Position Report

1700h Position Report

• 136nm from Port Macquarie
• 5nm to South Port, New South Wales, Australia
• 29'10.9S/153'36.2E

We broke free from Port Macquarie yesterday morning after double checking the weather and taking a walk out to the river bar to see how the waves were breaking. We have been waiting in Port Macquarie for a few days for the weather to clear. A really strong southerly blew through with 30-40 knots of wind. Even in the harbor where Sandpiper was moored, the wind was quite strong, with lots of rain.

The river bar at Port Macquarie has quite a reputation. When the tide is running out, large waves break all the way across the channel. When we arrived a few days ago, we were lucky, as it was quite flat when we crossed over the bar.

We left as the tide started to change from an ebb to a flood. That way we could get across as soon as the currents changed direction. That is when the swells should be the lowest. We arrived at the bar a little early. The waves were still quite large, so we turned around in the river and just motored against the current for about 40 minutes until we saw the current drop. The swells dropped down and we made a break for it. It was a little unnerving. There were breaking 12 foot waves on both sides of us... and then we were out in the safety of the open sea!

We have been doing a bit of sailing, and running the engine, to keep on schedule. We want to arrive at the South Port bar tomorrow morning where we are hoping to meet up with our friends on SV Shiraz. They are anchored just inside the South Port Bar.

We are going to follow them 10 miles inside the Gold Coast to a boat yard where they are having a new generator installed. We are going to have an electrician come aboard and look at our electrical system. We are having some charging issues that we are hoping to have fixed before we go any farther north.

Tom & Amy