Marg's ribs felt a little better, most of the bruising had gone down, so it was time to continue North. Motoring, not sailing. Her ribs weren't that good! We left Coffs marina around 11oo on Monday with a nav plan of 27hrs till the Tweed River. The wind was still from the SE at 10kts and the swell was 1-1.5 from the south. Pretty good conditions. We expected to be abeam Yamba at roughly 2200hrs.
Jacki and Ruby were tethered upstairs in the wheelhouse, Pearl took up her position on the saloon couch and Idge settled in the v-berth. Lots of shoals around the Solitary Islands gave us a rough ride. More than pretty rough...AK was at the helm and had to hang on to avoid falling over. The fridge door sprung open and disgorged its contents. Pearl thought all her dreams had come true...but she couldn't get her balance to fossick. We contemplated heading back to Coffs but after giving ourselves and the sea time, things settled and we continued North.
After a few hours we realised that the water pump was continuously whirring...what the? The hot water tank was heating up and then emptying through the overflow pipe. First time its happened. 700 litres of water (our entire fresh water tank) was discharged into the bilge...yikes. After a brief discussion AK disappeared into the engine room to attempt to remember (always difficult in a stressful situation) how to stop the fresh water engine cooling system diverting to the hot water tank. The brain whirred in unison with the water pump...this valve and that. Done. Better pull the fuse on the pump before it burns itself out. Done. Bloody hell, what else can go wrong!
Night fell, we were joined by many dolphins at dusk, always a reassuring sight. Our nav plan had us travelling at 15nm offshore. Although we have radar, GPS and do our chart work, we remain cautious of the coast at night, as well as fishing nets which are impossible to see in the dark.
We decided as this leg was giving our stress levels a shake up, whoever wasn't on watch would nap in the wheelhouse rather than downstairs. What else could go wrong? Well we could get stuck in the East Coast Current, which we had read wasn't strong on this part of the coast. Guess it's all relative, but I'd call 3-4 kts pretty strong. At times we were doing less than 1kt...but at least we weren't going backwards! And we had company...a tanker was starboard for the entire trip!
Marg trawled this trip and caught a mahi mahi. A flying fish managed to "fly" through the open wheelhouse window...what amazing creatures. Their fins really do look like wings. We found another on the deck at first light.
Just before dawn we decided to call it a hard leg and enter the Clarence River to head for Yamba. Contacted Yamba/Iluka VMR to get a bar report, who were informative. "Gee the sea looks rough, but I guess you'd know that....the bar is calm!" Calm it was, but the river is confusing. Again VMR assisted by giving us directions to Yamba. We also had to stop and get a fisherman to point us in the right direction!
We decided to head for the marina, even though there are great spots for anchoring, as we didn't have any water and we were exhausted. We remembered a bloke who was moored near us in Drummoyne saying to be careful when we navigated the Clarence to Yamba as he had got wedged on a sandbank in the shallow water. Remembering this we both looked at the depth sounder to see that we had 0.1m under our keel. Marg swung the wheel and she managed to avoid the sand. Hallelujah.
The marina allocated us a berth that was reasonably easy to navigate in to. After tying up we fell gratefully into bed. What a trip! 25hrs to Yamba.
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