Category: Australia

Port Macquarie

After years of sailing on our schedule, it’s challenging to be stuck for weeks with no progress on fixing Go. Yes, we have been stuck in worse places so we’re trying to make the best of our down time. Here’s how we’ve been having fun and staying busy in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, known in Aussie lingo as “Port”.

About Port Macquarie

A town in the Mid-North Coast region of New South Wales, Port is located almost 400km north of Sydney. Located at the mouth of the Port Hastings River, its known for beaches, koalas, and convicts, not necessarily in that order.

Port Macquarie on a map east coast Australia
Port Macquarie on a map on the east coast of Australia

The town has a population of around 50,000, many of whom are retirees. We also see a lot of young families mingling with the retirees at cafes and on the waterfront paths. This town is busy on weekends and holidays, when families and vacationers fill the caravan parks and hotels. What are they coming for?

Continue reading “Port Macquarie”

Best of Sydney

We loved Sydney. After sailing there for the holidays, it was hard to leave. What started as a month long visit became a wonderful two month stay. I miss the city’s clean streets, happy residents, busy bars and restaurants, excellent museums, and fun festivals. The best of Sydney ranges from cool music venues to funky neighborhoods to free art galleries and beautiful hikes.

Best Anchorage: Glebe Bay

My list of the best of Sydney wouldn’t be complete without talking about where we spent most of our time on the boat. Sydney has a lot of great anchorages, and it’s easy to move around as long as you avoid the ferries. You can anchor somewhere for great beaches and elsewhere for the fireworks. For us, the most convenient bay for shops and sightseeing was Glebe, which has three anchorages.

Glebe, Blackwattle and Rozelle were great anchorages for the selection of safe and convenient dinghy docks. We had dinghy parking at the fish market, the ferry dock, or Rozelle Bay park, giving us access to multiple shops, restaurants, and transit lines.

Continue reading “Best of Sydney”

The Worst Wave

We’ve been through a lot in our six years living on our boat. Between Sava and Go, we’ve lost our autopilot, torn sails, and dragged anchor. Those problems pale in comparison to our latest incident. The worst wave we’ve ever been hit by crashed into the bow of our boat and smashed our forward facing windows. Our boat flooded and soaked everything with salt water, us and Domino included. We’re still drying out and we don’t know what’s next.

We Got Hit by the Worst Wave

Since returning from Tasmania, we started making our way north, hoping to get back to some of our favorite parts of Queensland and see new ones. Well, we exited a bar on a pretty calm day, heading from Camden River to Port Macquarie, when a huge wave struck our boat. It was so strong it knocked out our front salon and galley windows, spewing tons of salt water into Go. Within a second, we lived through the worst disaster we’ve experienced on board in six years.

Continue reading “The Worst Wave”