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30 Knot Roller Coaster Ride, Plastered in Coal Dust! & Ghost Ships Of Great Keple Island
May 3, 2026 · 25 min · 21K views · Gladstone
What this video covers
A coal-dust problem at Gladstone, Australia, forces Adam and Luke to move their Prout Ltd. Snowgoose 37 Elite catamaran multiple times before departing for Great Keppel Island, roughly 50–55 miles north.▶ 1:23 Anchored opposite a coal-loading facility, the boat accumulated black dust overnight; they relocated twice more before leaving, finding no sheltered anchorage in 30-knot southeast winds.▶ 1:00 The passage north runs downwind under a poled-out genoa only — they avoid the mainsail to prevent chafe on the stanchions and to allow quick reefing in squalls.▶ 6:13 Average speed runs 6.7 knots, with a maximum of 12 knots in 2-meter swells and 30 knots of wind.▶ 8:46 Great Keppel Island (traditionally Wupa), the largest of 18 islands in the Keppel Group at 5.8 square miles, offers a comfortable anchorage despite 35-knot gusts overnight.▶ 4:25 Ashore, they hike 3 km to the island's lighthouse, where Luke recounts the 1848 ghost-ship story of the schooner Selina, whose crew vanished after leaving Brisbane and whose unmanned hull drifted the East Australian Current south to Victoria, across the Tasman, and back through the Coral Sea before grounding 10 miles from Great Keppel Island.▶ 15:45 Downwind passages in strong trade winds favor a catamaran's flat, fast motion over a monohull's rolling.▶ 9:17
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