I caught a plane to Newcastle to meet Brendon who had volunteered to help me sail Vestlandskyss from Nelson Bay down to Pittwater, just north of Sydney in New South Wales. My flight was supposed to land in the afternoon, with ample time to buy groceries on the way to the boat, but there was a fault in the plane’s trim circuit causing us to divert to Sydney to get it repaired, where we hit a bird on the way down and so had to switch planes. Thankfully Brendon had been driving around buying food in Newcastle, so by the time I eventually emerged from the airport, we could go straight to the marina.
The forecast was bad with a possible brief weather window at two o’clock the following morning, but when we arrived at the boat at 8 pm it was calm and quiet. We did some checks, ate a hasty dinner, and were on the water by 10 pm.
Rounding the Port Stephens light, motoring at six knots, we pointed the nose at Pittwater. The weather was calm and still, with about a metre of sloshy swell under a clear starlit sky, sporadically illuminated by electric storms. The Queen Elizabeth passed in the night, looking very impressive.
The wind picked up but was precisely on the nose and not much use for sailing. We were out of the Eastern Australian Current now, and missed its boost. On the way down from Queensland we could motor 6 knots at 2000 rpm, we now had to keep to 2800 to maintain the same speed.
We messed around a bit with different sail plans in the night, but it was simplest to just keep on under power, even though we were nervous about running out of fuel again. I turned on the water maker and it sprayed seawater all over the cabin until I realised that the fridge mechanic must have knocked the bleed valve when he was working on the compressor. I closed the valve and we were all good, and as a bonus, the fridge was still working.
We arrived in Pittwater in the early afternoon, and Peter at Gibson Marina was there to welcome us home to our swing mooring. Bronwyn and I had lived there until 2009 aboard our first yacht Pindimara, and it was great to be back in familiar waters. Thanks, Brendon, for being a magnificent crew.
