Port Macquarie

[Kyle]At our next stop at Port Macquarie, high tide was predicted to fall at midday. That meant we had to be out of Coff’s Harbour by 3am to make it. Oh, are we ready for a rest.

The sail was straightforward enough, although we had a little less wind than we would have liked. We ended up arriving just after the flood switched to ebb at the entrance. It was just starting to get a little rough and is definitely the bounciest arrival we have he’d so far.

The local webcam catches Begonia entering the bar

We picked up an unoccupied public mooring a couple of spaces from another catamaran called Bagheera. Our mooring was right in line with the entrance. We could see by the time that we tied up that the crossing at the bar had already become treacherous. We had just made it. Time for an afternoon nap.

We were just about to sit down for dinner when Maryanne noticed that she he’d received an facebook message from Bagheera wishing us a 'Happy Thanksgiving'. With super sleuthing powers, they had tracked us down via Google, noticed the flag and decided to wish us a happy holiday. We explained that we were winding down for the day, but promised to try to meet up with them the next day.

It ended up being drizzly, smoky and gray the next morning. Maybe the first will help with the second. As such, it took us some time to get up the motivation to go out in it. Our plan was to take an easy afternoon ashore walking around some of the town’s parks, locate a computer cable we couldn’t get in Coff’s and get an early night.

Before we did that, though, we swung by Bagheera for a cup of tea. Our timing couldn’t have been better. The drizzle switched to rain just after we arrived. The owners were Murray and Sheryl. They had only had their boat for four months after deciding to retire early and go sailing. Prior to this, they had virtually no sailing experience other than their initial course. They just decided they wanted to do it and jumped right in. They told us we were the first other cruisers that had visited them on the boat. {Maryanne: They are so organized they even have their own youtube channel for Bagheera: The Blue Nomads}

Had they not told us that, I would have guessed they have been doing it for at least a few years. They seemed to know their stuff and were loaded with good information about the coastline to come. They are heading north, with the goal of getting to the tropics right when their insurance company will allow it. That’s about when we’ll be there, too, so I’m sure we’ll run into them again soon.

Around Port Macquarie, and sunset aboard

Ashore, we failed to find the computer part for which we were looking. We then took the long loop around Kooloobung Creek Nature Park, which is supposed to have a population of koalas. We didn’t find any, although we met several locals who say they see them all of the time. We did, however, get to see some flying foxes (bats) fitfully rousing from their sleep to go on their nightly bug hunt.