly visible when the tide starts going down. The speed limit for boats longer than 6.5 m is 6 knots on Coomera River (but 30 knots for smaller boats)!

Once we reached Broadwater, the first option we took was to turn starboard, heading towards Gold Coast. Being Sunday with beautiful weather, there was quite a flurry of activity on the water, with boats of all types and sizes going up and down.

We went past Marina Mirage, the monstruous mobile enternainment venue Yot Club, under the Gold Coast Hwy bridge (where we saw an amphibian car boat entering and another one exiting the water), kept going on Nerang River – but not very far as we weren’t sure how deep it will be further up.

Next day we went the other way, towards Moreton Bay / Brisbane. The views were amazing – mangroves, many birds, small islands and vast stretches of water. We encountered far fewer boats than on Sunday, most of them fishermen – one being carefully followed by a pod of pelicans.

We went past Tippler’s camping ground, through Tippler’s passage, to Cobby Island, then Tuleen, Stingaree and Crusoe Islands.

On the way back, the “stretches” of water looked quite different, dotted by sand islets that were popping out as it was low tide. The channel to navigate through was not very wide, with the deepest water as shallow as 1.9m at times. We got to see the Yot Club on the go as well.

A short video from our trip can be watched here. There were some currawongs around the marina where we stayed and they enchanted us with their beautiful songs.