Wednesday 2 January 2008

3rd Stop Port Stephens



Despite a sleepless night filled with dread of getting stuck leaving Lake Macquarie, we had a smooth exit only to get offshore into a carpark of over 40 container ships as far as the eye could see! The wind was on our side and we maintained a steady 7.5 knots weaving in and out of the anchored giants.




We anchored our first night in Shoal Bay and despite the rain we made a hasty exit the next morning to escape the terrible swell. The cats were grateful for some respite from the ocean!




We had only just arrived in Nelson Bay when we heard an American accent call out Hi Simon! Our friend Leo who we hadn’t seen in years was spending a few days in Port Stephens. We had a great night catching up and playing Yahtzee. Amanda beat the all time record with a score of nearly 400!


Early next morning we headed to a gorgeous bay – Fame Cove. We caught up on Hawkeye with Leo for a Yahtzee re-match before he caught a southerly back to Sydney early the next morning. Fame Bay was a great spot with the highlight being all the wildlife. We saw turtles, dolphins, kangaroos, goats and even a goanna swimming across the bay! Our most interesting meal was a Shovel Nose StingRay - weather was bad and we were short on food - the fish book said it was great eating.. believe it or not they were right!


My favourite spot was Broughton Island – Providence Bay. I only wished we had visited here for a few days to explore. We did plan on staying for a few hours but we stuffed up the journey times for getting into our next destination and had to leave in a hurry to try and make the tides. The colour of the water was beautiful, the island deserted – I think we’ll come back this way…


Xmas eve – sailing north – fingers crossed we reach port in time to enjoy a Christmas dinner!
Farewell Port Stephens!



3 comments:

theotherbear said...

Holy COW! Can you imagine swimming along and running onto that goanna. I would completely lose it.
Interesting that you ate a shovel nose sting ray. Don't think I've had one of those lately. :)
Happy New Year.

Megs said...

Sounds like your adventures are going well, hope you had a good new years. Happy New Year. DLRT

Anonymous said...

Keep up the info on how it can be and it might encourage a few helpers to get the ship out of the West Gosford Marina SHED, the crusing way is obviousely better than deliveries and racing.