After several weeks of perfect weather and winds for sailing North, the weather has quite suddenly become very unsettled. We have a number of different weather forecasting sites which we use. Our friends Jonathan and Wendy Newbury had arrived yesterday and we had arranged to pick up Jane Hunt, a good friend of David's so we decided to at least go to the boat and see what the weather was doing. In the marina, which is quite sheltered, the wind was gusting over 20 knots, the forecast was for a swell of 3-5 meters so not looking very good. After much discussion we decided to make a run for Coffs Harbour as it seemed quite likely that things might be even worse in the coming few days. As it turned out, we had a great start to our journey. We filled Essex Girl with diesel and then left the marina at 3 pm. The sun was shining, the wind was gusty about 17 knots and the swell once out on the ocean was quite OK and coming from the south so not too uncomfortable. As we passed Broughton Island there was a large pod of dolphins. We had a beautiful sunset for our first night at sea and the moon came up a couple of hours later giving us a wonderful moonlit night. By morning we were off Port Macquarie. Late morning the wind died to 3-7 knots so we turned on the motor. We've made several attempts to sail as occasionally the strength rose to 10-11 knots but it didn't last long. We have just passed the 24 hour mark in which we covered 137 nm. Just south of Coffs we saw our first whales. They were between us and the coast, a mother and calf from last year. We seem to be doomed to sail with local currents against us. In this area the East Australian current comes in very close to the shoreline so we had 2 knots against us.
We are about 30 nm from Coffs where we shall stay the night and reasses the weather in the morning.
Sailing down the Bay.
Out through the Heads.
Amazing sunset.
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