Friday 18 October 2013
Coffs Harbour
The arrival of Chimere into Coffs Harbour, (instead of Sydney), 9 days out of Pt Vila, almost brings the return voyage to completion. Customs, immigration and quarantine formalities were completed on arrival with the crew, consisting of Skipper Bob (and fixer of autohelms), Carl, Cameron, David and Sally who did a sterling job with the weather generally good apart from the usual bad patches – wind on the nose or lumpy, horrible seas – which seem hard to avoid completely in a voyage extending beyond just a few days.
The diversion to Coffs Harbour was due to a patch of bad weather about three days ago and the reason I’m back at the saloon table typing up the day’s Ships Log is because last night Bob called to say that Cameron needed to get back to work as planned and Carl was concerned about the current fires (here in NSW) and understandably needed to get home too. That left just 3 onboard and there’s still the last bit to complete to Sydney before the the final batch of sailing volunteers step aboard for the last hop around to Westernport.
So, the long and the short of it is that late last night I booked a flight to Coffs Harbour, via Sydney, and after juggling a few work commitments, flew out of Melbourne at 1:00pm arriving here around 5:00pm this afternoon.
The weather upon arrival was wet, grey and gloomy, not really bushfire weather in these parts, but with a promise of improvement tomorrow. I certainly hope so.
We are currently tied up at the visitors wharf and after an amazing hamburger nearby for dinner it is now time for some sleep.
Smooth seas, fair breeze and back aboard once more…
Rob Latimer
Safe travels to Sydney Rob & crew. From a freezing cold Hobart. 🙂