Australia - Pacific Crossing Notes: A Sailor's Guide to the Coconut Milk Run - page 435

An Unscheduled Stopover
Twenty-four hours after departing Sydney, we finally reached Port Stephens, one of the few
all-weather ports of refuge along an inhospitable coast. Inside its bold headlands, Port
Stephens cuts a deep cleft into the mainland, branching into several arms that offer excel-
lent shelter. We'd already visited the area on our earlier trip south, when we'd taken refuge
from a Tasman Sea gale in North Arm Cove. This time, conditions were moderate enough
for us to simply duck into nearby Shoal Bay, drop the anchor, and give ourselves a night to
sleep on things. Happily, there was no need to rush into any decision, since we could count
on the stable weather pattern to provide moderate southeasterlies over the coming days.
Morning and a good night's sleep brought clarity to our minds, and we resolved to grit it
out on the inshore route despite the heavier shipping traffic. We did hang on to our original
hope of tackling the remaining distance in one shot if possible. While there are a number of
small harbors between Sydney and Brisbane, most lie behind shallow bars, making entry a
tricky proposition in all but the most favorable points of tide. This point was dramatically
illustrated in our cruising guide (Alan Lucas' excellent Cruising the New South Wales
Coast), with its images of fishing boats floundering in massive standing waves after miss-
ing the tide. Lucas also makes a point of detailing every shipwreck along this coast, with
long lists of macabre facts that fill the margins of nearly every page. We took his point to
heart and resolved to make as few stops as possible for simplicity's sake. After months on
the go, Markus and I could slip in and out of our four-hour watch keeping schedule easily.
Nicky had no qualms about blue water, either, so we set off again, somewhat wary of what
our new plan might bring us.
The strongest flow of the EAC usually occurs between Sugarloaf Point (twenty-five miles
north of Port Stephens) and Smoky Cape (another 100 NM to the north), so we'd have to
keep closer to shore than we would have liked - within three miles, give or take. At least
the swell had settled back down, giving us an easier ride. Geography was on our side, too:
as soon as we rounded Sugarloaf Point, the coastline angled slightly more north. We'd still
be heading northeast, but even a few degrees gained would make our course more tenable,
especially with the wind slowly backing from east to east-southeast.
Soon, things were looking up, and we were feeling good about our decision to stay inside
the 100 fathom line. Our unplanned stop in Port Stephens helped us make the mental shift
needed to embrace the inside route, and a sunny day didn't hurt, either. Now Namani was
sailing a good six knots to windward, practically racing along the coastline in comparison