29.25S, 153.21E

Around the world with the Aqualunies
Jonathan & Gabrielle Lyne
Fri 16 Dec 2011 11:56
Having left the Gold Coast Marina up river in from Southport we motored down and spent a couple of nights in Southport itself. A very lively Yacht Club more so because the Clipper Yachts had just arrived from New Zealand on their Round the World Race, a good band and lots of noise. Met a guy, Garry, who was on the Scottish yacht, he said the Southern Ocean from South America to New Zealand was quite smooth in comparison to the sail they had from New Zealand to Australia!
Jonathan managed to chip a bit of tooth on some pork crackling so he had to go and find a dentist the next day, I headed off to do some Christmas shopping but not very inspired by any of it.
Set sail the following day for Yamba (Iluka) in the Clarence River. It was a HORRIBLE sail/motor sail, directly into southerly winds a big, big swell and breaking waves on top, I was sea sick for the 5th time in my 34 yrs of sailing and this time it wasn't just being sick and then feeling better it went on all day, made me feel pretty useless. Ended up taking a Stugeron which promptly made me feel drowsy and even more useless.
We crept into the river having to follow lights, lots of horrible blue florescent lights everywhere as well which did not help the navigation, they marked the harbour arms and river divisions, but were quite blinding.
Got up to the area where we could drop anchor and found our way in through a very narrow entry into a walled off harbour in the river with a flood tide flowing in, coming in from the sea we had a sandbar to cross with breaking waves each side but had leading lights to help us. Safely anchored in 0.8 water under the keel. We were awoken at 6 am the next morning by an abusive man on a trawler fishing boat saying we were anchored in the channel although we had dropped anchored between two yachts late at night in the dark in an area we had never visited before. There was still plenty of room for him to go around us.
As soon as we had breakfast we set off again for Coffs Harbour.