Year 2 – 31 January 2024 -Broken Bay - Pittwater

We had a bit of a lie in and had banana pancakes for breakfast. I had not heard from the electrician to see if he could fix the AIS problem so I messaged him again to see if he could help. I had to have a second option, so rang some electricians in the area and one of them said send photographs of the issue and plotter which I did.

Malcolm looked up the issue and there is some software you can download to try and diagnose problems. We downloaded it and tried to use it. To cut a long story short we spent quite a lot of the morning trying to sort the problem out but without success. However, this gave us more of an idea of what the issue was.

We decided to go ashore in Careel Bay which is a large bay and full of boats. We got in the dinghy and could see many large jelly fish around. We went past the moored boats and could see many nice houses onshore and many of them had their own piers and some had lifts to bring people and goods down the house slops to the piers. It was clearly a wealthy area and looked nice. We eventually came to the Careel Bay Marina where we could leave our dinghy. This was beside a beach. There was nothing there but private houses. We asked the marina about where we could eat and there was a café some three quarters of a mile away. We set off and walked there over about 20-25 minutes. The weather gradually improved and it became quite sunny and warm for the rest of the day.

We walked through a number of roads with all sorts of different houses, many of which we thought were weekend retreats or holiday homes as we are only about an hour North of Sydney. We found the café which was very good (it was on the outskirts of Avalon) and we had a good lunch (wraps and baguettes etc.) and it was within a small row of shops. After lunch we decided to walk to the beach on the ocean side. It did not take too long to come to Avalon Beach – see the picture of the day. This was a lovely sandy beach with sand dunes behind it and it had some good surf. Luckily, the electrician rang and I explained the problem and what we had discovered this morning. He said he would speak to Raymarine and to send him the pictures.

We walked back to Stormbird and decided to up anchor and go down to Newport some 3 miles South where there were lots of restaurants and shops. We motored slowly down and saw lots of racing going on and there lots of dinghies with young kids being supervised. This was good to see and Australia is a fantastic place to learn and they have such good facilities for sailing.

We had a good look around the port and decided we could anchor a little bit outside. We found a good space and anchored from where we could watch all the racing. We seemed to be the only boat at anchor. We looked up local restaurants and found one called The Marina Café nearby which looked good. The electrician rang and said he had spoken to Raymarine and thinks it is a network issue. He said he would ring me tomorrow at about 9.00am and will try and come tomorrow. This was lucky and hope he will come.

We went ashore and The Marina Café was an excellent restaurant and we had one of our best meals we have had so far. It was an enjoyable evening and we hope the electrician will sort the problem out in the morning.

Need/Opportunity Year Two

I am in need of more crew from April to September so if of interest do email me at  hine.nick9@gmail.com  

In year two I will be going from New Zealand to Sydney and hen up the Eastern Australian Coast, Indonesia and then through Bali, Singapore and on to Thailand to end year two about the end of November 2025.

The blog will continue as we continue the journey. If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog then do email me on hine.nick9@gmail.com