An Interesting Last Day in Coffs Harbour

Thursday 12^th October 2017

There was very heavy rain last night and we woke up, after a decent sleep in, to see very overcast skies. The trawlers are going back to their berths, so we don’t expect to see many going out today.

After a late breakfast we decided to go for a walk around to the southern end of the harbour and out along the eastern breakwater. On the way, we did the mandatory walk out along the jetty. It is impressive to see the amount of work going on around the jetty park area, which looks like it is going to greatly improve the facilities here.

Walkway access to the jetty now upgraded

It looks like some sort of amphitheatre is being built on the beachfront

The Hamilton Island Race Week boats are still returning home, and Tilt arrived, and anchored, in the outer harbour this morning.

When we continue our walk around to the southern side of the harbour, there is also a new walkway, all concreted, that has been built and landscaped which leads to the eastern breakwater.

The improved Eastern Breakwater

The eastern breakwater reinforcing is now complete and it looks like this time it is built to take some serious treatment. There are lots of precast concrete “blocks” stored in the old quarry site, which we can only assume are to finish off the northern breakwater in a similar style, once the base preparation is completed.

It is sad to see the very large Sports Fishing Club, no longer in operation, and one wonders why such a great facility just sits there utilized.

The Sports Fishing Club, deceased

Whilst we were on our walk, we received an SMS message at 11am, from Dalwhinnie, letting us know that they had decided to take off. They are on a bit of a tight timetable and felt the conditions had improved enough to go.  It may have been a good call as the weather does seem to be a lot better than forecast. They intend to sail overnight through to Port Stephens, so they don’t have any crucial tide times to meet crossing bars etc.

Coffs is a haven for the recreational fisherman with a boat ramp and small boat harbour provided near the fishing club, providing safe launch facilities and easy access to the Solitary Islands fishing grounds.

The walkway continues around to Boambee Beach where there is a large carpark and great views south. Just a little further down the road is the 4WD access road to Boambee Beach.

4WD access to Boambee Beach

We walked back around past the back of the club, and noticed an interesting settlement just around behind the club.

Caretaker's residence ???

An excellent pie from the local bakery was lunch, and we then headed back to the marina.

Marg offered us a cup of coffee as we walked past Run for Paradise, which we gratefully accepted. It gave us an opportunity to talk about our own departure plans. We have decided to leave at around 5am tomorrow morning and head for Camden Haven, they were going to overnight to Broughton Island, but have now decided to come with us, avoiding the overnight sail.

We are now waiting on a report from Dalwhinnie giving us the time they are abeam of Camden Haven so we can calculate the influence of the east coast current (quite helpful in this direction) and firm up our departure time to arrive at the bar at around 4pm.

There is a strange new boat that has appeared on the marina, on D arm, close to the public walkway. On further investigation, we discover it is a  purpose built rowing boat, that is part of a quest by a Kiwi adventurer, Grant "Axe" Rawlinson, who has rowed this craft from Singapore to Darwin, with another crew, then rode a bike from Darwin to Coffs Harbour, and is now getting ready to row across the Tasman to NZ, solo !!!

He was on board when I went to have a look, and we had a brief chat. He is planning to head out next week, when he receives a favourable weather forecast from the famous  Sir Roger Badham (couldn’t do much better for help with weather routing).

The boat looks very strong, and he said it just floats along like a cork, and is very safe, as long as you stay on board, a very Kiwi understatement.

The following link provides some information on his journey.

https://axeoneverest.com/rowing-home/

A great sunset which hopefully heralds better weather ahead