As passages go this one took longer than it ought. The wind direction was typically diametrically opposed to prediction and of course on the nose (OTN.) Instead of a nice southerly breeze pushing us up north to Pittwater we had north north Easterly punching us in the face. This was unfortunate on several levels. Rose Bay is no place to try to scrape your hull, even though I knew EV was handling rather sluggish. Peering down from the surface I’d seen it worse so I thought the props must be pretty foul, but we were going to sail down wind for a couple of hours…right? So no need to add a lot of fuel to the equation…right? Just under a quarter tank should be plenty…right?
Headlands are always lumpy with swirling currents and accelerated winds from weird directions. I could barely make 3kts punching our way out of Sydney Harbor with both engines on but soon we’ll be sailing and both engines will be off. Wrong. With sails sheeted in tight and both engines laboring we made Barrenjoey headland as the sun was setting. That’s got to be some kind of record for a 25-mile hop. The next day we putted over to Cruisers Retreat and picked up a mooring and the next morning I was chipping away at a ball of crusty crap on both props. Mystery solved.
We’d heard that locals call this bay The Basin and that it features some nice hikes and petroglyphs so as soon as I chipped away most of the barnacles off the propellor blades, which involves holding my breath while diving down to the bottom of the sail drives, grabbing a barnacled blade with a gloved hand and chipping away with a stainless steel scraper until my brain screams out “DO YOU WANT TO DIE HERE OR DO YOU WANT TO FIND SOME AIR ASAP?” So far, air has won. We scheduled an early morning hike due to a warning that the path up to the carvings can be steep and the day would be hot.
Oh yes, it got steep and painful, reminding us of Chacachacari, Trinidad, where we were circled by vultures the entire way up, or maybe the mountain pass over Fatu Hiva.
Eventually we saw signs of…signs, and entered the petroglyphs site which was not especially well protected like others we’d seen.
Plaques described how Aboriginals used shells and rocks to hammer a line of holes 5 to 10mm deep and then scratched, using water as a lubricant, a connecting channel between them. Those who ought to know figure that they could finish about a meter and a quarter in an hour in the soft Australian sandstone.
We spent quite a while tracing the outlines of some of the figures which were familiar to us from the rock paintings we’d seen and the flat table of rock that they chose was instantly recognizable as a sacred site, almost like we’d seen it before.
Turns out that at a certain age, as hard as it is to haul one’s aging body up an incredibly steep incline for hours, the knee pain of a nasty descent is worse. By the time we eventually reached the bottom it had taken us so long that we were in full afternoon Aussie sun so we quickly diverted over to a shady spot, in beautiful basin park.
The park has an Aussie kind of collection of animals just hanging out. You should have heard the scream from a family after they discovered this beast while picnicking within a meter of it.
It typically takes us about twice as long as the Aussie brochure says it will so we find that a ratio of 1 Aussie hour equals about 2 Escape Velocities, which suffices for planning purposes, unless wind and waves interfere, but you know, the best laid plans…