Things that go bump in the night

23nd Oct 2010


After our record breaking speed of yesterday, the late night and early morning had us a little off the pace but still maintaining a very good 7+kts. The moon was full and with AIS and Radar humming, traffic was no problem so while we avoided hitting the big stuff, we did hit something through the night. I suspect it was a fishing float or similar as the impact on the hull sounded hard and though trivial in the retelling, it did tend to bring me up to a high alert state when I first heard it. Other than that the night was a good one and with the great speed we actually passed Coffs at about 03:45 ESST having elected to ‘push on’ to Port Macquarie.

This decision and our ultimate arrival around 13:30 saw the making of a number of new records for the trip. The furthest at 222nm, the fastest at an overall on track average of 7.3kts and the longest, although only just, at 31 hours.

On arrival at Port Macquarie, we were amused to find that the ‘Dad’s Army’ Marine rescue folk had not managed to lift their standards as set on our north bound trip. The interaction with ourselves and two other inbound cruisers was such that it was he first thing every spoke (and laughed) about on meeting once ashore but enough of all that as I’m sure they mean well!

The next trip is a short one down to Camden Haven as it was a place that still rates highly on my ‘must visit again’ list.