Arriving in Pittwater and collecting more gear.

We did our usual Tuesday thing this week and left the lovely Port Stephens behind at 5am with the promise from all weather forecasters of a nice 15kt northerly breeze for our sail down to Pittwater.

This time we had Roz on board who had joined us over the weekend from Albany. 

Our fresh new crew Roz working hard in the cockpit.

Before we left Port Stephens, we spent Sunday and Monday exploring further into the harbour and had a very pretty and peaceful night at Fame Cove sharing with just 2 other boats.

Fame Cove, Port Stephens - perfect sheltered anchorage.

Up the creek with the trusty tomato (aka the Tohatsu 3.5hp outboard)

Gorgeous Fame Cove sunset

We set off from Port Stephens early Tuesday morning with the prospect of an easy day cruise to Pittwater flying the asymmetric spinnaker.  Sadly the breeze never came and we ended up motoring the whole way over glassy seas. We covered the 76 miles to Broken Bay in about 11 hours and the auto pilot had a good day of not very challenging steering.

Entering Broken Bay after a long day of motoring when the promised wind didn't appear.

I think we had a mental picture of the Hawksbury and Pittwater being really busy, hard to find somewhere to anchor or moor and just generally a bit hectic like the Gold Coast. It was a lovely surprise to cruise in late in the afternoon and find an empty bay full of pink visitors moorings waiting for us. We are in Morning Bay which is on the west side of the Pittwater, surrounded by the Ku Ring Gai  Chase National Park.

The lovely quiet Morning Bay in Pittwater, far from the maddening crowd.

Upstart tucked right in close to the shore

It is very quiet and peaceful little bay, just a handful of houses with only water access and all with their own jetty on the shore backed by the national park. A YHA 100m up the track with nice hot rainwater showers and the only disturbance to the peace is the occasional dinghy coming past taking someone to work or the shops.

There are just squillions of yachts in this waterway, mostly on moorings on the opposite shores, with only a couple of metres between the boats. There is racing every day it seems and not a jetski to be seen anywhere, I think they must be banned.

Roz and Jenni got their land-legs back hiking up the hill behind the bay to take in the stunning views and meet some locals.

Other locals preferred to colour co-ordinate with our trusty tomato (Tohatsu)

Yesterday it rained all day and Jenni and Chris went on a long dinghy journey to find the young couple from Alaska who we had bought a small water maker from, and to find a bank so we could pay for it. A successful mission, we are now the proud owners of a little PowerSurvivor40e which I am hoping to fit soon so that we can have drinking water that doesn't taste bad. It runs on a measly 4 amps at 12 volts and produces about 5 litres and hour. A lovely high quality piece of engineering from the Swiss.

Talking of new gear, while we were in Coffs we had a day trip in a little backpackers hire car and drove down to South West Rocks to pick up an old Aries wind vane steering gear we bought months ago sight unseen for a song. It looks great and is lashed to the bulkhead in the forward cabin for the rest of the journey home.

Today Chris finally got around to changing the primary fuel filter and water trap. So glad he did it, the glass bowl was full of rusty water and gunk, an engine failure waiting to happen.

Yerk!  Good job Chris!
(technical explanation - the grungy fuel filter way overdue for replacement)

We are planning to make a move to Sydney Harbour in the next day or so.  For now we are enjoying the tranquility on our side of Pittwater.

Rainy day in Morning Bay.