NORDLYS - Esperence to Fremantle

Esperence to Fremantle

NORDLYS

David and Annette Ridout

Wed 29 Mar 2006 09:12

Last leg of a fantastic year

Esperance to Fremantle

Fremantle Sailing Club

(see appendix at the end for the difference between with the date of writing this and sending it)

19th March 2006

Well a years sailing has come to an end and Nordlys is now tied up in Fremantle. Hopefully she will find a berth here for some nine months rest. As I write this is uncertain as the New Australian affluence has meant that spaces are almost non existent and storage ashore is also not available at any price. Amazing but we have found that to be the case in much of Australia. Compared to New Zealand this country is not really geared up for visitors in many ways although I must add that friendliness by the locals is in no way lacking, quite the opposite.

We left Esperance after a hectic social whirl at 0615 on the morning of the 15th March along with our French friends in their lovely aluminium Garcia 52. She is an Ovni type shallow draught design only without chines and built to a very high standard. On her way home now she has visited such diverse places as Japan and South Georgia. We first made friends with Michel and Jacqueline in the Tuamotus. We left Esperance together. A horrid night of light winds and big seas followed and the motor was resorted to for almost ten hours. Morning brought back the wind and while Calibistris went into Albany we carried on as the weather men were promising a fine and settled few days. There followed a lovely sail. The whole way from Tasmania we had been constantly surrounded by albatrosses and shearwaters. Our feathered friends were back with us again, the black shearwaters flying at great speeds while the albatrosses wheeled with their apparently effortless flight. In reality they use the up draught caused by the approaching swells to give them lift. Many pleasant hours were spent watching these birds and trying, with only some success, to pick which type they were from our bird book. Each night about an hour after dark a nearly full moon rose giving almost daylight conditions and apart from the wind and seas getting up round Cape Leeuwin we had a perfect sail. Even the twenty five to thirty knots that blew for some six hours was from astern. The final night was with just enough wind to keep her going and with the sea now smooth there was no slating of sails. The rather complicated way into Fremantle was conducted under engine in no wind. 540nm and three days and six hours after we cast off we were tied up here in Fremantle.

So ended over eight thousand one hundred miles sailing and more anchorages than I can count since we launched in Whangarei last May. Memories, yes hundreds. Mostly of kind interesting people. Drinking Kava with the village elders in the Lau group far from the tourist track in Fiji. The contentment and pride of the Melanesian peoples of the northern islands of Vanuatu. People who quite frankly had almost nothing but would still prefer to trade and not be given outright. Christmas and New year in Sydney. The start of the Sydney Hobart and the New Years Eve fireworks must be two of the greatest spectacles one can witness anywhere in the world from the deck of ones yacht. The Bass straight southbound and then BBQing on Deal Island while a wallaby tries to take your food. The delight of finding what a civilised and interesting place Hobart itself was. The wilderness that is the south west corner of this state and finally the not very nice experience of getting back across the Bass straight to Portland. All these and many more come immediately to mind.

The crossing of the southern coast of this continent has in itself been an interesting challenge and has shown us that it is an area that the worlds wondering cruising yachtsmen underrate. There is far more to do and see than we ever realised and we are very glad we came this way yet to our knowledge only three out of the hundred or so foreign yachts that traverse Australian waters have done so this year.

So dear readers I draw this 'blog' as I am told is the new name for such writing to a temporary close. When we return to Australia in August for some Land Cruising, whether in a Toyota or not we are not yet sure, I will start again.

Cape Leeuwin abeam running before 25/30 knots

7,8,9,10 go girl go. Sorry I cannot let you hear the roar of the water

as Nordlys hurls her way onwards. Yes I am a cruising man but I still

love it when the old girl goes well.

Last few miles of a great year. The sun rising over Perth

Happy times

David

The above was written just BEFORE we contacted Perth customs!

APPENDIX

A detailed account of our experiences with Australian customs. I write this for the benefit of any following yachtsmen who come here. These are the facts.

We checked in to Australia at Bundaberg in Queensland in October 2005. The check in was thorough but always polite even though we had some things taken off us that others were allowed to keep and vice versa.

We were given a years cruising permit.

When about to depart Bundaberg we discovered that our cruising permit only covered sailing in Bundaberg and immediate waters!

This took four days to rectify as a weekend was involved. We lost a weather and tidal window for sailing south inside Fraser Island. The cruising permit we ended up with only covered us to Hobart. They would not issue one to Perth as they claimed 'they did not know which way round we would go'. We were told to ring in to any main port we visited and to get the cruising permit extended in Hobart. We heard of a yacht that made the same mistake but left that was called back and got as far as solicitors and huge costs even though the customs officer clearing them in admitted, like us, she never told them about getting a permit before leaving the clearance port.

We carried out these instructions in Brisbane, Sydney and finally Hobart. In the latter we were cleared to Carnarvon and given to the 1st June 2006 as this was then our expected departure date for Cocos. We were told to ask Perth to change this if we wanted anything else. We were also told that Bundaberg was incorrect in not clearing us to Perth or Carnarvon.

We saw the customs man in Esperance and then proceeded to Perth. In Perth we requested a year's extension of our cruising permit (Yachts are normally allowed at least two years without running into importation problems). Asked why we needed this we said that we had to go home for three months due to family illness and we would then have missed the season to cross the Indian Ocean so we intended to tour Australia and then depart in 2007. This was refused point blank. Reason being that we were not actually going to use our boat and Australia was not a boat park for foreign yachts. They would however extend our cruising permit for a year if I did not go home for more than three weeks. Much discussion followed and despite the fact that the East Coast of this country is full of parked foreign yachts I was up against a brick wall of bureaucratic indifference. We asked if we could pay a bond redeemable on departure. Yes we could have done that but only within two weeks of arriving in the country.

Eventually they said they would get a ruling from Canberra. Canberra ruled in our favour but then the local customs said that they could not do it as we would by now be having three cruising permits and not the allowed two. Hobart had unbeknown to us cancelled our original permit and issued a new one. I pointed out that even in June 2007 Nordlys would have only been in Australia for 18 months. To no avail. Number of permits not time in the country is what counts!

Canberra again came down on our side and after an agonising week plus Nordlys is now allowed to stay here even if we are not here. She has to be kept in a place the customs are happy with and if anything is stolen off her we have been told we will be liable for importation and GST charges for said items! (This is a general ruling apparently).

It turned out that the Cruising Permit we were given in Hobart was on a form that is over three years out of date. It was missing several pieces of information that the foreign yacht owner needs to know.

The moral of all this is that at the moment, unlike New Zealand, Australia is not really set up for visiting yachts. All the forms apply to a travelling commercial vessel. There is no real central source of information for yachtsmen and local customs officers can be extremely dogmatic in their interpretation of the rules.

If anyone reading this needs more details then I will be happy to supply them. Contact www.mailasail.com. Customs here are not necessarily malicious but one set of customs will not take into account the errors of other custom officers. There seems to be a mindset of obeying rules regardless of the circumstances. We have heard of several other cases of this.