The really big smoke.... cheap as!! (Mainly photos :) )

July 16^th 2014- Sydney

The trip to Sydney was, in itself, not very eventful and we were very happy when we could finally see the heads.

 

'twas a cold, cold day on the ocean blue!

Just a few of the carriers waiting at Botany Bay.

Seriously.... what a fabulous cemetery!

The Heads at Port Jackson (better known as Sydney Harbour) . Yay!!!!

Leavin' on a jet plane....... for New Zealand perhaps?

We arrived in Sydney on a Wednesday, but it was as busy a day as if it was a weekend. Boats of all shapes and sizes and numerous passenger ferries darted up and down and across Port Jackson (aka Sydney Harbour), making navigation a nightmare and vigilance an absolute must. A few yacht races were happening, with boats surging towards us, expecting us to get out of the way. The ferries cut close in front and behind as they heedlessly made their way to their various destinations across the water. Tiny catamarans and trimarans zigzagged about like wasps around sugar pots. It felt as though we each needed three pairs of eyes and taking photos was kind of tricky. 

  

Our closest encounter was just before we neared the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Whilst keeping our eyes peeled for errant ferries and yachts, we noticed a large racing catamaran heading our way with apparently little intent of changing course, despite the fact that we seemed to be right in their way. Dave said hold ground, so we did even as they cut across only feet from our rear. They were so close, we could almost have reached out and shaken their hands if we hadn't been ever-so-slightly panicked about a collision (well I was anyway). Of course these guys were obvious professionals and to them it was possibly not close at all. In fact they seemed absolutely oblivious to the fact that they could take our back end off with no problem, and seemed more concerned with not letting their own boat heel too much, but still.....! 

 

Fort Denison (Link)

They don't slow down for you. One of the many ferries in the Harbour

One of the interesting channel markers.

Zoom, zoom.... close pass by another racing boat

A rare sight in Sydney Harbour. Most freight vessels go to Botany Bay.

And the ferries also get a little close

 
After we passed under the bridge and moved further away from Circular Quay, the traffic eased off and we could finally breathe again. Our #1 priority now was to get to Drummoyne Sailing Club where we were to be based on a mooring for the next week or two.

Whilst there we caught up with our newest yachtie besties, Selina and Dave (who I shall name Dave2 for the sake of confusing anyone) who invited us aboard their yacht Quintessa for a lovely dinner, good wine and fun conversation. It was a late night. A couple of days later, Dave2 and Selina came for a visit, just in time to watch Dave ascend the mast to fix a broken light bulb and to straighten out the bird bent wind-vane. Later that evening it was our turn to play host and another late and somewhat boozy night was had. Another evening of total fun and relaxation. :D 

 

 

Every now and then things happen that are very interesting indeed, such as the racing of remote controlled yachts from the front of the yacht club. It was really fascinating to watch, as these little yachts still had to mill about just as their full sized cousins have to before a race and then when the starting gun sounded, negotiate the breezes and go around buoys. It was totally full on racing, with tactics and skill brought to the fore, and all in miniature. There was cheering and all sorts coming from the shore and it seems to be a very regular thing. From what we could gather it was totally serious business. No 'toy' references thank you very much.

Another very odd thing happened one warm afternoon when Dave spotted an object bobbing along near the boat. We watched it for a while and initially thought it may be a weird, kind of scary looking turtle, until it got closer and we realised it was metallic. Okay, our imaginations were piqued enough for Dave to get out into the dinghy and take a look. It turned out, after fishing it out of the briny, that it was a roof ventilator, the wind driven spinning type, inside which someone had placed a small, empty gas cylinder that was used to keep the thing just floating on the surface. By the rust on the whole thing, it had been in the water for some time. It could have presented quite a hazard for the wrong vessel but no longer. It's now somewhere in a recycling yard waiting to be crushed up and turned into something else.... we hope.

 
 



On day 5 we motored around to the fish markets at Pyrmont where, because their docks weren't busy at that time of year, we could tie up all day for free. We then hopped the free train into the city and did some of the touristy thing. The Bridge, the Opera House, parks, stuff....as with Melbourne, because Sydney is so big, with so many activities and places for visitors, I'm not going to go too much into what we did. I will, however, remark on how much walking we did and how much the knee goblins played up. The little sods were intent on partying under my kneecaps, setting off teeny tiny explosions every time I took a step. Beware goblins, your time is coming. 

 

 

 

One of the huge Morton Bay fig trees near the Opera House.

Urban Cocky right in the city centre. :D

After getting back to Venture after our super cheap day trip, we moved around to Farm Cove, which is right between the Botanic Gardens and the Opera House, and is completely free to anchor in. I mean WOW! Prime views, central to the entire city, a 2 minute dinghy trip to the Man O' War landing steps at the Opera House and costs not one cent. That's got to be the absolute bargain of the century. The only concession to perfection is the fact that it's very rolly during the day due to the wake caused by all of the water traffic, but when the ferries stop and all of the boats have gone home for the night, it's beautiful. To get to shore, we had to take the dinghy to the Man O' War Steps and its small floating dock near the Opera House. This was, by far, the scariest dock we've come across. The noise as it moved up and down against the pylons was horrendous, with almost constant unearthly Kraken-like groans and creaks and shrieks of metal against metal. It didn't seem to bother the old guy who was fishing off the edge. He just moved with it. I hope he managed to catch a few.

The Bridge and Opera House from Farm Cove at dusk

Farm Cove Panorama from Venture.

Whilst at Farm Cove, we did a bit more of the touristy bit around the city centre to look at a few things we'd missed out on the first time in and we also partook of an obligatory trip to Manly on the ferry. I think there's some kind of law where, if you're in Sydney, you have to take that ferry. It's so famous that it is a line in a song by Australian Crawl. Good song! Manly itself was really lovely, with a wide shopping mall that stretches between Manly Cove and the open ocean.

Just one thing I'll mention about this... what's with the upside down sign??

The Bards Who Lived at Manly (Link)

A navy ship on the way to Manly.... bathed in light against a slate grey sky

A couple more Navy ships. We've seen a fair few already on our travels.

After our third night in Farm Cove I was really ready to move on. Though the million dollar view was gorgeous, the $1 seasickness pill became more important to my flagging countenance as I found myself becoming increasingly queasy when we were aboard our anchored vessel. It's pretty bad when you have to pop a pill and you're not even going anywhere! It was time to finally move on.

On the evening of the 25^th, we headed over to Little Manly in order to get a good start to Broken Bay. The evening departed in a glow of fire fingers that lit up the opulent, money oozing cliff-top homes that towered above us. It was nice moored there though and I was once again struck by the realism that, when in a boat, you can basically stay anywhere in the harbour either cheaply or free, sitting in the cockpit in your daggy casual clothes, drinking red cask wine out of plastic goblets right alongside the well-to-do. Awesome!! Cheers Sydney!

Moored at Little Manly.

Location: Sydney Harbour NSW, Australia
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Port Hacking to Sydney Harbour. Amazing but a bit stressful

We headed off around 10:00 am from Cronulla heading for Sydney.  The weather was crap.  Misty rain, overcast and cold but we wanted to move on and the forecast was for the weather to improve so we headed out.

As we cleared the entrance of Port Hacking, we turned North and picked up a bit of wind so we raised the sails and motor sailed to the North and Sydney.  I left two reefs in the main as there was a strong wind warning current for the Sydney coastal waters and I didn't want any surprises.

We turned the motor off for about an hour as the wind was favourable and quite strong but then we had to start it up again when the wind died.  Such is life..

There was some big ships heading into and out of Botany Bay that made us pay attention but we never came close enough to force us to alter course or slow down.

We ended up on a port tack (wind from the North) clearing the South head and heading for Manly basically.  As we cleared the South head, a big gust buried the starboard side cap rail which was a bit interesting.  Water actually came over the cockpit coamings and into the cockpit!   I think we must have heeled over to about 35 degrees or so until she picked up and steadied.  I took the yankee down at this point :-)

We headed right over near the north head and tacked to take us into the harbour.   We were immediately in the middle of a race with big maxi yachts heading across our bows.  And that set the scene for the next couple of hours as we headed into the harbour and under the bridge.  Lots of traffic all the time with big ferries belting along making the really wide channels look  quite narrow.

One ferry approaching from the port side just forward of our beam, basically stopped and let us go through ahead of him.  I've no idea why he didn't just turn to starboard to pass behind us especially since when he did get going again, he made a starboard turn anyway.  I know he got cross though because he hooted us a couple of times :-)

He had to give way (we were the stand on vessel) and he didn't need to stop anyway as he could have made a small course change to pass behind us.  I think he didn't see us early enough and ended up stopping rather than throwing his passengers around making a tight turn.  He hooted us because he was embarrassed I recon.

So we took the sails down and motored under the bridge and onto a mooring at the Drummoyne sailing club and big sighs all round.  We're  probably going to stay here for a week or so as it's quite cheap and there's lots to see around the harbour.

Drummoyn Sailing Club.  We are both looking forward to a feed :-)

It's a big milestone for us and I have to say I'm very proud of Terry.  She has a lot of stickability and even with the sea sickness and having to put up with me, she still has a smile at the end of the day!

Thanks Love!

Location: Sydney NSW, Australia
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Our closest encounter so far.

We are seeing whales on most of the legs of our journey but we are still waiting (and hoping) for the close encounter.

This is the closest we've come as yet.

Location: Sutherland Shire, NSW, Australia
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Kiama to Port Hacking and some whales

We left Kiama at dawn and headed up the coast for Port Hacking.  Both of us were glad to leave actually.  The town is really nice but we didn't get on well with the harbour.  The constant surging and the worry about the state of the mooring at the bow made it a bit stressful. It was a pretty uneventful ride up the coast actually except for the incessant rolling. 

There seems to be a very small window of weather that's perfect for sailing.  It seems to be between 12 and 18 knots of wind on our beam with a combined swell and sea of up to 1.5 meters. Any less wind and there is not enough to stop the rolling, any more wind and it can start to get stressful.  Bigger seas mean you need more wind which is sort of self defeating.


It was actually a lovely day today.  A bit cold but the sun was out and the water was deep blue with scattered white caps.  But we had between 7 and 10 knots of apparent wind from almost directly behind and about 2 meter combined sea and swell so it was a bit uncomfortable.  The quells worked for Terry though so there was no need for the bucket.

And just before we turned into Port Hacking, we saw some whales.  We first noticed the spray and just as we were getting the cameras ready, one of them breached about 100 meters away.  I managed to get a couple of photos of the spray that shot up when it hit the water again but that was it.  We actually overtook them and they passed behind us and disappeared.  I've no idea how they do that but they just stopped coming up for air or that's how it seemed.  We got a couple of photo's and some video we'll be putting up when we get a chance.  I'm sure Terry will do it justice when she gets up to date.

Venture at rest in Cronulla marina

So we're in Cronulla for at least two days then on to Sydney harbour and points north.

Location: Sutherland Shire, NSW, Australia
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W...H...A...L...E...S... say it with me people!!

MONDAY July14^Th – WEDNESDAY July 16^th

 

We left Kiama with a sigh of relief and a great deal of thanks that we got away from the mooring from Hell unscathed and only slightly traumatised. If I ever travel to Kiama again, it'll be by car!

As we moved away from Kiama, the coast took on a decidedly industrial feel.

We were heading down towards Port Hacking/ Cronulla on our way to Sydney on seas that were fairly high and rolling but with enough wind to be able to use the sails for a while. We were pushing along quietly with no particular thought process going on or particular expectations at all and in fact I do believe I may have been slightly snoozing in the V berth when suddenly, out of the blue, the day became COMPLETELY AWESOME!

“Why?” I hear you inquire (although that may just be in my head). The reason is.... WHALES!!!!!!! Yes, we finally got a closer view of whales when one suddenly breached in front of and kinda sideways of the boat. I totally missed it of course (due to the fact that I like to sleep a lot on these journeys, especially if I feel I might be ill), but Dave managed to grab the camera and catch the aftermath of it whilst yelling at me to come up top. Arrrggghhhhh I couldn't believe I'd missed it again but instead of disappearing from view altogether, a few minutes later there came a noisy plume of spray and then a smaller one only about 30 metres from the boat port side.... a mother and calf! Oh.... my.... gaaaaaaaawd... whales, whales, whales!!! (can you tell I was a teensy bit excited?) We snapped as many shots as we could but they only stayed a few minutes before once again taking a massively deep breath and buggering off. Noooooooooooooo!!!! I felt a little gutted that they'd stayed for so short a time yet again but at last my faith that we'd see more was restored. One day they'll hang around a bit longer.

Cliff-top house at the entrance to Gunnmatta Bay

I was still on a bit of a high when we approached the relatively narrow channel into Port Hacking. Turning in along the cliffs into Gunnamatta Bay (seriously.... that's the name. It's almost as if someone said one day.... it's not a problem if you stay in the channel but if you stray outside, it's gunnamatta! Nyuck, nyuck!) I was struck at how constrictive the approach really was. At one stage the water shallowed off to the point where, when another boat approached us from the opposite direction, I was worried that we may run aground on the edge of the channel as we both passed by. It sure looked like a lot of water but obviously looks are deceptive. Though not a large bay, there were a lot of boats moored and anchored. This was promising for a still water night. I was glad to finally tie up in the Cronulla Marina.

Cocky on the wind vane.

The following morning came bright and sunny. Though not warm, it wasn't freezing either so we made the decision to get the bikes out in the afternoon and take a look around. In the meantime, a visit to the showers and laundry were in order. The marina didn't have the best facilities, with unisex showers and toilets but they were adequate and the water was hot, which was all that mattered. While we were waiting for the washing to finish, we sat on the boat and watched flocks of cockatoos having fun with boat bits. They picked and pecked and chuckled and screeched their way along the marina and no, even our boat didn't come away untouched. I saw one of them land on the wind-vane and although I took a photo, I didn't realise that it was actually bending the vane. (the repair is coming up in another blog post). 

Passenger ferry on GunnaMatta Bay, pulling in at Cronulla.

Helicopters we have seen buzzing around Port Hacking

After the mundane stuff was done with and the cocky shenanigans were over, we donned our helmets and hit the road. Up and down the mall we went and then wend our way to Cronulla Beach on the opposite side of the Peninsula. We stood by and chatted as we watched surfers trying to catch some waves and also spent a moment of quiet at the Bali Memorial which honours the 7 local women who died on that day.

Though a pest, I do love these miner birds

View down Cronulla Mall.

The 'bike' path was brilliant, even though it actually wasn't a bike path and pictures of bikes with a large red line through them and “No Bikes” were painted all along the path. We rode anyway as the paths were pretty much empty and it seemed as though a lot of locals also ignored the signs. We felt so rebellious, I almost felt obliged to get a tattoo or something. Part way along was a very interesting memorial obelisk to Matthew Flinders and George Bass. They seem to be very big on obelisks on the east coast.

 

The path was directly along the foreshore and the wide beach and beautiful rock formations made the journey an interesting one.

 

All along the beaches were sea pools which I could imagine were hugely popular in summer, particularly since even in the middle of winter we saw at least half a dozen people swimming. Rather them than me but more power to them if they have that kind of constitution. It made me feel cold just looking at them and i decided then and there that I'd never be an 'iceberger'. We stopped often to traipse over rocks and read snippets of information along the way. At one stage a young tourist asked me to take her photo in front of a tiny waterfall that was trickling down rocks next to the path, and she then returned the favour by taking ours. I hope she's enjoying her holiday. 

 We parked the bikes in one of the lovely park areas and ventured down to look into rock-pools in the hope of seeing creatures such as crabs or starfish scuttling or lurking about in the clear water but sadly we didn't see a single one, though we did see many sponges, squirts and tiny corals. 

 

History of the 'Ladies pool and dressing rooms' at Cronulla

Not sure but I think this may be a poignant memorial to a couple of drowned surfers.

 The little snippets of history were very interesting indeed, particularly with the surfing culture that's developed in the area.

 

Awwwwwwwwwww. :D xx

The view back towards Cronulla. It's a lovely spot.

Gorgeous little waterfall that ran down the cliffs that lined the bike path.

 

Many of the houses along the foreshore cliff area were hugely ostentatious, particularly one, an enormous white monstrosity which had a sign on the gate claiming that, because of the view “This house is Blessed by God. Don't believe me? Then turn around.” I was almost tempted to go to the door and inform them that I'm pretty sure that nature and millions of years was what produced the view and that if there was such a thing as a god, he or she wouldn't appreciate the pure pretentiousness and gaudy nature of his property. :) There was one house though that had the most awesome wooden chair in the front yard, which Dave and I immediately coveted. It was huge enough for both of us and all the grandkids all at once. How wonderful would that be?!

Awesome outdoor sofa!

We followed the path for as long as we could, going from a wide paved path, to a more narrow paved path, then to a narrow hard-packed dirt path to an abrupt rocky end and then turned around and did most of it in reverse before taking another road back to the marina. All in all we cycled about 11 or 12 kilometres. Not bad considering I have problems walking 100 metres nowadays.

Despite the highly negative reputation Cronulla gained during the riots, we found the area and the people to be really nice.

Location: Cronulla NSW, Australia
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Jervis Bay to Kiama. Fun meter down, up and down again.

We left Jervis Bay for Kiama this morning.  There was another strong wind warning declared for this section of coast but the wind was westerly (offshore) so it looked like a pretty good day to make some quick miles even if it might be a bit rough so we decided to head off and at least poke our heads outside the bay to see if it would work.

The trip over the bay to the heads was lovely.  Not a cloud in the sky, and a nice long broad reach with Yankee and 2 reefs in the main right out through the heads.  As we got closer to the heads, the wind picked up to about 15 knots so I put third reef in the main expecting it to strengthen again outside the bay.

We gybed to head up the coast and the wind picked up again as we expected to around 20 knots.  At this point, we were still sheltered by the headland (Beecroft Head) and I knew that when we came out from behind it, it would start to get rough so we pulled in the yankee and put out the staysail instead.  The plan was to clear the headland to see how rough it was and then make the decision to go forward or back.

Well it did get a lot rougher and the wind picked up again to about 25 knots.  There was very little swell from the south but the wind had kicked up a big sea from the west.  It was about 3 miles to the shore west of us so the wind had quite a bit of room to work (fetch) so we were seeing short period waves of about 1 to 1.5 meters which is uncomfortable to say the least.

On the other hand, we were flying, averaging well over 6 knots (touching 7 regularly) in a beam reach with triple reefed main and staysail.  The wind was plenty strong enough to keep us heeled so we were not rolling at all.

We decided to keep going.  Even though it was uncomfortable and the fun meter was heading down really fast, the boat was taking it in her stride.  You could feel her accelerate again every time we got knocked back by a wave.  I found it quite exhilarating but Terry was not enjoying it much at all.

I turned a bit towards the coast looking to get back into some shelter and we settled down for a bumpy ride.  We were getting a constant 20 knots now with prolonged gusts of 26 knots or so.   An occasional big wave slapped the side of the boat shooting spray up in the air which then blew down over the cockpit clears.

About 2 hours later, we were out of the worst of it and close enough to the coast to get some shelter.  The wind had dropped below 20 knots but was still gusting up to 20 or so occasionally.

So far, with the wind causing white caps and quite large waves everywhere, looking out for whales was a bit of a lost cause but as it had calmed down a bit, we decided to hang around for a while and watch for whales.

Stopping a boat is called "heaving to" and basically means that you set the sails so that they work against each other and set the rudder so that if the boat starts to move forward, it turns up into the wind and stops again.

So we pulled the saysail across to the wrong side of the boat, brought the tripple reefed main onto the center line and put the rudder hard over as if we were turning into the wind.   The boat sat bobbing with the bow pointing at the coast (about 60 degrees off the wind) doing about 2 knots directly up the coast.  She was still heeled over to between 5 and 10 degrees but everything had quietened down and it was actually quite peaceful.

We made a cup of tea and kept a sharp eye out for whales.  The fun meter went back up again and after a while we played eye-spy and ear-hear.  Terry stumped me with something beginning with "N".  Turned out to be "No whales" which I thought was cheating a bit but I let her score the point..  Anyway, there was nothing to be seen so we headed into Kiama.

The moorings here are different..  First you have to pick up a mooring bouy, then reverse towards the sea wall and attach stern ropes to the wall.  Venture does not do reverse very well.  She goes backwards ok but not in a straight line and steering just doesn't work at all until you are moving a lot faster than you want to go.

Terry managed to pick up the mooring after a couple of misses (my fault not hers) but the wind took us sideways up against an alloy charter boat before we could get the stern lines out (thanks fenders!).  The fun meter was heading south very fast..  Luckily we had some help on shore (thanks Trevor!) who threw us a nice long rope and pulled us in towards the sea wall where we managed to tie off.

Venture, stern-to in Kiama Harbour.

In all, an interesting day.  We've sort of decided to hang here until we get a nice calm day to move up to Port Hacking.  Calm would be nice for a change even if we have to motor but it might also mean that we will be able to see any whales that do happen by.

Location: New South Wales, Australia
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Knocking about in Kiama.... literally!

FRIDAY July 11^th – MONDAY July 14^th Kiama

We left Jervis Bay fairly early for the trip to Kiama, hoping but not holding our breaths to see whales. Again, we were out of luck and even worse, the ride was rough and nasty and miserable as the seas were choppy and just plain blech. Unfortunately I was not a happy Misty as the seasickness pills took over again and I slumped into the usual Kwell-induced stupor, thus leaving poor Dave to cope yet again with the most part of the trip. I was getting weary of the lumpy passages we so often seemed to do and just wanted to get to our destination.

I was well awake once we got closer but as I looked at the map of the bay, I was worried. It looked tiny but on the other hand, it seemed well protected from the weather. Following a phone call, Dave was instructed on how to best approach the only available mooring in the harbour and when we finally inched into the tiny man-made bay we found that we needed to back in to the wharf/breakwater. It was one of the scariest things we had had to do to date because the instructions that were being yelled to us by the guy standing on the wharf were meant for someone with a boat that could easily reverse, which Venture could not. Luckily we had tied fenders all the way around and Dave kept a cool head as I grabbed the mooring buoy, which was just as well because the sea surge, which we later discovered was notorious, thus necessitating the building of a special surge ramp, pushed us sideways into a large fishing vessel before we could toss the man on the dock a rope. We hated every moment and were so glad to finally tie up and find that Venture was undamaged.

However, we found that getting safely tied up wasn't the end of the worry as we were informed later on by another guy that the mooring to which we were told to tie was rated to about 3 tons.... Venture is 10 tons and apart from the fact that it was blowing a gale, the swells and surges at times tossed her sideways like a cork with the only thing stopping us from again ramming into the fishing boat were the lines on either side of the stern and the flimsy mooring. We made up our minds to make this a very short term stay, despite the fact that the town itself was really lovely. It has now been voted in my notes as “Worst Mooring Place Ever” (at least so far). Seriously, if you are a yachtie DO NOT GO HERE! We went and bought pizza for tea and didn't get a lot of sleep that first night.

Venture moored at Kiama. We were on tenterhooks the entire time. It looks pretty but the swell is torturous. Kiama itself is lovely though.

When Saturday morning came we found that the large fishing boat next to us, a charter vessel, had departed for the day and the wind had dropped a little so we got the bikes out and went out for the day for a bit of a sight-see at the Kiama Blow Hole, the Kiama Lighthouse and to another of the beach pools that seemed to be quite common along the east coast. The water in the pools was crystal clear and I can imagine it would be awesome fun in the summer. The blow-hole was active and loud and wet and impressive. Luckily we caught it when the sea and swell was in the right direction to force the water well up. It was pretty impressive I must say. It's definitely worth visiting.

  

  

History Lesson**!

 

The Kiama Lighthouse was established in 1887, 10 years after the creation of the Robertson Basin, a man made harbour to service Kiama's supply of crushed blue metal and paving blocks for the streets of Sydney.

The original equipment was an oil burner with a catadioptric fixed lens producing a light that was visible for nine miles. This was upgraded to the local town coal gas in 1908 with an intensity of 1,500 candelas and a range of fifteen miles. This was further upgraded to acetylene gas and group flashing in 1920. At this point the light was de-manned. In 1969 the light was converted to 240-volt mains electricity. Kiama Lighthouse is located in Kiama on Blowhole Point.

The principal Keeper's House was destroyed by vandals in the 1920s. The single storey assistant Keeper's House, used for many years as a residence for harbour pilots, is now a museum.

**

 

When we got back in the afternoon the wind and swell around the bay had again picked up so Dave took the opportunity to do a little maintenance work. Later in the day the fishing boat with about a dozen guys on board arrived back and again the fun and games were on as, when it tried to back in next to us, a surge pulled the boat sideways directly into our side. A huge bang followed by a few yells gave me some idea of what was happening as I belted up the stairs and onto the deck to try and help hold the fishing boat away from us while the ropes were thrown to other guys waiting on the dock. It was only by luck that we managed to get away with just a few scuff marks on the hull and clean underwear. I had rapidly grown to loathe this particular mooring and I would NEVER recommend it.

On the Sunday the fishing boat stayed put, so at least we didn't have that to worry about as we again took to the bikes and pedalled the few kilometres to the shops to restock a little and have a bit of a look about on the way back. We stopped in at a fish and chip shop that was on the end of the wharf and took our spoils back to the boat to eat with fresh bread. In and of itself, the town of Kiama is lovely and we were a little sorry that the whole mooring, bashing and being bashed into spoiled it a little for us.

The parklands along the foreshore were filled with people enjoying the beautiful winter's day.

Please don't toss your litter in the streets. You really don't know where it ends up.

Cars outside the fish and chip shops near the mooring. One chip and it's "The Birds" all over again!

This lovely heron was at the back of the boat

   

The following morning, and with a little surge and swell induced anxiety, we threw off the mooring lines and unhooked ourselves from the wharf. This was the one part of the entire mooring process that went by-the-book and we soon found ourselves on the ocean once more.

On this sign they should include mooring in the harbour and the very real dangers of being shat upon by mad seagulls fighting over the last chip of the day, or the first chip, or any chip in between.

Location: New South Wales, Australia
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