January 2009 Archives

Saturday was one of those "over the top" summer's days. A hot gusty westerly wind which fries your eyeballs. A forecast Southerly buster was due to hit in the late afternoon. We picked up a buoy at Towlers Bay on Friday evening and made an early start for Maitland Bay, lunch time destination for an Australia Day weekend cruise with "Alfreds".

Leaving Towlers' at 0830 hrs, there was already a nice breeze and we had a very enjoyable sail all the way. While Maitland Bay has a couple of reefs at its entrance, with common sense and a chart it's no problem. We anchored without incident a little after 1000 hrs. We have no temperature gauge on Te Moana, but soon the temperature was surely up 40 deg C.

So  into the water we went,  However, Jake prefers dry land (or boat), so he survived with a wetsuit (a damp tea towel).

We've been back from our Christmas cruise for a week and decided to have a weekend on shore. So we went for a drive and ended up in Hardies Bay and Terrigal. Sad lot, we are...

The fish and chips were nice, though...

We had a rest day at Greenwell point while the Southerly came through, even though that didn't amount to much. A kind local invited us to use his mooring and we had a relaxing day, followed by a delicious seafood dinner at the "back gate".

We're now (as I write this) on our way to Port Hacking, making good progress so far as you can see here.

We came back up to Jervis Bay today and decided to sample the little bay off Long Nose Point at Chris Daly's recommendation. Nice one.. Stunningly crystal clear water, white beach, perfect. Thanks Chris!

And surprise, surprise, what came around the corner but another Lagoon 380! Nice to meet you!

We woke early this morning. The wind had gently turned west and we were too close to a moored boat. So at first light we set off to Broulee Island, our next stop. We have no definite plans for the next few days and hope to roam around a few places before heading back home towards the weekend.  [ and Dawn..., why don't you come over for a sail some time? ]

Ulladulla has a pretty compact harbour, there isn't a lot of room. The real benefit of being there is to re-provision and get some chores out of the way.

So we paid the local supermarkets some visits, did the laundry at a local laundromat  and treated ourselves to a relaxing lunch at the Harbourview Restaurant.

 

So, while the anchorage is a little lumpy and there are more people around than we'd like, it a good place to stock up and get some things done. All part of a good cruising holiday!

Jervis Bay has its Pros and Cons. We've seen both in the past two days. When we arrived two days ago, we anchored at "Hole in the Wall" to await the Southerly. Unfortunately that was preceded by a strong Westerly which gave us a rough afternoon. Jervis Bay has little all round shelter, you need to go where the wind's from.

Once the wind settled down, we came to appreciate the clear, pristine conditions. We moved to one of the buoys and as you might see in the accompanying photo, it felt like we were on a glass plate. We're now underway to Ulladulla to replenish our supplies.

We greeted the New Year by watching the sun rise on the new year like we usually do. It was a particularly pretty sunrise, here at Greenwell Point.

We celebrated with a big breakfast and some Australian Champagne and orange juice and reflected on the past and the future.

We'd like to wish all the best for the new year to all our friends and our hearts in particular go out to Willem and Yvonne.

Oh, and yes, we don't normally drink wine from beer glasses, but it's all we had and it adds a touch of Holland to drink out of a Grolsch glass...