From reading back on the blog entries, I think we left our
travel log at New Caledonia, so for those of you that are interested here is
how we got to Port Philip Bay.
As previously mentioned we had a fantastic run from Futuna
to New Caledonia, and it almost seemed a shame to stop, but we hadn’t given our
advanced notice of arrival to Australian Customs, who requires minimum of 96
hours notice, so we needed to find some internet to do so and we had already
planned to stop in New Caledonia .
We spent a week in New Caledonia, manly around Noumea, but
with a few nights at anchorages just north of the city, to give us a break from
the busyness of the city and anchorage. We saw a wild dugong, met up with friends
from Nelson, Whangarei and Tonga as well as making some new friends.
I would like to go back and do some more exploring of this
area at some time, especially the more remote areas, but in saying this it
would be on the way north as we did find the slight drop in temperature
noticeable and we weren’t in the water nearly as much as we had been.
We left New Caledonia on the 31st October passing
through the outer reef at midday for a planned 850nm to Coffs Harbour,
Australia. Overall the trip was
variable, with light winds, to no winds leaving us motoring for several hours
most days or higher winds causing us to reef up and down several times a
day. Thank goodness for the generator
and the ability to fill up the diesel tank in Noumea just before the credit
card expired!
We had a few exciting
moments on the trip, one being during the day when Paige was on watch. We were expecting a change in wind direction
with a front later in the day, but it came through several hours earlier and
stronger than expected. I was in the saloon with Paige, and we were sailing
along nicely under autopilot, with wind from the N-NE , 15-20knots, when all of a sudden it went very quiet and in
less than 30 seconds the wind hit from the south, 20-25knots. We hadn’t had a chance to change the sails,
and called out to Dan who was having a nap to come and help us. It took all of us to get the boat back on
track, by turning off the auto pilot, sorting out the sails, which were all
back winded and sorting out our heading again.
Another interesting time was just on dark of the same
day. Dan was on watch and I was heading
off to bed for some sleep. All of a sudden there was a bang and the boat seemed
to lurch and feel off. Dan hurried
outside to investigate and in the fading light quickly worked out something was
wrong with the genoa. With torch light
we realised the genoa halyard and broken at the entry to the mast and the genoa
was trying to fall down. We quickly
furled the genoa and instantly the boat felt sluggish, but there wasn’t much we
could do at time. Over his watch Dan managed to get some of the genoa out so
that the boat had better steerage and a bit more forward power but we were not
making the speeds we had anticipated, so we contacted Australian Customs via
the Satellite phone to let them know we wouldn’t get to Coffs Harbour in the
time expected.
Finally on the evening of the 6th of November,
Dan once again celebrating his birthday out at sea, we set anchor in the outer
harbour of Coffs Harbour. We were advised by the marine radio service there
that we would need to wait until the morning to be able to clear customs, so we
settled down to a full night’s sleep after another 6 days and 7 hours at sea.
We had a week in Coffs Harbour, where we enjoyed the
Botanical Gardens, the river walkways, the beaches and the pier. We met up with
friends that we first met in Tonga and they shouted us a much appreciated
coffee at the marina cafe. We spent time on free internet, organising for our
mail to be sent to our next stop and sorting out our finances which weren’t
looking very healthy, to the point that in the full week at Coffs we didn’t
spend any money!
Our next stop was an overnight sail to Port Stephens where
we collected our new credit cards, spent some money on re-provisioning the
boat, getting Australian sim cards and internet connection. We also met up with
the designers of our boat Jeff and Lorraine Schionning and the couple that Dan
was to end up working for. After meeting
them, and a very informal job interview we made the decision to head south to
Melbourne, Victoria.
Next stop, Sydney, where we spent a week anchoring for free
next to a dog walking park, just around the corner from the Sydney Fish Market
where we could leave the boat during the week days for free under the watchful
eye of the friendly security guards while we explored Sydney CBD. We also spent some time with Dan’s brother
Andy and on the Sunday morning headed out onto the harbour and up the
tributaries. This was a very nerve
racking experience with many vessels out on the water creating lots of
wake/wash and not seeming to observe many of the maritime rules for passing
other vessels at an appropriate speed or on the right side! We left Sydney
early on a Thursday morning after watching the Wednesday night race yachts out
on the harbour on our way over to Manley.
We called into Jervis Bay for a few days waiting for the
southerly to blow through, and then headed out again to continue south. The
plan was to stop in Eden, but the wind was with us and would continue to be so
we decided to carry on around the corner into Bass Straight. I was a bit nervous about this notorious
stretch of water, but we had the weather gods on our side and had a very benign
passage, even having to motor at times due to no wind. The biggest issue we had
was keeping an eye out for all of the shipping on the way down the coast and in
the straight, especially at night, not having radar or AIS (automatic
identification system). We again thought to stop at Wilsons Promontory, but
realised if we stopped it could be up to a week before we could leave again for
Port Phillip Bay, so decided to carry on.
We knew we had to get to the entry for Port Phillip Bay on a
slack tide and at the time we made the decision this was looking like what we
would have. Unfortunately the wind
dropped away in the night, causing us to motor again, but not fast enough as
when the wind came in it was from the South West and building. We didn’t get to
the entrance until the tide was flowing out so fast it was causing the waves to
stand up through the middle of the channel and at one point we were doing a
boat speed of 9 knots, but only making way over ground at 1 knot. In hindsight
it was very full on coming into the bay, with breaking waves almost as high as
the spreaders, approximately 8.5m high, but at least they were from behind us.
We negotiated the entrance by dropping the main sail and coming in with a
partly furled genoa, which enabled us to have good steerage of the boat without
going too fast.
At one point I
realised Rylee was busy taking photographs out of the side of the cockpit, and
realising the conditions suggested he get his lifejacket on. When he was inside doing so we were hit by a
wave from behind with such force that he fell over. He came out laughing, saying that that hadn’t
happened before! We slowly made our way
through, negotiating a route that bypassed the steepest waves through the
middle of the channel and avoiding the reef and rocky outcrops that surround
the entrance. We also came across a
couple of turbulent areas that we later learned were created from large
underwater holes. These were bigger than our boat footprint and when you hit
the side of them they took the boat where they wanted, not where you thought
you were headed!
After an hour of nervousness an d great skippering from Cpt
Dan we came past Queenscliff and headed around the western coast of the bay
towards Portarlington. We made it as far
as St Leonards for the first night and were in bed and sound asleep before 8pm
after another three nights and days sailing.
The following morning we were up early and made our way
around to Portarlington, with wet weather gear on and a wind so cold it was
causing our noses to drip! We were met
by Dan’s new employers and had a quick tour of the local area before settling
in for our year and a bit in one spot.
