Are the DOD taking over the tree house and the A-Frame. It would make for a good party.

"There is no safe anchorage for vessels for about 100 nautical miles from Yeppoon north to the Percy Island group during the exercise."

On a serious note though this is a little bit concerning

"Our guys have been going over to the anchorages at Great Keppel Island and talking to all the yachties and taking the printed notices over to them. "Some of them didn't even know the existence of a notice to mariners, let alone that there was an exercise up there."

The story here: apple.news/A5RXY1yG7TuqX4-LRuhT2Gw

I know of a similar situation off Jervis Bay wheni was last there decades ago.

Tuna fishermen risking hot shrapnel just to land a fish during live missile firings.

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Toph said..
Are the DOD taking over the tree house and the A-Frame. It would make for a good party.

"There is no safe anchorage for vessels for about 100 nautical miles from Yeppoon north to the Percy Island group during the exercise."

On a serious note though this is a little bit concerning

"Our guys have been going over to the anchorages at Great Keppel Island and talking to all the yachties and taking the printed notices over to them. "Some of them didn't even know the existence of a notice to mariners, let alone that there was an exercise up there."

The story here: apple.news/A5RXY1yG7TuqX4-LRuhT2Gw

Or listen the VHF!

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D3 said..
I know of a similar situation off Jervis Bay wheni was last there decades ago.

Tuna fishermen risking hot shrapnel just to land a fish during live missile firings.

I visited Jervis Bay in my trailable yacht oblivious to the live firings.
HMAS Darwin can be quite pushy when they want to.
I was made to wait over at Hole in the Wall while they shelled Beacroft.
Being outgunned l had to comply.

Re:Navy exercises off Jervis Bay

Back in the early 1980s the Mrs and I did a prolonged East coast diving trip in a Kombi towing a 14' tinnie. Spent two weeks "free camping" on the western fringe of the Beacroft Head firing range. Good view of the shells detonating on the high ground to the East. Navy coms was by a red flag & notice at the beach launching ramp we used north of Currarong to access the ocean coastline.

One day, with no flag or notice, we went diving at "Drum an Drum sticks", about half way down to the Point Perpendicular Lighthouse. A funny underwater throbbing noise finally brought us to the surface to find a large navy chopper hovering above with two guys hanging a big sign out the door saying "Range Going Active".

Gee you think they could have said when! It look us a while to de-gear and high tail it back towards home base, nervously scanning the eastern horizon for any grey monsters lurking about.

Back at the beach ramp the red flag was up and the notice said firings would start later that afternoon. They put on quite a display back at the campsite while having dinner. Locals said they often changed their schedules on pretty short notice.

A couple of days later the EAC had buggered offshore and so we had a safe and mind blowing dive on the Sir John Young Banks with not much current. Fabulous territory there - clear water, big (& tame) fish. I also managed to salvage an abandoned fishing net with about 15Kg of lead weights attached. Not sure if the Kombi really appreciated that, given it then had to drag it all the way to Port Douglas and back to Melbourne!

Great trip that, got out to Low Isles, Batt Reef, Green Island, Arlington Reef, & Russell Reef. Offshore Nav in those early pre-GPS days was by plastic sextant held horizontally to measure angles subtended by several prominent (and still just visible) headlands or Islands. One one occasion we couldn't find the target reef, with (too) deep blue water everywhere in sight.

Didn't know it then, but I had accidentally swapped the angle digits when transcribing from the chart (back in the Kombi). Luckily there was a bit of cloud about and it had a bit of a green tinge to it in one particular direction. I assumed it was reflected light off our target reef lurking somewhere over the horizon. Headed off that way and after three or four miles hit pay dirt!

cheers

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lydia said..

Or listen the VHF!

Or this.

Ive only sailed that are the once in 2017. There was going to be a live firing exercise starting at 0600 on (IIRC) Rattlesnale Island just off Townsville. I had spent 4 nights at Magnetic and went in Townsville for a night to stock up. For at least 1 week out there where at least 2 warnings per day over the VHF and becoming more frequent the closer the day of the exercise drew. I left Townsville around 0530 and by then the warnings over VHF were constant. I don't know whether that was standard practice or that they knew there was a boat in the vicinity, but sure as sh!t, 2 minutes before 6 o'clock, a vessel piped ups and stupidly asked "what is the problem".

I arrived at Great Keppel this morning, we will wait here until the exclusion order is finished, could be worse places to wait.
Might go into Yepoon one day to fuel up while we wait.
Had the vhf on 16 all day haven't heard anything about the notice to mariners.

I am thinking the little anchorages north of here will be wedged from the18th.

These large exercises occur every two years, so the next one is in 2027.

Not sure if this is thread drifting - hope not - apologies if it is - but I have to make note of HMAS Melbourne's sublime empathy exit from Sydney Harbour around the mid 70s in January when we were sailing the Javelin Aust titles out of Middle Harbour - the brilliant courses being out in the sound - so in the area as centred below. During a mid-week race HMAS Melbourne was coming out of port up the western channel - the whole fleet >30 skiffs were essentially becalmed across the sound on the work in a very light and patchy NE breeze from the start off Balmoral to the windward mark off Little Manly Beach in an outgoing tide. HMAS Melbourne throttled right back to essentially park in the water but to still maintain it's heading as was needed in such enclosed waters for it, to let the fleet get a new breeze which thankfully came, and then sailed out the heads in clear water behind the whole Javelin fleet after we all headed for the downwind mark off Obelisk iirc.

A few months back we were cleaning up the last couple of projects for the new Singapore Army training facility at Shoalwater when they did a live fire exercise. I was on a Teams call at the time at what I thought was a healthy distance when they shot off some 155mm rounds. On the video, it looks like I got b%tchslapped upside the head just from the consussion from the guns firing.
I'd hate to be anywhere near the other end!

Trivial info: The project just won an innovation award last month and deservedly so, it's a remarkable facility. As well as a bunch of supporting infrastructure/buildings, they constructed two live fire 'towns' for urban warfare training with inner lead walls, gas extraction and smoke generators everywhere and a pretty uber cool thermal camera system feeding imagery back to the classrooms for the other teams/instructors to watch in real time.
All paid for by the Singaporeans, but co-shared amongst the two nations. It turned out there isn't any room in Singapore for them to build anything lke this, so for them it's a pretty big deal. Win/win for both countries and a big plus for Australia in our efforts to become an major player in strengthening regional defence ties. So thanks very much Singapore for picking Australia to build/host it for you!