While in New
Zealand we made arrangements for 1 year Australian visas to accommodate a more
leisurely trip from Sydney up the east coast to Thursday Island which is
approx. 2000nm. The leg from Sydney to
Brisbane offers few opportunities for good shelter. One of those stops was Pt. Stephens which we
availed ourselves of and quickly wished we had not. They have very freaky weather in this country
and we were hit with a Western Willywally…which is a hellish westerly wind-hail
storm extraordinaire combination. We
ended up with a cockpit full of golf ball sized hail which pretty much
destroyed all of our cockpit canvas and Isinglass.
The only
good news for us in Pt. Stephens was meeting a pair of Poster Kids for Australian sailing. Wes is native Aussie with his curly blonde hair and devil may care attitude and Stine is just one of those natural Norwegian beauties. Here are two young people that are just Happy and Wholesome. It was their first season out cruising on their lovely Sv Sarabande
II. What Great Kids!
This is what cruising is all about...this generous young couple came to our aid the morning after the windstorm to assist us. We were caught in heavy swell. The mooring line had jammed on the cleat and already snapped the port side Hawser off the deck. The conditions were brutal and if we didn't get free we were going to suffer more damage. Wes battled the waves and between us we managed to free up the lines and move off to safely tie up inside the marina.
Oh Well!...we were already en-route to The Boat Works Marina on the Gold Coast for our
annual haul out and now...we just had more to fix! Ain't Life Grande.
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