What-amazing Wattamolla – what can I say – we sailed past lovely sandstone cliffs just south of Port Hacking, zigzagged our way into this very sheltered bay, dropped our anchor and swam ashore. The beach was fairly crowded and the lagoon with waterfall cascading into it was more so – apparently the road is closed with a “FULL” sign at times, we lazed in the warm waters of the lagoon and watched as scores of young (and not so young) jumped from the rock ledge into the waters below.
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| Anchored in Wattamolla |
Wednesday morning the fog, or ‘sea-mist’ as the nice
gentleman on the radio called it, was so thick visibility was reduced to about 1
nautical mile as we made our way down to Wollongong, luckily it lifted by 11am
and we were on the public mooring in Wollongong behind Bruce’s boat Shellac, by
lunchtime.
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| A look over Wollongong from Mt Kiera - Jamie and Bruce |
Bruce was coming to Tasmania with us, so in the morning we sailed out in a perfect 10-20knot north-easterly anchoring in Jervis Bay by 430pm. The benign conditions we anchored in were not to last however, and by 8pm we had amazing lightening, wind all over the place as we watched a monohull nearby drag its anchor before they abandoned this anchorage for more shelter elsewhere. By 1030pm, convinced our anchor was going to hold, we settled in to bed.
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| An incredible light show courtesy of mother nature in Jervis Bay |
Moruya River was our next port of call, and here we stayed
for the weekend with the float planes entertaining us taking off and landing in
the river right next to where we were anchored. We went to the Saturday
markets, visited the historical society museum and had lunch at the bowls club.
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| The calm waters of Moruya River |
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| Float planes landing and taking off, close enough to see the expressions on the faces inside!! |
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| Basking seals at Montague Island |
The seabed around Montague is big round rocks, which made
dropping the anchor a little risky – not only could we maybe not catch and hold
but also there was the potential we could get it stuck under one of the large
boulders and then what would we do??? None of us either keen or able to free
dive down the 12 metres to free it should that happen – which situation did not
eventuate luckily, and we had a good night raising the anchor at 6.15 Tuesday
morning arriving in Eden just after lunch. Jamie and I walked to town for a
look around and a few groceries, stopping to chat with Kevin and Mei (Whisper
HR) who we had met down in Fulaga (Fiji).
We didn’t stay in Eden, preferring to go a little further south to Bittangabee Creek, another cool anchorage, really well sheltered where we spent two nights, walking on the Wednesday to Green Cape Light – about 15km round trip, generally resting up before the crossing to Tasmania the next day. The lighthouse at Cape Green, the southernmost lighthouse in New South Wales and the first to be built from concrete, took three years to build and was completed in 1883. The lighthouse, however did not prevent the paddle steamer “Ly-ee-Moon” crashing into the rocks at full speed on a clear night in 1886, with the loss of 71 lives – the cause of the wreck remains a mystery.
At 0600 on Thursday 24th January we left Bittangabee, N.S.W., for Tasmania.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but we experienced everything except rain on this trip!!
We started out with the mainsail and the jib but in a couple of hours we swapped the jib for the screecher and sailed along averaging a bit over 7 knots boat speed. We even had a burst of sunshine in the early afternoon on a day which had been fairly grey and cool. However, by 3.30pm we dropped the screecher and put two reefs in the main as the wind got up around the 25-30 knot mark, and of course gusting more. Then, by 8pm we had taken down the mainsail and reduced the amount of headsail (jib) to just ¾ and although the winds were stronger, SOL was now much more settled. This continued all night, with winds constantly hanging around the 25-35 knots until 4.30am when even the reefed jib we had up was too much sail for the conditions, so it was time to get that down and just pull up the stormsail. This was a more wild passage than our trip across the Tasman last year!! During the two days we had waves that Bruce estimated to be up around 6-8metres, winds from below 10 to over 35 knots, used all our sails – reefed and unreefed at different times – they do say ‘treat Bass Strait with respect’ – and it’s true.
We didn’t stay in Eden, preferring to go a little further south to Bittangabee Creek, another cool anchorage, really well sheltered where we spent two nights, walking on the Wednesday to Green Cape Light – about 15km round trip, generally resting up before the crossing to Tasmania the next day. The lighthouse at Cape Green, the southernmost lighthouse in New South Wales and the first to be built from concrete, took three years to build and was completed in 1883. The lighthouse, however did not prevent the paddle steamer “Ly-ee-Moon” crashing into the rocks at full speed on a clear night in 1886, with the loss of 71 lives – the cause of the wreck remains a mystery.
At 0600 on Thursday 24th January we left Bittangabee, N.S.W., for Tasmania.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but we experienced everything except rain on this trip!!
We started out with the mainsail and the jib but in a couple of hours we swapped the jib for the screecher and sailed along averaging a bit over 7 knots boat speed. We even had a burst of sunshine in the early afternoon on a day which had been fairly grey and cool. However, by 3.30pm we dropped the screecher and put two reefs in the main as the wind got up around the 25-30 knot mark, and of course gusting more. Then, by 8pm we had taken down the mainsail and reduced the amount of headsail (jib) to just ¾ and although the winds were stronger, SOL was now much more settled. This continued all night, with winds constantly hanging around the 25-35 knots until 4.30am when even the reefed jib we had up was too much sail for the conditions, so it was time to get that down and just pull up the stormsail. This was a more wild passage than our trip across the Tasman last year!! During the two days we had waves that Bruce estimated to be up around 6-8metres, winds from below 10 to over 35 knots, used all our sails – reefed and unreefed at different times – they do say ‘treat Bass Strait with respect’ – and it’s true.
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