Sailing Trip Sydney to Coffs Harbour and Back
26 January 2016
Lorraine Bower
Leaving Sydney harbour, December 27, 2015
I had done a bit of sailing with Captain Bob. We had sailed down the coast to Jervis Bay. I had spent one tranquil night at sea returning from Broken Bay 16 nautical miles north of Sydney, but this two week trip from Sydney to Coffs Harbour and back was to be the longest by far that this novice sailor had undertaken.
The trip had been much anticipated by both of us. Bob was working industriously getting Diana, his 41ft ketch, in perfect working order. We’d carried dozens of bags of food, clothes and equipment down to the wharf at Balmain in Sydney and we were packed to the gunnels, with Bob complaining bitterly as always that I’d brought too much food and there was nowhere to put it all. With every nook and cranny loaded up with supplies, we spend the night of Boxing Day on the boat and finally sailed out through Sydney Heads on the morning of the 27th.
The prediction was for a nice 15-20 knot southerly pushing us along, and so it transpired. The winds were favourable but even so my predictable seasickness set in. All I could do was sit and sit in the cockpit and keep my eyes open. Closing my eyes made me more nauseous and going below decks was worse still. Around me Bob was a whirlwind of energy – alternatively resting for a moment and then launching into one job or another, checking, fixing small repairs, looking around, one hundred percent engaged and ready to tackle anything that came along. It’s his thorough approach, not to mention 55 years of boating experience, that is so reassuring when you are anticipating that long a journey.
Whenever we are at sea I’m always initially struck by what it means to be on this small boat in a big ocean –frail and vulnerable – with no ability to just walk off if things get difficult. Perhaps these thoughts are a function of seasickness which soon becomes a general malaise. I was wondering why on earth this trip had seemed like such a good idea just a day or two ago. Fortunately we spent the first night just five hours away at Broken Bay anchored in a sandy cove, where I had the chance to adjust and find my ‘sea legs’.
By the time we left for Newcastle the next morning the seasickness had abated and my mood had lightened. We sailed up the coast and came in to Newcastle harbour in the afternoon as part of a procession of 12 yachts all wanting the same thing we did – a safe mooring for the night. We had to wait outside the harbour for a massive coal ship gliding out the other way, then spent the evening and next morning tied up at the swish Newcastle Marina, exploring that part of the accessible and liveable city.
Newcastle to Trial Bay December 28-30, 2015
Newcastle is the biggest coal port in the world. Most of the industrial infrastructure is north of the river and while it is certainly a visible presence, on the south bank there are smart cafes and restaurants, walks and bicycle parks around the river front, a bit reminiscent of Melbourne’s South Bank. The modern marina itself has a restaurant and bar, hot showers and a laundry. One of the permanent residents even lent us his pass-card until we were able to get one of our own. We availed ourselves of all of this, and the thought of coming back for a night on the return trip was enticing.
We left Newcastle around midday the next day and sailed on one long tack up the Stockton Bight – a single beach that seems to go on forever. It was my first time alone at the helm, making small adjustments to the auto steering while bob had a sleep. After around 4 hours Stockton Bight was behind us, Bob had woken and the Port Stephens lighthouse came into view. I stared longingly at the tantalising entrance to beautiful Port Stephens. We couldn’t call in now but we made plans to stop there on the way back and visit some friends. We sailed around Broughton Island north of Port Stephens. It’s a wild and uninhabited place – really a small group of islands – but full of deep coves and some little beaches; an enticing stop on another trip, but not one Bob was prepared to tackle in a southerly. It was here that we saw our first pod of dolphins. They followed us for a while, slipping under and around the boat before heading off for more fun elsewhere. They really do lift the spirits, these companions on the journey, like a benevolent presence.
We headed north in now in failing light towards Seal Rocks with its many treacherous rock outcrops, and Bob took over the helm. Eventually I went below to sleep and woke at 1.30 to take over the watch until 5am. I was wrapped in a blanket, seemingly alone on the ocean, doing a bit of meditation and eventually witnessing the wonder of the first pink glow of morning in the eastern sky.
Trial Bay Dec 30 2015
The plan for the next day was to sail to Trial Bay and drop anchor there for the night. The southerly was still at our backs with blue skies and manageable swell. We eventually passed the perfect triangle of Hat Head and then Smoky Cape towards evening. My family holidayed in that area for most of the years that our children were growing up. It was very nostalgic and also exciting to see it from the same perspective that Captain Cook must have done when named the Cape after the fires of the aborigines on the hillside. Fish Rock, just south of the cape, is important habitat and a breeding ground for Grey Nurse sharks.
We passed the familiar Gap Beach, Little Bay, and the old Trial Bay goal on the hill that held so many prisoners from the 1870s onward, including German ‘aliens’ interred there during the first World War. There’s a monument there to those who died when they were interred. The reason for situating the prison there was to build a sea breakwater wall and a safe harbour at Trial Bay, but this was eventually abandoned along with the prison when they realised that the wall was never feasible, doomed to fail and the harbour had silted up. It’s now a sought after camping ground.
We pulled in there out of the southerly near South West Rocks, and spent a relaxed evening before heading out in the morning to our most northerly destination, Coffs Harbour.
Coffs Harbour Dec 31 2015 – Jan 3, 2016
We sailed into the afternoon until we spotted what we thought was Coffs. In our enthusiasm and with no regard for the trusty GPS we were almost at Sawtell by mistake and had to go back out to sea to reach Coffs, around 20 km to the north.
coffs-harbour
Coffs Harbour itself is fascinating. Mutton Bird Island on the northern side of the harbour entry is joined to the mainland by a sea wall, forming part of the marina. As I was later to discover, the Island is an important breeding ground for mutton birds, and you have to keep strictly to the walkway. It’s easy to see why, because there are holes dotted across the island where the birds nest. They are protected, but because the rock wall is now joined to the mainland they are subject to predation by foxes and rats.
The outer harbour offers some protection from southerly but little from easterly winds, and has a huge old wharf that held railway tracks and was once an important loading port for timber going to Sydney, and for the developing north coast area.
The marina, which has another sea wall and its own entrance from the outer harbour, is tricky to navigate and it was almost full on New Year’s Eve. Bob had called ahead and arranged a berth for three nights. When we arrived the office was closed and the berth allocated was too small to manoeuvre the boat into, so we tied up at the public wharf. Once again I failed the test of responding quickly to instructions when we berthed. We had to move the ropes to the other side of the boat, and I got confused about which ropes had to be moved. Bob had to both steer and run forward to sort out the ropes. A friendly man on the wharf helped with tying up the boat, leaving me feeling mortified at my clumsy seamanship.
There was nothing to do but get over it again, and we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the area, where preparations were underway for the New Year’s Eve celebrations. We had a relaxing shower at the yacht club, had dinner on-board and later walked down to the beach to the sight of families and couples laying out their picnic blankets and kids of all ages running around excitedly in groups brandishing fluorescent tubes. The children here were all well behaved, even the very young ones, and we never heard a child crying. Bob’s theory is that the parents are generally younger in the regional centres so the kids are more ‘naturally’ brought up and less likely to be neurotic. I can certainly think of a few parents who would strongly disagree with that notion.
The wharf was closed for the fireworks being set up there, and the Fun Fair behind the beach was just getting into gear for the night. After dark it was in full swing and packed out – a multicultural affair with people of Indian heritage from Woolgoolga and a number of beautiful second generation Sudanese with very ocker accents, as well as any number of other nationalities represented. There were all the predictable rides including dodgem cars, prizes for hitting targets and the scariest ride I’ve ever seen which spun the riders around on a huge mechanical arm 50 feet in the air. The 9.30 fireworks were a mini Sydney display and were much appreciated by the crowd, with oohing and aahing at every rocket sent up. We headed up to the café strip for ice creams then back to bed by 11.00.
I spent the next two days reading, showering, swimming at the exhilarating north beach, and generally walking around with the scenic green hills of Coffs as a backdrop. Bob tinkered about on the boat for much of the time, and introduced me to the area he had lived in for a couple of years. On the final day we washed and dried some clothes in the laundromat and had our last meal of fish and chips from the fisherman’s co-op. We ordered battered whiting which came in a box of around 20 fillets – the biggest serving of fish for two I’d ever seen but seemingly the standard serve. It required much serious gorging to rise to the task of finishing that lot, but we did.
We had to leave the next morning (3rd Jan) because the marina was booked out by boats entered in the Pittwater to Coffs race. Everything seemed in order. Bob had walked 4 kilometres carrying 10 litres of fuel back from a petrol station, only to remember that fuel was available at the wharf.
The forecast was for continuing 15-20 knot southerly winds for the 3rd, changing to a strong easterly starting at midday on the 4th. We were concerned about the easterly which carried a strong wind warning, but Bob wanted to take advantage of the easterly winds that were going to get us south more quickly, and we decided to sail straight through to Broken Bay north of Sydney as fast as we could without stopping. We wanted to get south of Port Macquarie before the easterly hit, because it looked on the satellite weather chart to be the epicentre of the heavy rain predicted. My heart sank at the thought such a long sea trip but I understood the rationale and agreed.
Heading South from Coffs Jan 3-4 2016
When we left Coffs I was given the task of pushing the bow off the wharf while Bob reversed the boat, but I did not go far enough forward and the rail around the bowsprit took quite a knocking on the wharf piers as the boat swung around. Fortunately there was no real damage, except to my already battered self-esteem.
The first day was very slow going. We were butting up against the southerly with Bob tacking often. There’s not much to do on days like this. It’s impossible to read or write or use a computer when the boat is rocking, and boredom can set in. Bob is constantly making decisions, bringing the boat around and changing the sail angle, as well as keeping everything humming, but for me, there isn’t much to keep my mind occupied. I knew what I had signed on for, so I accepted my situation graciously, but yearned for more to do and a chance to develop more sailing competence.
There were always things to see though. The entrants in the Pittwater to Coffs race were coming north in patches so there were boats to be discussed, evaluated and counted. The water and sky are constantly changing. Shearwaters are everywhere and in large numbers, dive bombing and gracefully riding the air currents above the waves. Sometimes they would sit about on the water together, moving with the waves like a cluster of small dark brown buoys. They reminded me of a group of friends sitting gracefully on the ground chatting. Once Bob picked up a long black shiny object from the deck at dawn and we realised it was a flying fish that had taken a leap in the wrong direction.
One area where I did feel at ease was in the galley. I’d spent a lot of time planning the provisioning and looking up recipes that did not require much fresh food, which is a problem with a small fridge that we can’t always run because it takes a lot of battery power. I’d decided on things like nachos, vegetarian pasta and vegie curries, and it all went pretty much to plan. I’d done some cooking in Coffs to give us a few meals ahead. Not much was wasted in the end and by the time we arrived at Broken Bay there were still enough ingredients left for several meals.
But back to the home voyage. It’s one thing to have a southerly at your back as we did on the way up and quite another to be fighting against one. After a fairly uneventful night on the 3rd, progress was almost non-existent on the 4th as well. It seemed to take forever to get past Smoky Cape and Fish Rock going south. The wind started swinging around randomly so that Bob couldn’t find a decent angle for the headsail. At one point we were spun around 360 degrees. After a frustrating morning we thought that it probably would have been faster to take down the sails and just motor in a straight line.
We kept waiting for the easterly to appear and reading signs that it was approaching into the distant colour changes in the sky. It was raining lightly and there was more heavy rain coming. The easterly finally appeared in the mid- afternoon. It began slowly, swinging round from the south east to the east, with a mild wind that gradually strengthened, and strengthened. As the old saying goes, ‘be careful of what you wish for’.
Bob went to lie down for a couple of hours, having given me the instruction to take the boat out further to sea as soon as possible. I had the navigation system on close up so I could make sure that we didn’t run into any submerged shoals or rocks, when I finally zoomed out and saw to my horror the huge land mass of Cape Hawke jutting out to the east. We were less than 20 minutes away on a ‘lee shore’ – with the boat between the strong wind source and the shore. I changed direction, but too slowly because of the sail angle and finally realised that we were travelling fast towards this massive cape and were not going to make it around safely.
Cape Hawke to Seal Rocks Jan 4 2016
I called Bob and his immediate reaction was that we were in serious trouble and should have gone further out much earlier. He started the engine, turned directly east into a 30 knot wind with the engine barely powerful enough to overcome the elements and our speed dropping down to little over a knot. The southerly current was driving us toward the cape. Bob pulled in the headsail. The waves by this time were 3 -4 metres, and it was raining heavily. We kept heading east and crashing into the oncoming waves for around 30 minutes until we finally saw the shape of the next headland before turning south. By this time it was getting dark, and as we moved across the black brooding bulk of Cape Hawke with waves smashing against the rocks the boat kept being pulled or pushed sideways towards it. At one stage we thought we wouldn’t make it, but by then we had no other plan than just to keep the motor running hard and keep going. It seemed to take forever to get past the Cape through these big seas and the roaring easterly, and the Cape kept moving towards us, but eventually we did shave past it after four hours of relentless effort from the captain and the engine.
I had prayed to the universe that the engine would not fail. I imagined the moments before drowning after hitting the water or being smashed on the rocks and decided that this was definitely not the end I wanted. My body was aching from grasping the rails and bracing against the crashing waves while Bob tackled the real work of getting us out of danger. Having a pod of dolphins accompanying us around the Cape was probably coincidental, but to my terrified mind they were good omens urging us on and letting us know we would get through this.
As darkness overtook us, we were clear of the Cape, but still not far enough out to cleanly get around the next hurdles – a further three headlands followed by the hazardous Seal Rocks, surrounded by reefs – with the roaring easterly pushing us towards the shore. It was pitch black by this time, the wind was howling and the seas were getting even fiercer. Water was crashing over the bow and the occasional double wave was dumping a curving wall of green water into the cockpit. We had scheduled to call marine rescue to give our position at ten o’clock – the precise time Bob was negotiating our way around Seal Rocks, so we simply relayed the message that we would call back later.
Bob had been at the helm for six hours from the time I called him up from his sleep. He was wet from head to toe, trying to keep the boat on course. The boat leaned so far to starboard as we hit the larger waves that I was convinced we would be knocked down at any time. It seemed that if we did not get knocked down, the boat would fill with water from the waves pouring over the cockpit and we’d sink, or more logically that we’d be pushed onto the rocks.
My mind kept wandering between terror and strange thoughts. I imagined the news report that a couple – an elderly couple – had perished at sea. I imagined that people, including our friends and relatives, would be nodding their heads sagely saying – ‘what were they thinking? He’s 70 and she’s 67 – of course this was going to happen!’ ‘What would have possessed them to go out there in dangerous conditions when they could have stayed in Sydney harbour like sensible old people and done a bit of easy sailing?’ they would say. The embarrassment and shame of it all kept me focused and determined that we would make it through.
After Seal Rocks Jan 4- 5 2015
The wind and waves were at their most ferocious coming around Seal Rocks, but eventually we got round and we turned south west so the wind was mostly at our backs and the going became easier, with the bulk of the waves now rolling under our stern. Easier is a relative term of course. We were still heeling very far to starboard with the easterly wind slamming large waves into the boat, continuing to threaten a knockdown. The old Formosa was roaring along doing over 7-8 knots consistently and sometimes topping 9 knots – at the absolute limit of what she was built to do. The bow was occasionally hitting waves with such force that the whole boat shuddered and I wondered what it would take for Diana to start breaking up. I put that thought out of mind and perhaps because of sheer exhaustion I went out of the wind down below where it was a bit quieter and drifted off to sleep for a while with a pillow wedged between the edge of the bunk and my ribcage.
Bob was transported with delight, now that – according to him – we were out of danger. With a huge smile, shining eyes and shiny face wet with rain, he relished the experience of his slow old 13 tonne ketch tearing down the coast like she was a racing yacht.
I took over watch at 2.15 and sat under the dodger because the boat was rocking so much that I didn’t trust myself to make the three or four step journey to the helmsman’s chair, even with a safety line on. It was an easy watch because we were far enough out to avoid any reefs and shoals and there were no big changes to the coastline direction for the next 70 nautical miles (120km). The trusty autopilot kept us on course but even it sometimes fails so needs a watchful eye. Every time I looked around the wheel was making its little adjustments with reassuring creaks. It had been a very reliable crew member.
I tried to see the coastline and looked for lights from towns to the west. Occasionally I thought I could see a light lume from a town in the distance – a gauge that we were on course. I kept looking for Newcastle lighthouse and thought I saw the light flicking on and off in the distance. To the east were coal ships parked out in the ocean waiting to come in to Newcastle port. They were well lit up and a much more reliable gauge of our course, although disconcertingly as we rolled to the left we’d lose the lights, so that they appeared to be blinking like a lighthouse – a very disorienting phenomenon.
Bob earlier had a message come over the AIS (radio positioning system of other ships) that we were on a collision course with a container ship. Desperately searching, he saw a ship around 2 km away off the port bow and realised that the ‘bomb’ signal that appeared on the screen would come up if we were within a 2km radius. There can also be a delay on the signal in some areas, so that it could also warn of a collision when we’d already moved on. In the blackness though, it took a bit of courage for him to cancel the warning.
We’d both had friends who wanted to see us in Port Stephens and the earlier plan was to get in there for a few days – a barbeque was mooted – but pulling into any port with the fierce easterly blowing was out of the question and we kept going. At this time a barbeque in a gentle port seemed like something from another reality. I longed to be back in Newcastle harbour too but it would have been impossible to get in there.
Finally at 5am I called Bob to take over. The aches that I’d ignored or not even been aware of in my shoulders, arms and back from the Cape Hawke ‘crossing’ were now apparent. I’d banged almost every part of my body on something. I later counted ten bruises on my left leg alone, but the bruise on my lower back where I’d whacked my pelvic bone was now hurting the most and I was glad to be lying down for a while. I woke to find we were about 6 hours from Broken Bay where we planned to hole up for a day or so, see what had happened to Diana and lick our wounds. Bob’s right hand had swollen from overuse and he had blackened a nail where he’d got his left thumb caught between the winch and the rope. His knees were aching from scrambling around the cockpit changing the sails.
Safe at Broken Bay Jan 6-7 2016
We’d heard from another yacht over the Volunteer Marine Rescue (VMR) radio that the crossing into Broken Bay was rough, but when we got there the wind had calmed down and the crossing was relatively easy. This was fortuitous, because as we were approaching the heads the motor, which had kept us going when needed throughout the trip and saved our lives at Cape Hawke, broke down.
I steered the boat in towards Lion Island while Bob scrambled around frantically looking for the problem. After about half an hour he called VRM Sydney to let them know that we were in Broken Bay, broken down, and that he’d keep trying to fix the problem and send for them if needed, but they sent a rescue boat over anyway. Bob fortunately had just got the motor going. The problem was water in the fuel tank – both filter bowls were full of water instead of fuel. He’d never seen that happen before and once he took off the water we were underway. Amazingly the filters must have had water in them when we were crossing Cape Hawke but the engine kept going.
The VRM went ahead and let us know that there were moorings in Refuge Bay and that is where we are now. It’s raining still but beautifully calm here. We are relishing the amazing feeling of being able to walk around without hanging on to hand rails and bracing, boil a kettle for tea, sleep for a whole 8 hours and eat something substantial. For the past day and a half, we’d grabbed dry biscuits, hard boiled eggs and carrot sticks just to keep up our energy. It is still raining now and the captain’s cabin is wet from a leak in the porthole but there are no serious leaks to report. The mainsail was ripped and will have to be replaced, the canvas over the cockpit is badly ripped and there are various other small repairs to be done. The dinghy had filled with water but the davits did not break.
We’re playing some CDs – Bob Dylan of course. I’m practicing guitar and writing this blog. I like it here in our little capsule. It is life in miniature, and just for now, it is enough. I’ll go home by bus tomorrow from Palm Beach and Bob will stay, get some things fixed and when conditions at sea are calmer, he will sail south to Sydney harbour. It’s been a huge two weeks. We’ve come through it with the aid of Bob’s 55 years of experience on boats, a good measure of luck and Diana, the lovely old ketch who proved herself pretty tough in the most difficult conditions I at least can imagine.
Debrief
Our two accounts of the past 36 hours differ markedly. Bob places the emphasis on the exhilaration of letting Diana run before the wind all night after rounding Seal Rocks, at an average of 7-8 knots, with just the headsail partly unfurled in 30 knot winds. I’m left with the memory of our last night at sea, from early afternoon when the wind changed from light southerly to easterly, culminating in one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.
We did a bit of a debrief on that journey through hell. We agreed that Bob’s experience and skill as a seaman very likely saved our lives and definitely saved the boat. I was just too inexperienced to be navigating that course and our predicament at Cape Hawke and then Seal Rocks was caused by my mistake, certainly a mistake I will never repeat.
On the other hand, I think we both made the mistake that Bob has often said was the primary reason people get into trouble at sea – that of putting our own agenda in front of the sea and the wind. We had to leave Coffs marina on the 3rd but could have stayed in the outer harbour and then assessed the situation as conditions changed. Maybe we could have got another berth later or gone to Trial Bay and monitored the conditions then. I wanted to get home in time for my son’s birthday, but my presence was not imperative. Bob wanted those fast easterly winds to make some distance, but we should have heeded the warning that there would be winds of 30 knots.
As it turned out, Bob did have a plan B when we were rounding Cape Hawke. He had decided that if we got close enough to the rocks he would abandon Diana and we would take our chances in the dinghy, which would be more maneuverable, and hope that the outboard motor started. Not a comforting thought either way.
I would not want to be at sea in those conditions again, although I don’t think Bob shares my reservations. His travel diary of our trip would undoubtedly be somewhat different to mine.
Postscript
We heard at Broken Bay that sadly a yachtsman from one of the boats returning from the Pittwater to Coffs race was swept overboard by a wave near Port Stephens and is presumed drowned.
POSTSCRIPT FROM SKIPPER BOB
Diana and I have had many adventures during the nine years we’ve been together, including a voyage to Lord Howe (around 800klm offshore,) and extensive trips up and down the east coast of Oz. In her youth she was sailed out to Australia from Canada under mysterious circumstances, believed to be a drug run! This is the first time a blog has been kept about one of her voyages.
I’ve owned a number of sailing boats, including a very competitive 26’ ‘Folkboat in which I (and crew) won the NSW State Championship one year and were runner up during other years. Diana was not designed or built to win races. She is a solid, high-sided, long-keeled 12.5m ketch weighing a hefty thirteen tonnes with a maximum hull speed of around 9 knots (15klm/hour) which is frighteningly fast with a high wind powering her through ferocious waves. She is an ocean cruiser, with comfort and safety a priority.
I never felt the wind alone was the big danger for us, it was the combination of very strong gusts (probably @ 35-40 knots, just below ‘Gale force’) and the 4m waves producing the occasional rogue where two waves doubled up at over 5m which swept over our deck and through the cockpit.
Looking back now, the decision to leave Coffs and head south using an easterly wind was fine, even though it was forecast to blow at up to 30 knots at times (50klm/hour.) The comment from the radio operator at Coffs Marine Rescue Centre when we logged onto their watch system was “there’s a strong wind warning but looking down at your boat in the harbor, you’ll have no worries.”
My main mistake was handing over to Lorraine and going below for a nap without zooming the GPS screen out to see beyond our immediate 10 nautical mile trajectory. I guess being around 3 miles offshore lulled me into thinking we were well clear of upcoming headlands, as we had been.
As it was, when Lorraine woke me over an hour later to announce that Cape Hawke was visible ahead through the mist and rain, my heart froze because I realised that with the easterly now blowing much stronger over our port side, (and a rock shore on our starboard side) and the waves developing, we’d have to go about and start tacking (zigzagging) into the rising conditions – which we did immediately. However, with the southerly current that runs down the east coast, we were being swept towards Cape Hawke faster than we were tacking out to sea, even with the engine going. I made the decision to drop the sails, point the bow directly east and take the engine up to absolute max revolutions and try and power our thirteen tonnes out through the now cresting waves and very strong winds. Maximum revs can only be maintained for a limited time before the diesel engine begins overheating and losing power but we gradually started pulling ahead (at a meagre 1.8 knots, ie, about 3klm an hour) and after half an agonizing hour, we were able to incrementally swing south and shave past the cape and watch the huge waves crash up against the rocks. With the wind now at a more favourable angle I raised a small storm headsail and eased back the engine and we were on our way again, although with another three capes to pass followed by Seal Rocks, it was still a battle to sail the boat to windward to stay a (reasonably) safe distance from the very inhospitable shoreline of those parts. By now the wind was blowing just below gale force, the waves were very big and it was raining heavily.
Four hours and some twenty anxious miles later, we passed Seal Rocks at 10pm. At this point the coast abruptly turns southwest, and with the increasingly stronger wind and waves now coming in from almost behind us, we roared off into the night at maximum hull speed, plotting a course that gradually took us many miles offshore and well away from rocky danger as we made a beeline for the safety of Broken Bay, 95 nautical miles (150klm) ahead.
The following day we heard about the six racing yachts returning from Coffs that had all put out Mayday distress calls in the Seal Rocks/Port Stephens area. One boat had the helmsman washed overboard and drowned, another washed up on a beach and the others had to be towed into P Stephens by water Police and Marine Rescue vessels. Keeping in mind that all those yachts were fully crewed and equipped with state-of-art gear, it shows what a fine ocean-going yacht Diana is.
The ‘strongwind warning’ the Bureau of Meteorology had predicted of up to max 30 knots (but mainly 20 knots which is just ‘boisterous’) had developed into a dreaded ‘East Coast Low.’
As a final note, it is inconceivable that the helmsman who was washed overboard was not tethered on with a safety harness. This is a fundamental and neither Lorraine nor I ever left the cabin without hooking on.
Congratulations to Lorraine who didn’t fall in a heap on her first storm experience but kept her nerve and rose to every task and challenge with composure.
Search for sailor lost off yacht near Broughton Island …
www.theherald.com.au/…/search-for-sailor-lost-off-yacht-near-broughton-i.