Passage to Lake Macquarie

[Kyle]Our leg north out of Sydney Harbour was both good and bad. The good part was that it was in mild tailwinds and slight following seas the whole way. We did the whole thing with just the spinnaker and one gybe midway for variety. The bad part of it was that it was cold and raining for almost the entire time. That and the lighter winds meant we had to depart our anchorage at 1:00am, in order to make it across the entrance bar at Lake Macquarie at the ideal time to do so.

I was tossing and turning anyway, so I just got up when I knew my alarm wasn't far off. Once I got outside and started getting rained on, I was properly awake and ready to go. I have always thought that getting wet was worse than being wet. Once all hope of staying dry has faded, it gets easier. Since Maryanne was tucked up warm in our berth, I decided to leave her there as long as I could. I ended up surprising myself by making it all of the way to the Lake Macquarie entrance before she appeared, wondering why I hadn't roused her for her normal 6am watch.

The bar crossing turned out to not be nearly as harrowing as can commonly be. We were a little early of the optimum time for transit and so the tide was a bit on the low side. Squinting at the range marks through the rain, I made a point of keeping exactly in the middle of the course. It reminded me of shooting an approach in an airplane. Maryanne was looking for the range markers and said she could only see one of them. That was always the goal in the airplane, too. Make the needles look like they were painted there. If the range marks are lined up, they should appear to merge. Usually, it's necessary to be a little off course to make room for vessels going the other way, but this time there was no one else around, so I wasn't taking any chances.

Crossing the bar at Lake Macquarie (Screenshot from web cam) - lovely calm conditions

Once we were safely in, we headed to the Swansea Bridge for our opening. Due to a slight miscommunication, the bridge tender had us listed for the wrong opening time. After hovering nearby for a bit, we finally got hold of him. He apologized, saying the mistake was on their end and then gave us an off-schedule opening to let us through.

Blue Skies arrived, and the Swansea bridge (eventually) opened for us

The really shallow part of the entrance to Lake Macquarie is at what is called “The dropoff”, just before the sea channel opens up into the "lake" part. There, just like in the Tamar in Tasmania, the outgoing lake water dumps its load of entrained particulates upon meeting the saltier sea. It's constantly silting up, being dredged out and shifting around. The chart is useless here; follow the buoys. Our shallowest spot was right by the dredge, where we hit a depth of 1.5m with the tide at 1.0m above datum. We made a note not to pass by on the way out at anything lower than that.

Once inside Lake Macquarie, we turned south and headed for the little indentation on the northeast side of Pulbah Island and picked up a public mooring ball. The lake itself is lovely and reminds us both of northern Chesapeake Bay in the U.S. It is pretty uniformly ten meters deep, with anything less marked by extensive buoyage. Apart from one small footpath that bisects the narrow aspect of the island, Pulbah has been protected in its natural state. Thus, our backdrop was old-growth forest trilling with the sounds of many different bird species. It was a thoroughly peaceful spot.

Off Pulbah Island (the largest island in the "lake")