After a very unsetelled night at Broughton Island, kept rolling all night by a persistent easterly swell, we were keen to move on. As if the rolling was not enough, we were also discovered by the local mosquitoes, who joined us in droves.
However, there are lots of hidden dangers under the water here, so we wanted to leave with some light, as we have not been at this anchorage before. So at 6am, there was enough light, and we pulled up the anchor and headed North.
Todays destination is Camden Haven, where we plan to anchor in the river overnight, before continuing on to Coffs Harbour on Tuesday.
We made good time getting to Camden Haven, arriving there at Point Perpendicular at 4.30 pm, with good light and a high tide at 5pm.
Point Perpendicular, behind which is the entrance to the Camden Haven River
Couldn't get much better than this you may think, but alas, there was 5 to 6m easterly swell rolling in across the leads into the entrance to the river. If you didn't get rolled over getting there, the river entrance looked quite peaceful.
It didn't take long to decide we were not going to try, and rescheduled to continue on to Coffs Harbour. We had already been going for 10.5 hours, and it is 80 nm to Coffs, so we are in for a long night. The sea state was OK, just big rolling swells coming from 2 directions, east and south east. Every now and then we would get a really big one, but it was generally comfortable.
Looks like its off to Coffs instead
There was a SW breeze of around 8 knots which allowed us to carry the headsail motor sailing, gaining a bit of extra speed and using a bit less diesel.
The next surprise was the strength of the East Australian Current, always a bit of a pain on this leg, but today it was moving south at 2 - 3 knots, putting a real hole in our progress. It continued pretty much all of the way from Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour. To give you an idea of the impact, from midnight until we reached Coffs (8.5 hours), we covered 47.2 nm over ground, but did 59 nm through the water), and the current on this leg was a lot less than from Port Macquarie to Smoky Cape when we were sometimes only doing 3.5 knots over the ground. In total, it took us 26 hours to get from Broughton Island to Coffs. That would have to be the slowest trip we have ever done.
Just to add a bit of interest, not long after passing Port Macquarie we saw a number of thunderstorms, most of which we managed to dodge. But that was the end of having the headsail out, and a few rain squalls caught up with us.
The easterly swell is still with us, and we have a bit of a surf on the way into Coffs outer harbour. We spent about 10 mins on a courtesy mooring whilst we sorted out our berth allocation, and were tied up in the marina in no time.
A very welcome sight, the entrance to Coffs Harbour. You can see the easterly roller in front of the boat
Despite all this, we had steak and salad for dinner and both managed to grab a bit of sleep here and there along the way. In the early hours of the morning it was very cold, but now we are sitting in Coffs in our shorts on a warm sunny day.
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