The Gold Coast

As we entered the Broadwater we were bombarded by jet skis and power boats. The calm and quiet passage surrounded by native trees and sand dunes that we had sailed down opened up into a highway for motor boats, high rise buildings and million dollar waterfront houses. It was an exhausting contrast but we still managed to find a very quiet anchorage outside an area called 'the rock' on South Stradbroke Island. We watched a beautiful golden sunset and Ian even spotted a kangaroo watching the sunset on the beach across from us. As the sunlight began to fade the sky turned a beautiful pink and illuminated a house boat anchored in front of us. I was amazed that even the house boats here were 'high rise'. We had another early start the next morning with a plan to sail overnight down to Coffs Harbour. We exited the seaway around 7am and found it to be more bumpy and shallower in parts than expected. Luckily we had a few other boats for company and headed out with the guidance of the Gold Coast VMR who incidently do a wonderful job for the boating community. We picked up the northeasterly wind and sailed out to sea to pick up the East Australian Current. It was a beautiful morning and the winds were a bit lighter than expected. It wasn't long before we had crossed the Queensland border into New South Wales. By now we were well on our way down to Sydney. As the day progressed we picked up stronger winds and current. Ian had to go out on deck in the big swells and put the whisker pole out so we could run downwind. We were then getting good speeds between 7 to 8 knots but the swells were unfriendly when they hit us beam on. I was still getting my sailing legs back and in one moment of carelessness decided to lie down in the cockpit on the upwind side. It wasn't long before I was lying on the cockpit floor with some new bruises and bumps to add to my collection! The sun set before we had time to organise dinner so we went with the easy option of hot soup. We both wrapped up warmly ready the night watch. We saw lots of container ships on the radar and visually. Most of them ran down our starboard side with no change of course required except for one ship that we had to radio several times to warn that he was actually on a collision course with us. When the Captain finally picked up the radio call after we quoted his approximate position he said "are you talking to me"? and shone a strobe light above the ships tower to confirm it was his ship we were actually communicating with. As things are always more difficult at night when sailing we prefer to be extra cautious. The winds carried us nicely further south but due to a predicted bad weather system coming up from the south we decided to go ahead with our plan to stay at the International Marina in Coffs Harbour.