The next leg to Eden was the challenging one. The first day was one single tack East, with a NNE wind at a steady 16 knots. Very unusual to have such fine and constant conditions. It was sunny, the sea sparkled, and it was just lovely. We skipped along at 7 knots and it was what the brochures call “champagne sailing”. We were waiting for and watching the developing front come through. We could see it all gathering on the horizon behind us and prepared inside and outside the boat for what we could see would be quite a front.

It came through at night time and brought strong winds and driving rain. Hard stuff to sail in and really difficult to manage the sails without the usual visual cues such as sail shape, wind direction, land marks. It was absolutely pitch black. We only had the headsail up but at 1am, with the wind shifting and waves building, the sail kept changing all over the place. We had decided to have two up on that watch, anticipating the change. All the action woke Dennis so he got up too. Just to add to the excitement, the AIS alarm went off to warn us that a ship had turned in front of us and was going to cross our intended path. We furled the headsail and turned on the motor until the gusts had stabilsed from a constant direction. It was all a good lesson about how to manage sails in the dark.

The next day was lumpy and stormy and the sailing difficult with cross-swells to the wind. We motored for a lot. Saw wonderful displays of whales and their young, quite close, and wandered around in circles having a look at their antics, trying not to get too close in case we bothered them. One whale kept rising out of the water, tail first, and slapping his tail on the water repeatedly. We took this as some sort of warning to keep away, so we did exactly that. Dolphins joined us also. It was spectacular!

“During the night we continued to motor, with lumpy seas, swell going across our beam, and not a lot of wind to enable us to sail well over the swells. But the moon created a white blanket over us, through the clouds, and at 4am it was a beautiful sight. I could see so clearly and thought about how glorious it was feeling like I was the only person awake at that moment anywhere on the east coast.

Dolphins joined us again for the two hours leading up to dawn.  The bright navigation lights lit them up as they played in the bow waves and so we had red and green dolphins dancing in front of us.” – Christine

We had slowed down in the last few hours in order to arrive at Eden in daylight.  The Marine Rescue people were already up and about and called us by name as we motored into Twofold Bay to welcome us to Eden and to offer any assistance we needed. They guided us to a fishing jetty where one of the locals living on his boat was waiting to take our lines.

It was a great welcome to the town and very typical of the friendly help that was extended to us everywhere – from the NSW Port Authority officer who welcomed us, gave us his mobile number and charged $5 per night, to the local supermarket staff who offered to drive us back to the boat and go via the laundromat to pick up our washing.

Dennis got his plane home to Melbourne on Friday morning. We were sad to see him go. He was such a great help and was always uplifting company. Having a third pair of hands was always welcome. As too were the wonderful meals prepared for us in advance by Gaye.

“Eden was beautiful. A fishing village, where people are very close and supportive. The weather was warm and I finally felt that the bone-chilling cold of Melbourne was being burned out of me.” - Christine

We stayed on the jetty until Saturday afternoon, then went to the other side of Twofold Bay (where Eden is) to get protection from a southerly front and thunderstorms coming through. Had a lovely afternoon fishing and getting the boat ready to leave at 5am the next day to head to Bermagui. Caught our first fish, a flathead, and we filleted it and had it for dinner that night. Wonderful storms came through, with lots of rain and thunder and lightning, and we were very protected. Felt safe and snug.

It was great to get to Refuge Cove at about 4pm on Saturday , not only because it’s such a beautiful place but it was also the end of a 32 hour sail from Docklands (25 hours from Port Phillip Heads).  Much of Wilson’s Promontory is still closed because of the flooding earlier in the year so the sense of peace and solitariness of the Cove is even more pronounced.  There was one other yacht there when we arrived and they soon came over to say hello and tell us that they were going ashore to find mobile phone coverage up on Kersops Peak. In the meantime we settled down to a quiet dinner and a well earned rest after our first overnight sail. We had tried out 3 hour watches which gave us 6 hours off with the 3 of us on board, but we felt that we would try shortening that to 2 hours each watch for the next leg.

When the crew of Serendipity(?) returned they came over to give us the weather report and let us know that they had put a large X on the track to indicate where we could expect  the best reception.  The next morning we got the dinghy inflated and went to find the X. Reception was still pretty dodgy but the walk was delightful.

From the hill it was great looking down on New Horizons looking like a photo from every tourist brochure you ever saw. We watched another yacht arrive and circle New Horizons and anchor nearby.  When we got back to the boat we learned that the new yacht was “Taffy” with Rob as the lone skipper circumnavigating Australia.

We moved New Horizons to the north side of the cove early in the morning of 13th as we were expecting northerly wind. It was a bit more rolly over on the north side which wasnt really a problem until Michael headed off up the mast to untangle a halyard on the staysail. It made climbing the mast at Docklands seem like a dream as he swung about like an insect in a spider web, collecting bruises but getting the halyard fixed.

 

We had a delightful couple of days getting ourselves organised and sorting out the boat.  We waited until Tuesday to leave, picking what we thought would be the best weather window for the 40+ hour trip to Eden. So when dawn broke on the 15th we headed out of the Cove and set course for Eden.

We had watched one storm come through Melbourne from the safety of our berth at Docklands and didn’t really want to face another one like that one.

Of course getting out of the river meant dodging a few of our larger friends but we certainly got used to that over the next week.

 It was a slow trip down the bay with light winds but that gave us a chance to farewell Rob who had motored out in Dalliance to give us a wave.

As it was, it was perfect timing and we headed down and out, turned left, and had the low and eventually disappearing sun behind us. We went into the night’s sailing with a little trepidation. We were sailing further south than we had hoped as the winds had stayed easterly longer than we had expected. We also knew we would encounter a number of ships coming towards us and we were relying on the AIS to give us adequate warning.

At dawn we were passing the Glennie Group off the Western side of Wilson’s Promontory and, apart from dodging some shipping we were doing well.  

A few hours later we were entering Refuge Cove. We were accompanied in by a pod of dolphins who came to play on our bow and we were still excited from our first whale sighting. A humpback breached 2 or 3 times about 150 metres off our starboard

side as we rounded the lighthouse at south East Point. Hard to believe that all this was happening. We still feel overawed at times with the reality of this new life.

It had started some years ago when we decided that the cruising life was for us. But that meant a new boat. Our beautiful 32 ft Ericson was a joy but we needed a bigger boat which would take us offshore cruising.

The first step was to get the new boat and that was New Horizons, a Cavalier 37 –  Thanks to Richard and Merren who reluctantly parted with her. New Horizons is a veteran of several  Sydney-Hobarts, including the infamous 1998 race. More importantly she had cruised the Pacific with Richard and Merren so she knows the way.

But then we added a few things, under the watchful eye of Richard who was generous with his advice and efforts. The sail inventory was expanded with a cutter rig with staysail and furler, new mainsail, new genoa, and reaching spinnaker on a furler. To the existing electonics we added a new chart plotter at the helm and an AIS to monitor shipping. This complemented the charting software on the Macs and a handheld GPS.

We replaced many of the halyards and sheets and added a boom brake to keep that under control.

Of course we couldnt get far without the dinghy and outboard and a crane to lower the outboard to the dinghy, as long as that didnt interfere with the BBQ which came with its extra gas bottle.

The new safety gear included the 6 person liferaft (why 6 I hear you cry??) the new EPIRB and 2 Personal Locator Beacons, 5 new lifejackets with tethers and harnesses and a floating handheld VHF radio.

The 3 house and 1 start battery were all replaced with AGM batteries and, to help with the power management, all the navigation lights were replaced with LEDs and so were the interior lights.

Then there was the upholstery and that was only the half of it; but it’s too disturbing to go on adding this up!

Hi Folks,

Welcome to our blog. We will use this to keep you in touch with what we are doing and how we are going.

We can post photos here so we will do that and we can add comments, but you can too. It will be fun sharing this with you and maybe you can give us some advice on how we might use this. If you are under 40 then by definition you’ll know more about it than we do.

In brief our plan is to make our way to Sydney where we will spend a couple of months cruising the local waterways including Pittwater, and then make our way North but coming back to Coffs Harbour in May. From there we will head for New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomons and the Louisiades before heading back to Cairns in October; but then that’s today’s plan and the whole idea of this is not to have a plan…….

Cheers

Michael and Christine