It’s been nearly two years, waiting for countries to open their borders and it has been nearly three years in Australia. None of the world’s population has experienced anything like the Covid pandemic which not only took lives but took aa big chunk of time from many people. Enough of that, it is time to get going.
To that end we departed Sydney, or more correctly Broken Bay in the Norther Beach area, at 0800 this morning, which is Sunday April 10. We are headed to Newcastle, about 50 nm north. Since we have not sailed in two years it seemed prudent to take a short passage just to see if we remember what we are doing. It is like riding a bike, right?
We have our good friend Russ sailing with us. We met him when we first arrived in Australia in June 2019. Russ sailed the Sydney-Hobart race with us in 2019 and has sailed with us from Bundaberg south to Brisbane before the race. Could not ask for a better mate.
This is the first leg of a journey that will take us to Bundaberg, AU then on up the coast eventually to Thursday Island in the Torres Strait. From there, we will sail to Indonesia with a rally to facilitate all the government clearance processes and help with language. Indonesian is a difficult language to understand if you do not speak it, and from what we understand many Indonesians speak little English. The rally leaves July 5th.
I started this earlier today while we were underway, I am finishing it anchored in Newcastle, the largest port on the east coast of Australia. From what I have seen there is a steady stream of large bulk carriers coming and going. Coal is the big export.
The passage today was interesting. Leaving Broken Bay, which is at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River and has been subject to extensive flooding over the past couple of months. The ocean water was the color of tea, with lots of debris. It was many miles before the water started to look like the ocean. There were some fierce storms late last week, so the seas were about seven feet. Fortunately, once we got out of the river, we stopped slamming and simply rolled for about nine hours. The cat was sick but she recovered after a while and now that we are anchored, she is back to being a cat.
We may leave in the morning for Coffs Harbor, a lovely place about 190 miles from here. That will involve an overnight passage, so depending on the weather we may bail out at Port Macquarie, about half the distance. Stay tuned, now that we are back to sailing and have completed a journey half way around the world I will be posting as before.
More later……