Arrival in Botany Bay

(Cabin Boy) Arthur Phillip Ransom Lesser posing on arrival in Frenchman's Bay, La Perouse - the site where his namesake first landed on the 18th of January 1788 with the 11 ships of the First Fleet (exactly 227 years, 10 months, and 11 days earlier).

Capt. Phillip only took a few days to decide that this wasn't the spot to settle a new colony, and we too are only planning to give it a couple of days.

Things have moved on a bit since the First Fleet. We're playing a plane-spotting game. EV is leading with 10 Qantas, Arthur and I'm second equal with 6 Jetstars and 6 Virgins respectively...

A day in the life... Bay cruising

So what do we do every day? I thought I'd track a day in photos to show you what happens during a 'usual' bay cruising day. Of course, no two days are alike but it gives a general idea. 

Woke up ~ 6am hearing Arthur asking Giles for tablet time. Wondered, briefly, about getting up to take a sunrise shot for my friend Sonia but thought better of it and went back to sleep. Sorry Son!

Woke again ~ 7am and read a little. Currently reading through a Peter James crime series (Roy Grace) and loving it!

Got up after 8 and prepared breakfast. Coffee (for me),  random hot drinks (for everyone else), croissants and pane au chocolate (on special yesterday at the supermarket).

Breakfast

After breakfast I went for a row to shore and a walk along the beach. All by myself! It was delightful. Solved all the worlds problem or at least began solving my own.

Back on board to find the crew fishing. 

Is she catching the jetski??

And colouring.

Decided to use up old bananas by making a banana loaf. 

Finished measuring the ingredients (stowed them in the oven so they wouldn't spill) before we set sail for the opposite side of the bay (better for the forecast). 

Choosing the listening story for the sailing

On the way we saw some whales. They were amazing! Definitely the best and closest we have seen to date. We must have spent at least an hour watching the family frolicking, smacking their flippers and tails in the water and leaping out of the water. See Giles' post for more details and much better photos!

Breaching whale

 

 

We picked up a mooring, made lunch and rowed ashore to explore. 

The kids went swimming and I found amazing shells. 

It isn't really cold enough for the wetsuit

 

Giles went exploring and found a camp group and another gorgeous beach which we went to check out.

Signs flip (to red) when closed for action

Meander on the mooring

Back to Meander to move to a deeper spot more suited for overnight. 

Dreaming about her birthday/Christmas list

More colouring

Finished the loaf (now morphed into cake with the addition of pecans and chocolate chips), had happy hour and dinner.

Kids are now in bed so it's time for the relaxing to really begin, after finishing the blog posts...

Jervis Bay Whales

Jervis Bay is turning out to be a splendid place. We came here with zero expectations, except that we had heard that it was an under-valued cruising destination a long day south of Sydney.

Frankly, it has stunned us so much that we've decided to pass up some perfectly good weather for heading north, just to hang around and enjoy the place.

There will be other blog posts about the swimming and beaches, but this one is just about the whales. As you will have gathered we've seen quite a few whales since rounding the corner at Gabo Island - I would say 30 to 50, or more. However the closest and clearest we have seen them (apart from the one we nearly hit near Gabo Island) is in Jervis Bay. They seem to come in here to frolic and generally show off - much to the delight of the whale-watch tour operators, I'll bet.

Well, today we were minding our own business just sailing across Jervis Bay from West to East in about 5 knots of wind when, all of a sudden, we had whales around us. There were 3 of them and, we reckon, they were definitely a Mum, a Dad, and a baby calf.

We carried on across the bay, thinking they'd just wander off, but they didn't. Instead they started wacking their fins on the water, waving their tales in the air, and even performing a couple of very spectacular "breaches". All this action attracted the commercial whale watching boats and a couple of small fishing boats which also stopped by to watch the show.

Mum and calf, cruising along.

Dad.

One of the whale watching tour boats

These guys thought maybe they might catch one...?

Dad, putting on a show

What goes up... must make a massive splash!

About this time all the other boats pushed off and left us to our gentle 5 knot drift. The whales however seemed to have other ideas. Perhaps they were perplexed by this boat that didn't make the horrible whiny noises the other boats did, or perhaps they just didn't know we were there at all...!? In any case, as we sailed on towards the Eastern shore the whales moved across on a collision course.

What to do?

Well, we figured they were pretty smart creatures, and WAY faster and more manouverable than we are, so we just pretty much sailed on and held our course...

Dad cruises across to intercept us

Hmmm. This is getting close.

Fin waving sequence at a close, but respectable, distance.

...until things got too close for comfort (about 1 boat length away seems to be the edge of my comfort zone) when we turned sharply away to at least keep out of flipper range!

Now less than 1 boat length (10m) away. That fin is WAY taller than we are!

Hmm. Not a good angle. Is this is a Humpback doing a Killer Whale impersonation?

After a bit of flipper waving, and some deep breathing, the whale family were on their way again. And we continued to find a delightful beach in a military weapons firing range, but that is a story for another day...

OK, some digital cropping and zooming of an earlier photo, but this is what we're glad we DIDN'T get to see close up. That whale is about 1.5x the length of our boat!

Batemans Bay - Ulladula

`So now is the time` That is how most adventures start, right?

That`s how this started. 5 hours may seem like a lot to you but not to us. Batmans Bay - Ulladula was 5 hours.

So when we came up to Ulladula we had a decision to make.

`Should we stay at Ulladula?`  We decided to stay for lunch. Lunch submerged into dinner. Dinner submerged into the night.

While mum and Katherine went to the laundrette Dad and I went shopping and bought me a straw hat.

Midday the next day we left to get to Jervis Bay.                                                                                                                                                         

By
   Evelyn

Meander view cafe

At the beach we made a cafe, here is the menu

~ Starters ~

Pipi Cakes ( like fish cakes )

~ Mains ~

Pipi Pasta

Pipi Sushi

~ Desserts~

Pipi Cake

~ Drinks ~

Saltwater wine

Saltwater dessert wine

Saltwater pipi wine

Saltwater

No Refunds !!!

Jervis Bay

Crystal clear water, white sand beaches. Whales and dolphins jumping in the bay.

Kids frolicking in the water at 9am.

What's not to like?

Batemans Bay

We arrived in Batemans Bay on Friday after a short and relaxing cruise around from our overnight stop at  Barlings Beach. Coming into the bay we passed between Black Rock and the Tollgate Islets and headed to Chain Bay to stop for lunch, have a walk and fill in some time while we waited for the high tide to cross the bar.

Tollgate Islets, at the entrance to Batemans Bay

Tollgate Islets, or maybe a dinosaur??

Looking into Chain Bay

Rock pool exploration

Meander anchored in Chain Bay

After some initial rockpool exploration we moved up the beach to the park. We found a group of kangaroos sheltering under the trees. It was quite neat to see a few joeys pop their heads out of their pouches, they sure looked heavy!

Who is studying who?

And then it was back to the beach...

Chain Bay Beach

We had great fun exploring the sandstone cliffs, climbing them,  adding to the graffiti and generally marvelling at how cool it all was. Easy to climb rocks, real  quartz & sandstone,  awesome views, funky seaweed... And we pretty much had it all to ourselves. We saw about 5 other people while we were ashore. 

Mermaid necklaces

Quartz, of particular interest to Minecrafters

Sandstone graffitti

Then it was time to cross the bar from Batemans Bay to the Clyde River. We were expecting about 30cm clearance crossing the bar. The lowest depth we saw coming in was 2.5m. We draw ~1.9m so we were happy with that! 

Clyde River anchorage, south of Princes Highway Bridge

After anchoring we went ashore to check out the metropolis of Batemans Bay... 

To walk, or not to walk. That is the question...!

On Saturday we stopped traffic with Meander, literally! Well, it was the tourist boat that stopped the traffic but we delayed the restart for a bit. The ferry goes through the bridge twice a day giving tourists a look up the Clyde River. It is possible (supposedly) to arrange a boat opening but the usual way through is to ring the local marine store and request to follow the ferry through while the bridge is open. 

Crew preparing to travel under the bridge

Bridge up to let ferry through

And a little more up to let Meander through

Looks OK, I think?!

Made it!

Definitely through!! Phew!

Much better distance

I was pretty nervous going through the bridge as we had never done anything like this before. I find it difficult to measure distances and stress doesn't help the accuracy. With our shade cover installed Giles was unable to see the bridge so was relying on me to say if it was ok. The bridge operator was waving us through (or was he trying to signal something?) the light was red (is that starboard marker or a stop sign?) and we were underway.... We made it through  and the operator was waving at us to go faster, the words "hurry up" floated down for far, far above as we got closer, so we did! 

The anchorage behind Budd Island was beautiful. Peaceful, flat and still close enough to town for another excursion. Motoring up through the oyster frame in our dingy was fascinating as the tide was low & we could see all the baskets with oysters growing inside. There seemed to be plenty growing on the posts too. 

Mangroves on Budd Island, Clyde River

Oyster Farms, Clyde River

Clyde River Oysters

While ashore we came across lots of 'finger nail' shells.  We still need to look these up to learn what they are really called. But the kids collected several manicures worth and spent some time on our return giving themselves the longest fake nails any of us have ever seen. The decided that despite the 'nice look' the inability to use tablets, phones or pick up anything would render them useless. Another bullet dodged. 

Shell manicure #1

Shell manicure #2

Just so you don't think it's all beach walks and ice-cream on the trip we also squeezed in a trip to the supermarket. So the trip back to Meander in the dingy included 2 adults, 3 kids and 3 bags of shopping.  I guess we must have looked pretty low in the water!  

Today (Sunday) we went back into town to go the the museum and water gardens (recommended by our friends on Division II). Sadly the museum was closed but the gardens had plenty for us to see. Bats (or flying foxes) filled the trees, ducks, terns, swans, red-eyed-chicken-of-the-seas (another Division II influence) and eels swam in the water (along with the odd supermarket trolley). 

"Mum, if you were a duck you could have 11 children!"

Lots of beautiful things in the water & some not so beautiful

The Bats of Batemans Bay

Watching the bats

While the bats were pretty cool hanging around in the trees, flapping themselves cool with their wings the kids really wanted to see flying bats so with a couple of claps they did and I filmed the result!
 

After a hot walk we needed lunch. Our first family meal at a Thai restaurant was a huge success. Arthur was particularly pleased with his sunkist! 

Thai for lunch, it felt right given the temperature

After lunch it was a mad dash back to the dingy, then Meander to make the 2nd bridge opening of the day. If we missed it we'd also miss the tide to cross over the bar in the morning and then the southerly to take us to Ulladulla...  

Return trip through the bridge

We made it with plenty of time. We anchored just south of the bridge again. Giles went for a 3km walk to get some more gas, the kids played and I prepared for a BBQ dinner ashore.