Harwood Bridge

Going up the Clarence River, First a 11.00 bridge opening to catch. We made it with an hour to spare, so we anchored and had a cuppa.

I've found the grey nomads

and they're all here at the Iluka caravan park.

Bar Crossing at Iluka and Yamba

Some crossings are harder than others, can't wait to get into Qld waters, there aren't as many Bar Crossings to cross to get into a nice place to stay.

Left Coffs Harbour this morning at 3.30am, after saying goodbye to Peter, Jakehan and Christie. Early morning for all of us, but it was good to see them all.

Made good time, arrived at Iluka - Yamba  Bar Crossing at 1.45pm, we were Anchored and beer in hand by 2.30.

As you tell from the video Martin and I are still working well together, even when it looks a bit dicey.

Hope I downloaded this video properly and it works. I was using my photo camera, touched the button to change from photo to video without knowing. When I looked later I found 3 videos, this one shows how close we have to get to the rock wall at the Bar crossing.

Sunrise at Coffs Harbour

I took these three photos from the breakwall less than an hour ago.  From first to last there is just over a minute.

06:26:16

06:28:35

06:29:34

According to the weather forecasts when we leave tomorrow morning to go up to Yamba it should like pretty much like this or even flatter.

Coffs Harbor

View from the top of Mutton Bird island back over the marina in Coffs Harbour.  If you zoom in we're about dead centre of the marina (side on with a burgundy sail bag covering the mail sail.)

 

 

Cleaning the days catch

Klauss cleaning the fish and his very captive audience.

Good morning

Early start, left Trail Bay 3.00am

We have 4 more hours before we get into Coffs Harbor.

Trial Bay

Dropped anchor in Trail Bay at 1530. Great day motor sailing from Port Macquarie, we've done 37 miles in 7 hours. Swell was being is and we also had a south westerly of about 6 knots as well in the morning.
We'll eat early and get up before dawn to go to Coffs Harbour.

Last night in Port Macquarie

Heading off in the morning with the rising tide. Probably stay overnight in Trial Bay and then do an early start on Tuesday to Coffs Harbour.

Sydney Boat Show

Last week we looked at the weather we've been having up here in Port Macquarie and it hasn't been bad and we probably could've kept going up the coast last week but we decided we'd go to the boat show instead.
It's always nice to see what new things are available and we want a new VHF radio that has AIS built in so we took the train down to Sydney on Thursday and came back yesterday.
Stayed with Dave and Nat on Thursday and Friday night and spent the whole day walking around the boat show on Friday.  They're rebuilding the Sydney Convention Centre so they had the boats outside in Darling Harbour as per normal but we had to take a ferry to Glebe Island where they had all of the inside stuff in marquees.
As usual we saw things fitted to boats that look pretty good and this is an example that might make it's way on to our boat. So simple.

Didn't get the fixed VHF radio that I want but we now know where to get it from and which one to get.  We did however buy a handheld VHF which has a 10km range.  Always good to have  spare and most of the time we'll be within 10km from the coast anyway.