Culture in Cockle Bay 6th September

 

Tonight we are moored on the ocean side of Swansea Bridge in the Swansea Channel. We are off to Port Stephens tomorrow as the tide is favourable early in the morning. Rene is rocking gently in the current as the remainder of the ocean swells make their way up here. We should sleep well, so long as we don't bump the mooring too much. After a couple of weeks in Port Stephens we hope to get as far north as the Broughton Islands. These islands are about 8nm north east of Port Stephens. From here we will make our way back to Lake Macquarie to await the arrival of our first grandchild and make Rene ready for her rest at Toronto until next April.

This morning, after our lovely hot shower at RMYC Toronto, we motored around to Cockle Bay. Carol had told us about the Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery and the good coffee produced at the café there. They do a really nice Hazelnut Chocolate Slice too. The gallery is located next to the Marmong Marina overlooking the bay, with some interesting sculptures in the park surrounding it. We enjoyed viewing the contemporary exhibition and wandering around the grounds afterwards.

 

An artist at work in the grounds of the gallery

We had already decided to make a break from the lake on Saturday as the weather and tide combine to allow us to leave at about 7am. The plan was to motor down the channel to the Swansea Bridge and take up one of the courtesy moorings on the inland side for the night. We had already booked a bridge opening for 7am. We could clearly see the very shallow water along the edges of the channel so carefully followed the channel markers. Rene's draft is 1.8m, maybe slightly more loaded up as we are. Things were proceeding nicely when we suddenly felt a shudder and Rene's keel carved a little furrow in a sand ridge in the middle of the channel. It was over in a moment, thank goodness, and we continued on without incident. I guess the bottom of the keel is now shiny and clean.

On arrival at the bridge we set ourselves up to pick up the mooring rope on one of the buoys. The current was strong and we could feel the boat being pulled and pushed around. Unfortunately the mooring we chose had a rope that had been severed by a propeller so was useless. There is not much room on this side of the bridge and in the strong current we lined up for the second buoy. At that moment I heard the bridge alarm announcing that it was about to open and the operator called us through. We had jagged the 2pm opening. Now we are safely tied to one of the buoys on the ocean side for the night and hopefully will be off early in the morning. Peter cancelled our 7am bridge opening appointment.