Gold Coast to Ballina

Gold Coast

We anchored at the Gold Coast for a couple of nights near Seaworld, in the cut known as the Marine Stadium (or Bum's Bay), but again couldn't entice the crew into the beautiful clear water for a quick hull scrub. Sharks again, ho hum. By now we'd also discovered that Charles didn't know how to cook, and his hands were allergic to washing up liquid. Hohoho hum...

Choosing to press on in the fair weather, we finally returned to open ocean through the Gold Coast Seaway, set sail and quickly caught a nice big mahi-mahi. Supper!

I need a sharper knife!

We rounded Point Danger (thus leaving Queensland waters) then Cape Byron (easternmost point on the Ozzy mainland) and quickly covered the 60 nm down the coast to Ballina, but arrived a tad early to cross the bar at the mouth of the Richmond River.

These rivermouth bars are formed by the northward migration of the sand and can be treacherous in the wrong conditions, such as when >2 m ocean swells break over the bar. Or simply at the wrong phase of the tide, when the ebb can compound the river's natural flow and trigger even larger breakers.

Ballima entrance

We wanted to follow the standard advice, which is to cross the bar at least 3 hrs into the flood: say 1800. No strike that - we're now in New South Wales so the clocks have to change (strangely) - make that 1900.

However, Steve & Jo were due to meet us in Ballina and had already arrived and scoped out a berthing opportunity on the town quay near the RSL, so perhaps we could try a couple of hours earlier?

Beer-battered mahi-mahi

We sailed past on a recce fly-by and all seemed well, with breakers only really effecting the SE quadrant; we would come in from the NE then hug the northern breakwater. The nice chap from Marine Rescue Ballima, looking out over the entrance from their watch-tower, seemed to agree but hedged his bets with a "Decision made by the skipper at his own risk". Thanks, got that.

So we dropped the main, donned life-jackets (by law for bar-crossing in QLD & NSW) and flew in under motor and Genoa.

Snag-less. We were safely alongside by 1800, and enjoying our DIY beer-battered fish supper by sundown. Yum!