Sail Home to Pittwater

17^th October 2017

Time for the last leg of our journey, an overnight sail back to Pittwater. At our long term average speed of 6.3 knots we expect it will take us 24hours.

High tide at Camden Haven is 7.43am, and there is a NE swell which will make the entrance a bit bumpy, so we waited till 7am to raise our anchors, so that the tidal flow is greatly reduced, but still coming in.

There was plenty of water under us in the river with 1.1m under us at the lowest point and not too much incoming current to push against. The swell offshore is 1.5 to 2m, and it is very rolly at the entrance, so we patiently climbed our way up over one steep swell after another until we were over the bar and into deeper water.  It was slow progress and we had put our mainsails up in the river so just had to take it easy till we were out. The breeze was ESE and already blowing at around 15 knots.

We had put a single reef in the main, assuming that the forecast would probably be understated, as it has been recently.

Once clear of Point Perpendicular, we were able to set our course and had a beam reach all of the way to Seal Rocks in 15-20 knots of ESE Breeze. We made very good time averaging around 7.5 knots for this leg shaving about 2 hours of our estimated time.

Once around the Cape, we had the wind behind us, and the headsail came in. We were quickly up over 7 knots and the wind increased to 25 knots. Our peak speed was 12.4 knots, but  the sea conditions were not pleasant, with a predominant swell from NE and a secondary swell from the South. The seas were well over 3 m in places. It was particularly unpleasant off Port Stephens, but settled once we were abeam of Newcastle.

We sailed for 18 hours, only needing some engine assistance for the last 3 hours when the wind had dropped, and thankfully so had the seas. We rounded Barrenjoey at 3.30 am, and were comfortably on a mooring at Coasters Retreat by 4am. Run to Paradise arrived about 20 mins later.from lifting our anchor in Camden Haven River to tying up to a mooring at coasters took us exactly 21 hours.

We had a stiff drink and went to bed, glad to be home.