TinCanBay Melb Coffs

On Saturday 28th May I parked Shanti in the marina at Tin Can Bay and flew back to Melbourne to see family & friends & help celebrate my grandson Felix's 2nd birthday. 

From there I flew back to Coffs Harbour to help a friend sail his boat up the coast to Southport.

It was raining heavily when I arrived & one of those nasty east Coast lows was forming. It was like stepping into a war zone.

Not long after getting on board police closed off access to the Marina. 

The next 3 days were intense with very little rest.

Huge waves were crashing over the northern rock wall, most of them above the 30' high lamp posts. Forty ton concrete blocks were being hurled over like missiles, smashing the walkways and closing off any access to or from docks. A trimaran was impaled on the broken pontoons and smashed. 

Despite the torrential rain it was necessary to be out in it, as pontoons broke away and tipped upside down, threatening to hole boats with their barnacle encrusted concrete undersides.

It was up to the boat owners who stayed aboard to protect their boats by righting pontoons and tying the dock together. Only the piles provided some secure points to lash boats and dock to. The power posts sank and power leads had to be cut from them, giving one man a bit of a shock.

Another man jumped from his boat and collapsed on the dock, where he lay in the rain for quite some time before a dinghy could transport him to an ambulance.

It was surprising there weren't more casualties. 

 

The aftermath. Concrete pontoons broken up.

Even after the wind had abated, high seas continued to pound the breakwater for the next few days, wreaking further havoc. Most of the individual fingers broke loose and had to be towed away; the undulating central walkways sheered into angular tangents. One brave boat owner dived underneath the concrete floats, passing ropes from one side to the other to tie them horizontal again.

 

The only way to get off the marina was by dinghy and one exceptionally generous volunteer spent all his days and nights ferrying people ashore and back. Any support from the marina staff was notably lacking. Even food donations didn't make it out to those stranded on their boats. Tempers were short as documents to indemnify the marina were passed around.

 

  Perhaps those hardest hit were the local liveaboards who had made Coffs their  home and had nowhere else to go. The situation was further exacerbated by the lack of a slipway to haul out damaged boats. A cruising couple from South Australia had only just pulled in to Coffs a few nights earlier, expecting a five star International marina. They were angered by the state of disrepair that rendered the place “a disaster waiting to happen” - one that had happened before and would happen again if allowed. Their lifelong cruising dreams were dampened by unknown damage to their beautifully restored Swanson 36.

A week later the 8 metre plus swell had subsided and wind dropped enough for us to leave Coffs. We motor-sailed non-stop the 170 miles to Southport on the Gold Coast and dropped anchor in “Bum’s bay” at 2130 on Saturday 11^th June. The passage was pleasantly uneventful and we even got to see a huge humpback whale breach fully out of the water nearby, a most exciting and  memorable sight.

I stayed on board long enough to catch up with a few of my old friends in the area and for Wayne to bus back to Coffs for his car. After that he drove me the 300 miles back up to Shanti in Tin Can Bay, where we serviced all my winches which had practically seized. This was a job that had fallen off my job-list before leaving Melbourne originally.

One of Wayne’s valuable contributions to my project was to introduce me to the blog of his hero Webb Chiles, a 73 year old sailor with several circumnavigations under his keel. He is currently finishing his sixth in an ultralight Moore 24. That's inspiring! His website and blogs contain lots of interesting and informative reading.

see http://www.inthepresentsea.com

His tracks go from Opua in NZ to Bundaberg. From there he went outside the Great Barrier Reef to Cairns. This section was done non-stop over 7 days.

He then day-sailed from Cairns to Cape York and then non-stop across the top of the Gulf of Carpentaria to Darwin, where he is now preparing to cross the Indian Ocean.

 

This information, complete with Webb's waypoints gives me a last shot at getting to Darwin this year before the end of August, which is the latest I can be there to avoid cyclone season.

To date, I have wandered slowly up the East coast from Melbourne, taking my time “smelling the roses” and all but missed my opportunity.  Continuing on day-hopping up through the Whitsundays would be pleasant enough but that would close the door on this year’s attempt to get across to South Africa - which I am still keen to do.

In the next few days I will continue on up the inside of Fraser Island through the Great Sandy Straits to Bundaberg, and from there, make the call whether to go for it non-stop outside the reef. It is both an exciting and scary proposition.

I think a large part of my prevarications have been around facing my fears of making a longer passage by myself, especially concerning sleep management. But sooner or later that has to be faced if I am to pursue this dream of sailing solo round the world.