Fraser Island to Port Stephens (19th October - 6th November)

It was up at 5.00am at Sheridan Flats to meet the tide to safely navigate THE SHALLOWS in the Great Sandy Strait and luckily we made it through yet again with no issues.  We travelled the 25NM down to Inskip Point before breakfast and had a leisurely day on board.  Next morning it was up early again to meet to flood tide to cross the WIDE BAY BAR along with the other 10boats that were anchored up with us at Inskip Point - the annual migration south is well under way.

As forecast we had light winds and motor sailed our way down to Mooloolaba.   We caught up with Steve Richo on Tardis again who is waiting for crew to arrive before continuing his  way south - all be it at a much faster pace than us!

After a few busy days in Mooloolaba we departed from the marina at 3:30H bound for Southport.  We had a great sail down which was assisted by some very helpful current - it is not often that Sally sits on speeds of 8's and 9's.  We had a bit of a bumpy entry into the Southport Seaway but made a safe arrival and dropped the pick in the very infamous Bums Bay anchorage before heading into the Southport YC marina on Monday morning.    We found getting a berth on the Sunday a little tough as our arrival just happened to coincide with the V8 Supercars!. 

Surfers Paradise

Brian and Kathy, our new crew, arrived on Tuesday arvo and will be on-board with us till we get to Sydney in a couple of weeks which is great.  During our stop over we did the obligatory trip to Seaworld which happened to be a first for our visitors.  As always it is a great day and we thoroughly enjoyed the Seal and Dolphin shows as well as the other sea life on show.  Kathy and I were even brave enough to tackle a couple of the rides including the new Storm ride which is based on rescuing people in a cyclone - maybe a little too close to home for comfort - but it was a lot of fun. 



SeaWorld

Dolphin Show

30th October and we are on the move again. We departed the Seaway at 8.30 on our way down to Coffs Harbour which is a 158NM passage.  Luckily we had a bit of current assist for most of the trip which is always appreciated.  During the passage we saw a heap of trawlers which we figured must be out  catching lots of prawns and bugs for all those Cup Day functions.  We also had a ship which seemed to find Sally very attractive  to the point where we had to take evasive action to keep out of its way (despite that we are broadcasting our position to the world on AIS)


Not what you want to see at night!


















Coffs Harbour Marina

We arrived at Coffs just in time to have showers and head up to the Yacht Club for a long lunch and not long after that we were all tucked up and sleeping soundly.  We had a lovely couple of days at Coffs and did the obligatory walk up Mutton Bird Island - which is aptly named as it is covered in Mutton Bird Nests.  On the 4th November (Cup Day) and it is on the move again which seems to be the way at the moment as we are hoping to get Sally home by the end of November.




We did the 175NM overnight passage down  to Port Stephens which ended up being a lovely down hill sail although we did have to push current for a fair bit of the passage which did slow us down a bit.  There was plenty of things to keep us entertained on the passage!  We listened to the Melbourne Cup en-route and between the four of us we picked all three spots on the podium!  We also got to see a whale show which was very exciting as our sightings of whales have been few and far between this trip.  We also had a plethora of ships traversing up and down the coast - luckily most of them kept their distance however, we seemed to have at least one that we were monitoring closely to make sure they kept their distance.


We arrived in Port Stephens just after lunch and headed up to a mooring in North Arm Cove where we were lucky enough to catch up with an old friend Rob (Morelli) from RMYS who dropped in on his dinghy for dinner. 

Today we are going up to Nelson Bay for the evening and then we are down to Newcastle tomorrow as this trip south progresses.