Port Stephens to Forster. Dolphins at the bow!
25.07.2007
Spent most of the day in Port Stephens. Gonzie was fixing
various things on the boat and I went shopping. I came across a pie shop which
had a sign of something like: “best pies in Nelson Bay” and I bought 3:
stroganoff, seafood and kangaroo meat. The pies turned out to be quite good.
In the afternoon we set off for Broughton Island and
arrived there at 6:30 pm – it was dark already and hard to find the mooring.
26.07.2007
In the morning Broughton Island looked beautiful, but we
have to move north, to the tropics. We will stop here on the way back for
longer.
The plan is to go to Forster, and if we are too slow, stop
at Sugarloaf Point near Seal Rocks.
It’s a beautiful day and the wind is only 5 knots, so we
are motoring. We tried to put up heavy genoa, but it was not enough to fill up
the sail and we put it down. We should have tried to put up the drifter but were
too lazy to get this “fat lady” out.
The area around Port Stephens is famous for dolphins and
they didn’t wait long to appear.
They appeared from the coast and were following our boat
for an hour or two, playing with the waves, created by the bow. There were 10 of
them or more and they were coming up so close you could reach your hand to them
from the bowsprit.
We took like 100 photos and some videos.
I’ve read the story somewhere that during some race around
the world a dolphin jumped into a cockpit of one sailboat and, as the race was
single –handed, a skipper (apparently he was Russian) had a hard time winching
this huge flopping creature up and dropping back to the ocean. For a moment I
imagined a dolphin in our cockpit … I found this story in Jessie Martin’s
Lionheart book, it happened near him and he heard it all over the radio.
Gonzie is fishing (trawling) and is singing a song:
I want to catch a fish
So I don’t have to eat spam
Fish would make such a great dish
And spam is not a ham
I want to catch a fish
Because I don’t want to eat spam.
Passing Seal Rocks, we logged with CP Forster. On channel
16 heard the other boat logging too. They were a couple of miles more out to the
ocean, passing outside of Seal Rocks and they saw a whale. We are obviously
jealous.
Having arrived to Forster’s bar at around 5pm we inquired
about marina berth on the radio. The marina was on the other side of the river
and we needed high tide to get in. So the guy on the radio offered us an
alternative berthing on Tuncurry side: 2 oyster-covered poles and a wooden
bridge connecting them the mainland. We could have anchored, but we wanted to go
ashore and there wasn’t any good place to leave the dinghy.
This berth was $20 for the night, but the owner didn’t come
to collect the money and said we can pay on the way back.
We went to see Harry Potter 5 and dropped by the
supermarket for some fresh meat, fruits and vegetables.
