As I mentioned before HaveFun had prepared an excellent voyage plan with nav notes and strip maps.

MorningBird brought along his Garmin chart plotter, iPhone with Navionics and 8 or 10 Easy meals. Check them out here.

http://easymeals.net.au/

They are really quite good if you do not get the ones with any sort of pasta or rice in them. The beef stroganoff and the beef bourginon are great if you have spuds and peas on the side.

Before embarking on a voyage such as this, protocols have to be set so there are no surprise disagreements along the way. I went through everything on the boat with HF and MB so that they knew we had all the necessaries aboard and then we had a sit down talk with plunger coffee and biscuits to set the ground (or should I say water) rules.

HaveFun was appointed Chief Navigator, Morning Bird was appointed Sailing Master and I was appointed Chief Engineer, cook, bottle washer and arse wiper.

This prompted the question from MorningBird, "Does that include head jobs??" I responded with, "Definitely not, and there is no barrel on board that we have to take turns in either." So we have a crew with a sense of humour.

On the serious side, as I was the Master and owner of the vessel, and therefore responsible for the safety of the vessel and crew, I stated that we would do things by consensus but that I would have veto or if you like final say.

Life aboard a ship at sea is not democratic. It is autocratic, ie one person has supreme authority with which goes supreme responsibility.

We each agreed on this structure.

So here we are, about to slip the lines and adventure forth.





HaveFun had been quite insistent that our bridge opening and therefore departure from the Swansea Channel should be at Noon. I disagreed based on the tide time at Fort Denison (1300 hrs), Swansea Heads 15 mins later and the continued tidal in stream to Lake Macquarie for 3 to 4 hours after. I had booked a 3 pm bridge.

The day before I had organised the "Big Guns" ie Local Knowlege Guys to be there at the dock before we left so the arguement could be settled. Without too much fuss we left the dock and headed out on the Lake.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day with the locals either on or beside the water just having a fat old time on Easter Monday. Just beautiful and I will never forget that day. We got the main sail cover off, hoisted the main, rolled out the header and around 2:30 pm we entered the channel.

People were fishing from tinnies, sailing yachts, young guys impressing their half naked spunkettes on their speed boats, fathers teaching their kids how to jet ski and families having pic nics on the beach. It is so rare that one sees this happening en masse. Lake Macquarie is one of the most beautiful places in the world, no doubt.

So here we are putt putting down the Swansea Channel with the tidal stream against us (better than with us) headed for our 3 pm opening. There is a 40 odd foot racing type yacht on the courtesy mooring doing nothing and we are a tad early and do circles. Finally the traffic stops and the bridge opens. Protocol is incoming vessels go first.

Approach.



Bridge is open but let the incomers go first.



Then it is our turn.



On MorningBirds advice, "Always have your mainsail up at least when crossing a bar in case you have an engine failure.", we had the mainsail up. Good advice but not in this case.

A booming voice from the bridge controller says "Vessel approaching the bridge. Reef your sail." Whoops, quick turn around and drop it.

OK. Here we go. The bridge opening is quite impressive. It made me think and ask the question "Is this the 'Gate to Paradise' or 'The Jaws of Hell' ??

Coming in the former, going out to bad weather, the latter.



That is all I have got in me tonight folks. Off to Brisbane tomorrow and back Saturday arvo. Catch you then.

nswsailor said..

Gee Cisco, they have fixed the piles on the starboard side, that would have been a lot softer to hit last year when I went out!

Just out of curiosity nswsailor, where was the tide when you had your mishap??

I've been out 3 hrs before high tide & back in before high - it does get a bit "speedy" thru there sometimes!!


This was New Years Eve last year - 7am bridge opening with an 07.51 high

I think the best strategy when coming through the bridge opening is to be doing it when the tidal flow is least on the high tide.

From what I have been told by veterans of 100 or more transits, that occurs about 3 hours after the Fort Denison high.

In the end it is up to you.

Was that just south of Port Macquarie Cisco?

That sounds about right.

MorningBird has wonderful memories of Smoky Cape. The EAC squeezes right into the coast there. I think we did one tack out and we actually lost ground because we were beam on to the current.

MB had the watch and he was determined to get past it so we let him keep the tiller. He hung in there for a marathon six and a half hours till we had cleared. At times our speed was down to 1.4 knots.

Once we had cleared I said "OK. You have had enough." and I took the tiller. I think he was getting a bit woozy by then and he went below for a well earned kip.

Our watch keeping was not very formalized and was mainly offering to relieve or asking to be relieved. Our compass was a Plastimo Mini Contest 2 which was fitted to a board offset to port which was slotted into the wash board slides. It had no light in it and we taped those 2 inch long cyalume sticks to it. They were not really effective so we got eye strain a bit.

Most of the time there were two of us on deck. One steering, the other checking the course on the plotter, doing galley trips for snacks and drinks and dozing on the cockpit seat. It was quite an arduous trip even with three reasonably experienced sailors on board. It is not a trip I would care to do with say an unseasoned wife aboard and no one else. That would really test a marriage.

Apart from not being able to shower on board, we lived very well. The 12 volt fridge was excellent even freezing the milk at one point. It is voltage sensitive and will not drain the batteries flat but as we had to have the engine running all the way the fridge was cycling on and off throughout the trip.

HaveFun had made a superb provisioning list which included hand sanitizing cream, plenty of paper towels, brown paper lunch bags for used toilet paper to avoid putting paper down the head and paper milk shake cups for weeing in when it was a bit rough for doing it over the side. very good ideas. With the food I made sure there was variety and only bought the best quality items. It all helps with morale.

I have always held that it is possible to live as well on board as on land and to that end I make an extra effort. This was lunch one day with ham, smoked chicken, sardines and salad.






MB loves cheese, so there was plenty of that. HF loves rice, so there were two packs of that plus a frozen fried rice and I love Aldi's hommous and brown rice crackers, so there were two tubs and packs of those. We had chocolate, fruit cake, biscuits, Vegemite, Rose's Strawberry conserve and three loaves of bread (Helga's whole grain and light rye) which just lasted the trip before it got moldy.

The fuel tank is regular oblong shaped and has a dipstick plug hole. I measured it's external dimensions and calculated it's volume to be 5,2000 odd cubic centimeters which is 52 liters. Based on a conservative estimate of 2 liters per hour that gives 25 hours of running at 5 knots which gives us a motoring range of 125 nautical miles. That was not enough so I bought two 20 liter containers with the spout going in the lid which are not the best ones to get. Also I got a jiggler siphon hose. More control and less spillage risk than pouring into a funnel. The Willow fuel drums are better with a larger opening and externally stored spout that you don't have to wipe the diesel off.

Even with 90 liters on board we found it was not quite enough for a good safety margin. The fuel consumption turned out to be around 1.8 liters per hour and we decided on a fuel and overnight stop at Port Macquarie where the transit leads have been changed to a sector light as mentioned before.

I had been unable to find the ginger nut biscuits listed on the provisioning list and had bought butter nut snaps instead. They proved to be very popular and in high demand. I related to HF and MB how on another voyage I had been crewing on that some ham slices had been left on the galley bench after breakfast which I thought were there for the taking which I did with two of them and gobbled them down. Next thing I am confronted by the South African Captain who says "Stealing!!! There will be no stealing on this boat." You could have knocked me over with a feather.

"Stealing!!! There will be no stealing on this boat." became a bit of an on board joke with us with particular reference to the highly popular butter nut snap biscuits.

Going ashore at Port Macquarie I bought an extra fuel drum and slipped into Woollies to buy three more packets of butter nut snaps.

Getting back on board I placed the biscuits on the table and announced "There is one packet each." then we all said "And there will be no stealing on this boat."

More later.

Cant believe that 3 years have gone since you did that trip Phil

If you are referring to Second Wind's trip, it was current and wind against us all the way except the last day from Hervey Bay to Bundaberg when we had 7 to 10 knots directly behind us for a few hours of the afternoon.

Mr Yanmar got a good run with well over 100 hours on the trip.

Artemis said..

Can you tell me why a sailor's blood group will most likely be 'B'? Do you have any further information about this?

-------------------------

A reference to a cold beverage consumed south of the tweed river with initials VB?

Also known as Very Bodgy or Vitamin B

cisco said..

If you are referring to Second Wind's trip, it was current and wind against us all the way except the last day from Hervey Bay to Bundaberg when we had 7 to 10 knots directly behind us for a few hours of the afternoon.

Mr Yanmar got a good run with well over 100 hours on the trip.

motor got a good run.

Just for my own interest and also because my girlfriend and I have a pipe dream of sailing around Australia one day ;-) my question is;

If you had plenty of time on your hands and could choose the time of year and wait for the right winds, in theory would you be able to mainly sail on long passages around Australia with the wind from your aft or at least abeam without having to motor sail ?

The stop over in Port Macquarie was very pleasant allowing us to get a good night's sleep and use shoreside ablutions.

The inlet was quite crowded with many moored yachts and the anchorage was stacked up too. We were told that if buying fuel they didn't mind if you stayed on the fuel wharf overnight which we did.

Leaving the next morning I didn't really remember exactly which way we had come up the inlet. I am driving off the wharf and heading between moored yachts and the south wall when whoops, the sand bar says, no you are not going any further this way. The channel is between moored yachts on either side.

The guy on the yacht that took our line that we used to winch ourselves off said this happenes to him at least once a week.

It would have been great to have had the time to go into the various inlets and anchorages along the way. Port Stephens, Broughton Island, Crowdy Bay, Camden Haven, Korogoro Point and Trial Bay were all bypassed. Trial Bay would have been a great stop off with going ashore to tour the old gaol.

A few more pics along the way.














By the time we had passed Nambucca Heads, we have knocked off a big chunk of the journey and it was time to think about topping up with fuel again. We are approaching Coff's Harbour a bit after first light with HF and I on deck and MB sleeping below. I go below to make coffee for the watch on deck and notice the cabin is quite smelly with diesel exhaust fumes. I have a look in the engine bay and see that the weld on the bend of the wet elbow has deteriorated to the point of escaping exhaust gas.

I had to wake MB up before he went into a permanent sleep and then removed the engine bay front cover and opened the cockpit locker lid so the engine could get some fresh air too. We did not want it choking to death. Entry into Coff's was in full daylight and calm conditions which made life nice and easy. Once tied up on the wharf about 7 am I explore where I might get the wet elbow welded up. The slipway yard did not look promising and one of the fishermen told me the tradesman there was Wait by name and wait by nature.

There are a couple of exhaust shops in town but getting there and back was problematic and one of the guys had his smart phone out and said what we need is a welder. I said yes, Google up "mobile welder". The one that came up at the top of the list was "Lando's Mobile Welding" and his description sounded just right. I said, "That is our man!!" and he certainly was.

He was there half an hour after I rang him, took the part back to his workshop and had it back to me 2 hours later, all fixed, and he only charged me $30. If you are in Coff's and you need some welding done, Scott Landrigan is your man and a great guy to talk with too.



Coff's was very friendly and the yacht club allowed us to use their showers and toilets. There is an IGA shopping centre about half a klm from the harbour as well. The spunkettes like to do their jogging on the sea wall which makes things quite scenic.

The guy on this yacht needed a starter motor for his Volvo engine and was looking down the barrel of $2,000. I think he managed to track one down for $1,200. The marina wasn't charging him to be alongside the wharf because he had declared "disabled vessel". They cut off power and water to him though. Someone said the marina there charges $100/day for visiting yachts.



If you wan't to be in Coff's for a while, anchoring in the harbour seems to be the go but the anchorage is a fair way from shore.









As is usual, when the engineer is slaving and sweating away ensuring the vessel is seaworthy and safe, the crew is freshly showered and goofing off.






For the next leg HaveFun had plotted us a course through the Solitary Isalnds. West of South Solitary and Black Rock, east of Groper Island and North West Solitary but well west of Breaker Rocks which then put us well west of North Solitary Island.












We then followed the coast quite closely to Yamba, turning east a few degrees to clear North Evans Reef and Evans Head, another degree or two to clear Ballina then a few degrees west to pass close to Cape Byron. I have been told that Byron Bay is a good anchorage in a southerly blow. I am not sure I would like to go in there as there are a few hazards around and I would not like to join the wreck marked on the beach. We couldn't quite see the white pointers on the beaches around Cape Byron.




















Now that we had cleared Australia's most easterly point, we are gradually coming westward and hopefully out of the EAC. Our destination for that night was the Southport Yacht Club for refuelling again. We passed between Guy Rock and Inner Reef off Fingal Head a bit before dusk altered course off Point Danger and headed for the Gold Coast Seaway.

Surfers Paradise that night had spectacular fireworks going off every half hour. They literally know how to burn money on the Gold Coast. The seaway entry was good but it would be a judgement call in heavy weather.

Fuelled up and freshened up in the showers at the Southport Yacht Club, we headed straight out again rather than wind our way through Moreton Bay which has more lights than you can poke a stick at.

More coming soon.

Dwarf on the left.

Great story thanks for sharing

Thanks for sharing found it interesting so far and enjoying the photos to Cisco

You are welcome. There was a suggestion some time ago on the forum about people posting their cruising experiences/stories.

Should be more of it as "cruising" has become the character of this forum.

scruzin has done very well with his blogs about cruising in S.A. I think it is a great opportunity for the readers to pick up snippets of information that may be very useful to them at a later date.

Hey Cisco

Great read and enjoyed the pics also, looks like the sea state was kind.

Hows your form, Bloody Queenslanders thinking they can sail through the Swansea bridge, bloody typical

Cheers

Disralei said...
Hey Cisco

Great read and enjoyed the pics also, looks like the sea state was kind.

Hows your form, Bloody Queenslanders thinking they can sail through the Swansea bridge, bloody typical

Cheers

Well it was actually at the insistence of a New South Bloody Welshman that we had the mainsail up. No names, no pack drill.