Te Moana is on the public jetty at Ulmarra, just a few miles down river from Grafton. It's a convenient spot for me (Marius) to dash back to Sydney for a couple of meetings while Joy looks after Te Moana. I'll be back on the boat by Saturday afternoon together with Bruce Dell, who will help get Te Moana back to Sydney.
October 2009 Archives
We’ve had a fair bit of rain over the past 24 hours and the countryside around here looks like that is a regular occurrence. We’ve sailed past lush green paddocks and canefields. Tomorrow I fly back to Sydney for a day to attend some meetings and to pick up our crew for the return journey.
The Harwood bridge opened as promised and we had a quiet motor up to Maclean. Maclean has a nice public jetty with power and water, so Me Too and Te Moana and very comfortably settled here.
The public jetty is right in the middle of town and as long as we're pretending to be MacCoomans or MacWatson, we'll get on well here.
We're on the Clarence River after an easy motor-sail up to Iluka yesterday. The Pacific Highway is going to close for us so we can go under the bridge at Harwood at 0630 tomorrow morning. Rather than rush up the river tomorrow morning, we decided to come up this afternoon and anchor at the bridge. There are two other boats with us, Mica (Mike and Carole) and Metoo (George and Nick). My Dutch friends and relatives probably won't understand the excitement of having a bridge open for you and stopping the traffic. In Australia, there are not many places that a boat can hold up traffic on a national highway. We look forward to that in the morning.
Just to follow up on our engine failure the other day. The cause was a faulty relay (the one driving the starting solenoid). There is a young sparky (Marcus Edwards, 0405 248 854) here at the Coffs Harbour marina who found the cause quick smart and had it going again in a few minutes. Today I rode the bike into town to get a spare relay, just in case the starboard engine wants to play the same trick.
At first light tomorrow we’re hoping to set off for Yamba/Iluka. Another adventure awaits…
We've been sailing for long enough to know that occasionally, things go pear shape. When they do, it's a matter of limiting the damage. You can't prevent or foresee all of the challenges while cruising, merely hope to limit the damage.
As predicted, we had a rolly night at Trial Bay. The plan was to get some sleep after the leg from Camden Haven and to simply lift anchor if it became too uncomfortable. As it happened, the Northerly came a little earlier than expected and so at 3.00 am we decided to get going.
Unfortunately, the port engine emitted all sorts of grinding noises when I attempted to start it. It soon became clear that we would have to do without it. Luckily, catamarans have built-in redundancy and so we still had our trusty starboard Volvo. Getting away on one engine is a little tricky as the boat spins until it achieves enough boat speed for the rudders to become effective. So we decided to wait until first light before lifting anchor.
At dawn, we hoisted the mainsail and made a successful get away. It was a longer day than expected (NE at 20Knots) and we were pretty tired by the time we got to Coffs Harbour. Our assigned spot was at the end of C arm, which gave us at just one shot at getting tied up while we were on only one engine. It proved to be tricky - as the boat slowed, the wind caught it and we missed the marina at our first attempt. As was to be expected, all further attempts were futile with only one engine. We crab crawled down the channel past C and B arms and found a bit of sand. As luck would have it, we stranded opposite A arm. Fellow Cruiser Mike Quinn and the Marina Manager were a great help and with some judicious rope and winch work, Te Moana was soon alongside A arm. Of course we had an attentive audience as a yachtie making a spectacle is always popular with crowds.
Next time we'll call the marina ahead of time and have a few folks standing by before we attempt this again. And now we'll wait for a mechanic to get the port engine going again before proceeding to Yamba. [No boats were harmed in the telling of this story and thankfully, no photos or video are known to exist - just in case you had ideas, Leon]
We left Camden Haven today and had a gentle motor-sail up to Trial Bay. We have really good memories of the Bay because of a terrific camping holiday here lots of years ago. Another memory of this place is pulling in here on Te Moana to shelter from a Southerly Buster in the middle of the night on our way back from the Whitsundays.
It will probably be a "rolly" night, but it's nice to be back here. Tomorrow we go on to Coffs Harbour.
We're having a lay day at Camden Haven (unlike the lay week, which we had here in 2005). We're anchored just off the jetty at the Laurieton RSL club, which does a excellent job in providing complementary facilities for visiting yachties. More pictures from 4 years ago (including a visit from Oma and Opa)..
We originally set off to sail for Port Stephens today. The weather was kinder than expected and we wanted to make the most of the weather window on offer. So we pushed on to Broughton Island, ready to proceed to Camden Haven tomorrow.
We picked up a mooring on the North side of Broughton Island. Jake was "relieved" to get to the beach after 14 hours at sea. A great place to relax at the end of a long day.
We’re joining the CCCA for their Jacaranda Cruise to Grafton via Yamba/Iluka. The weather has been pretty ordinary the last few days (weeks), but we were hoping to make a start today. We arrived at the boat last night and originally were expecting to make an early start. Except that the rigger hadn’t quite finished his job, we had left a bag full of groceries behind at home and that weather was still looking pretty ordinary. To make a long story short, I (Marius) picked up the groceries at 6 am (thanks Craig) after having the Volvo’s picture taken by a speed camera. The rigger finished at 9.00 am and we finally departed at 11.00 with a faint hope to get to Lake Macquarie.
Putting a couple of reefs in the sail in preparation for the solid westerly proved less than spectacular and we decide to divert to Coaster Retreat for lunch and re-grouping. That was a good move. We sorted out the sail, generally relaxed and re-charged our batteries. And it turned out to be a very nice afternoon, looking out over Barrenjoey. We’re ready to go early in the morning and will head straight to Pt Stephens. Follow along
Personally speaking, I don't care much about ball sports, particularly artificial , media manipulated gladiator sports like Rugby League. However our son Troy was wrapped in it. He would be stoked to know that his favourite team, the Eels is in the Grand Final today.
We're on Te Moana at Akuna Bay with a bunch of cruising friends. The Marina has offered the use of their meeting room, including television to watch the Rugby League Grand Final. This year, Joy and I will be watching it, decked out with some of Troy's "accessories".
Troy had his day with the Eels at a practice session, soon after he was diagnosed, thanks to the Parramatta Leagues Club and sister-in-law Mel's initiative. Picture(s) below.
Troy with his idol, Nathan Hindmarsh. He's still wearing that shirt. He's still wrapped in the Eels. More pictures here.
ZOals je altijd zegt: hang in there