Moruya River

Matt’s birthday is Saturday 7th March – the day we planned our second attempt to leave Narooma. As I mentioned in the last blog post, on the Friday, when we were to leave originally, the conditions in the bar were too dangerous and so we postponed our departure. But on the morning of Matt’s birthday we woke up before our 6.30am alarm and went over to visually scope out the bar; and it was good news! Relatively flat and calm water. We were good to go! We raced back to the yacht and prepared to leave, stowing the tender on the deck. Breathing a big sigh of relief, we motored uneventfully and safely through the bar at 7.15am right before high tide.

Matt was very keen to head back to Montague Island, to see if he could catch himself a kingfish and then to swim with those pesky seals. Unfortunately, on reaching the island we found the water to be very choppy and swelly; quite uncomfortable. Undeterred, Matt set out his lines, our 43 foot yacht bobbing about and drifting amongst a fleet of little fishing boats. Spot the odd man out!

Unfortunately, it was not his day, and although he pulled up a few little fish, the mighty kingfish proved elusive. When there was no bait left, and the water deemed too choppy to be able to swim with the seals, we set our sails and headed north. A strong southerly wind pushed us north at a good pace, and we sailed all the way to Moruya. The swell picked up and soon we were riding three metre waves, with the occasional four metre wave thrown in for fun. It’s quite something to see a huge wall of water approaching the boat, but thankfully Cool Change handled it with ease, and I was remarkably ok with it!

We made such good time that we had to sail around in a holding pattern as we arrived substantially earlier than our 5pm to 6pm window for crossing the bar into the Moruya River. Moruya River also has a potentially hazardous bar and so we needed to time our entry carefully and precisely. When we did eventually motor through, there were waves breaking to the side of the entrance and even a surfer sitting out amongst the waves. That’s not something you see every day; a surfer in a bar entrance! So it was with some trepidation that we motored carefully into the bar and navigated our way through into the river. But it was all good! We had thought that we might be able to make it a fair way down the river, close to the town of Moruya, however, upon hitting the bottom several times we discovered that the river was not as deep as we had been led to believe. We eventually settled for anchoring in the deepest part of the river we could find, which was unfortunately quite far from the town, so that derailed our plans of a Pub dinner. While Matt chucked a line in, I pulled out the last of the Shepherd’s Pie from the freezer (thanks Mum). Paired with the last bottle of Shiraz that I’d saved for this very occasion, we celebrated Matt’s birthday. Oh, and he did catch a little fish! Happy Birthday Matt!

Unfortunately, during our sail to Moruya we managed to put a couple of small tears in the sail. Thinking that we might be able to do a temporary repair, we pulled the sail down to have a closer look. In doing so, we managed to damage all five battens in the sail. Yes, that’s right, all five! We stupidly pulled the sail around onto the front deck and in doing so either outright snapped or twisted all the battens. What we should have done was drop the sail down to the side of the boat. But we didn’t. You live and learn, I guess. We sure are doing a lot of learning!

After some creative problem solving we figured out that we weren’t going to be able to salvage any of the battens, and Matt found a guy in Jervis Bay (our next stop) who was able to order in the correct replacements within the week, as well as carry out some repairs to the sail. So we decided we might as well spend a few extra days in Moruya, before heading to Jervis Bay.

Moruya River is a very peaceful, quiet and pretty place. Here are some photos from our anchorage:

We had some pretty quiet and low key days here, just relaxing, as well as doing necessary jobs; Matt ran the generator to replenish our severely depleted house batteries (all those cloudy and rainy days), while I took the tender into town to do grocery shopping and laundry.

We did venture out one day to the neighbouring town of Broulee and Broulee Island. Broulee Island is connected to the mainland by a permanent sandbar and was touted as having some of the best snorkelling around, so we packed a bag with snorkel gear and towels and headed off. A local guy that we met at the Moruya boat ramp offered us a lift to Broulee Island, which cut 8 kilometres off our walk, so we accepted gratefully. It was a lovely warm and sunny day, and while the beaches on Broulee Island were all very pretty, unfortunately the water was extremely dirty with terrible visibility. We did try several snorkelling spots, but found the water to be just as filthy in both. Quite disappointing. However it was still a beautiful day and the long walk back along the gorgeous beaches gave us our exercise for the day, about 15 kilometres all up.

One night we saw the full moon rising up from the horizon:

We decided to jump in the tender and head to the beach to take some photos of the moon and stars. Unfortunately, the moon was so bright and it was quite cloudy, so we didn’t get the effect we were after, but Matt played around with a few different effects on his camera:

On our way back to Cool Change we noticed that the wake of the tender was glowing. Yep, glow in the dark water! The glow is due to the bioluminescence of some marine organisms and is super cool! We first noticed bioluminescence when flushing the toilet at night, tiny glowing spots in the water, and then we saw some in the wake of the tender at Narooma but not as strong as this. This bioluminescence was a really vibrant blue. The photos give you an idea, but don’t really capture the full effect. We were both pretty amazed, and hooned around for a bit to watch the glowing water.

As I write this we are in Jervis Bay. We left Moruya safely on 12th March and were tied up securely to a mooring in Jervis Bay by 1.15am the following morning. We have been exploring the Jervis Bay area for just over a week now, and during that short time the coronavirus situation has really escalated. Only a week or so ago, when we were talking to locals it was all about the impacts of the bushfires, and now it is nothing but ‘corona.’

At the moment we are in a pretty ok situation, probably better than most. Social distancing isn’t too hard for us as we aren’t seeing too many other people! Most of the activities we are wanting to do; hiking, cycling, swimming, snorkelling etcetera are outside, and we have a pretty self-sufficient boat that is quite well stocked with a range of food. We feel quite fortunate.

Our thoughts are with all our friends and family, hoping that they are coping ok in this strange time. We listen to the news most days, but it is hard to imagine the reality and the hype and hysteria that we are hearing about. We don’t know what we will find as we head further north towards Sydney, and how the rapidly changing coronavirus situation will affect us. We can only take it one day at a time.

Look after yourselves, dear readers, be kind to one another and stay safe. I’ll share our Jervis Bay adventures in the next post. It’s a very beautiful little place!