Goodbye Iluka - Yamba

Well we have left the Clarence River, tonight we will anchor in Byron Bay ETA 1700hrs.

In a couple of days we will finally be in the Gold Coast, our home for the next month :-)

!@#$% weather

Darn weather can't make up it's mind.  Yesterday we went for a walk about a quarter way along the breakwater wall.  Took a video which I'll upload later that shows how rough it was.  Forecast was for 22 knots from the south and it came in about 2pm.  With the forecast for the next week showing combinations of wind over 20 knots and swell up to 3.6 metres we have decided to come in to the marina at Yamba and stay on the dock.
We came over here at 6 this morning and the breeze has dropped right off to less than 5 knots and the water is like glass.  Anyway, we're here for a week now.

And the weather window closes ...

So the hope was to be leaving Yamba / Iluka early on Tuesday morning and staying in front of a 15 knot southerly with 2.5m swell heading up to the Gold Coast arriving Wednesday midday ish.
Anyway looks like it's coming through a bit earlier and  by the time we get to Byron Bay it will have caught up with us. We'd be running with a 3m southerly swell up to the border at least but it should have died down to 1.5m by the time we get to the Gold Coast.  I guess at least it would be behind us.  We'll still go under the Harwood bridge tomorrow just in case the forecast changes again but at this stage we'll be here another week or so. The arrows show wind strength and direction while the shaed blue shows the swell height.

And the swell direction and height

Grafton

Well, that was a disappointment.
All of the reading material we have indicated that there are overhead cables just before we get to Grafton but they are 21 metres or 19 metres above the waterline depending on which side of Elizabeth Island you go.  Not a problem, we'll fit in easily.  When we get there there are signs on both sides of Elizabeth Island saying that the maximum height of all vessels is 17 metres.
A quick check of our book and our DWL (Design Water Line) is 18.8 metres and then we would add the VHF antennae on top of that.
Very disappointing but we anchored short of the cables and took the dinghy in to Grafton.
Wow, that was a long way!  Full tank of fuel in the outboard and it took us 25 minutes to get there with the tide going our way as well.  We wandered around for a while, minimal shopping and changed my Telstra WiFi device and then came back (when the tide had changed around).
Well, we didn't even make it back to the boat before we ran out of fuel. Fortunately it wasn't too far to row but I checked afterwards. About 4 nm or 7kms round trip.

Anyway, we decided that we'd head back to Ulmarra this morning and then catch the bus in to Grafton to do enough shopping for 5 days which hopefully will get us to the Gold Coast. Plan at this stage is to leave very early Tuesday morning, stay for 12 hours or so at Byron Bay and then up to the Gold Coast very early Wednesday morning.
Bus trip was pretty expensive, $25.60 for the two of us return to Grafton.  I'm sure we were the only two full paying passengers and it was probably the same price regardless of if you went from Yamba or Ulmarra which is the last stop.  By road it's only 14kms to Grafton so it probably would have been just as cheap to take a taxi.
Overall the trip up the river has been a nice diversion from the usual on the coast.

On the public pontoon at Cowper

Stumbled on this by accident. Apparently a joint funded initiative by NSW maritime and Clarence Valley Council they have one here, another in Grafton (on the other side of the bridge and power lines so we can't get to it), one at Ulmarra and another at Harwood. Very nice and this evening we'll walk across the bridge and have dinner at the pub.

Clarence River

Tried to get a photo to show how wide some of the river can get, but I had to take 2, photos really don't show it well.

Dad these photos I took after I talked to you, as promised. Love you Belinda

Picking a weather window

A few factors that we consider when working out when we're leaving a place and going to the next.

• Wind
• Swell
• Tide
• at the leaving location
• How far it is
• How fast do I think we'll be able to go
• Wind
• Swell
• Tide
• At the arriving location

For example when we're going to leave Yamba and go up to the Gold Coast seaway I'll be looking mainly at these pages.

Yamba Wind

Yamba Swell

Yamba Tides

Byron Bay Wind

Byron Bay Swell

Gold Coast Wind

Gold Coast Swell

Gold Coast Tides

BothYamba and the Gold Coast have a bar that we need to cross and so does then ideally we'll go across the bar during the third hour of the rising tide.  In this way the swell coming in and the tide coming in are both going in the same direction and the water should be flatter.
What I'm looking for when we leave here is ALL of the following:

1. A Yamba tide going from low to high and leave 3 hours after the low
2. Swell less than 1.5 meters and ideally from the south or south east and dropping lower still
3. Wind anywhere from the west through to the south east but less than 15 knots
4. Swell in Byron Bay later that day / night (about 10 hours later) to be roughly south and down around 1.2 metres
5. Byron Bay wind to be less than 10 knots overnight (so we can get 6 - 12 hours rest)
6. Gold Coast wind to be less than 15 knots (about 8 - 10 hours after we leave Byron Bay)
7. Gold Coast swell to be less than 1.5 metres
8. Gold Coast tide to be going from low to high and we need to arrive 3 hours after the low

Yamba to Byron Bay is about 50 nautical miles so that'll take us about 10 hours and Byron Bay to the Gold Coast is about 40 nautical miles so that will take about 8 hours.  The good part of stopping over at Byron Bay is that it's what they call 'open roadstead' which means that it's open to the ocean.  No bars to cross and therefore no tides to worry about but it does mean we need better weather.

Maclean

Anchored near Maclean, we'll have a look around town tomorrow or on our way back down the river.

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.