In our quest to head to the tropics, every little bit of progress north helps. We are doing small hops along the South Coast whenever the southerlies blow. But as soon as the northerlies take over, we have to stop!
And so we hopped from Eden to Bermagui, and stopped there for two nights, rafted up against our favourite fishing boat, Volution. We like doing this as we don’t have to worry about adjusting mooring lines for tidal changes.
Take It Easy at Bermagui, rafted up to Volution
As always whenever we are in Bermagui, we caught up with our friends Baz and Lyn, who unfortunately are not faring so well healthwise. We all feel let down by our ailing bodies and don’t like this business of getting old. But as Wade puts it, it is better than the alternative!
Sunset over the Bermagui River
Bright and early on Monday 21 May, our passenger, Doug, caught his bus back to Bairnsdale and we turned our sights to Batemans Bay, some 45nm further north. But the northerly breeze soon stopped us in our tracks and there we stayed for two days!
Take It Easy hiding behind Snapper Island
Despite the forced pause, we always find something to occupy ourselves and some positives to focus on. We dinghied into town and did a few errants one day and lazed around on board the next.
Yachts moored in the Clyde River, with Snapper Island and the Tollgates in the background
At this time of year sunsets seem to have a particular intensity. In the shelter of Snapper Island, we witnessed another one of these magic shows of colours. Aren’t some sunsets amazing?
Sunset at Batemans Bay
Sunset at Batemans Bay with our wind turbine spinning well!
Now while on the subject of amazing things… You will recall that a couple of posts ago we talked about the hassles we had with the sounder/transducer. Well much to our surprise, Brook of BB Marine Electrics, who handled the replacement of our navigation gear in Melbourne, transferred some money to us to cover the cost of the new transducer. When problems occur, apologies are easy to make but reimbursements are a rarity. We are grateful for Brook’s business ethics.
Today, as we post this we are riding the southerlies towards the Crookhaven River, then Port Hacking on Friday and north of Sydney for the weekend. Beyond this, who knows!
Sv-Anui 
Hi Chris, your pictures are excellent, the places that you visit are incredibly beautiful! Enjoy your life, every minute of stand don’t worry about getting old. We all get older but don’t FEEL older. That’s the trick! 😉
Oh HJ, we feel older but won’t give in to ill health and intend to keep enjoying our adventurous life, no matter what!
Memories of Volution, great and those wonderful showers at the co-op. Love the sunsets, magnificent
Yes, tramping across his boat to get to shore, wallies with water at the Fishing Co-op, moaning of pleasure under the hot water and fish and chips for dinner! Nothing much has changed except we need a stash of dollar coins for the hot showers!
Stunning sunset photos!
Is it noticeably warmer now?
How does it work with rafting up against somebody else’s boat? How do you get their permission? Is it common practice for yacht people and fisherman to have this sort of relationship?
Hi Craig – not yet much warmer, just not as bitterly cold! When you tie up at a jetty you have to make allowances for the rising or falling tide in the length of your mooring lines. But if you raft up against a boat at a quay, then you just tie to that boat snuggly and don’t have to make adjustments. In a tight fishing harbour, rafting up means you don’t take up space against the quay that fishing boats might need to unload. You come in slowly, ask for permission in advance via radio, put fenders out, then if all ok, tie up. But you have to be prepared to move out of the way if the fishing boat needs to go out. In our case, we happen to have tied up to Volution quite a few times so we know the skipper and it’s all good.
Snapper Island and the Toll Gates… great names!
How about our anchorage for the night: Crookhaven, 3 hours north of Jervis Bay!
I dunno, sound a bit crook …