Sailing around Australia; Clarence River, Scary Bar Crossing

Clarence River, NSW

20/6/2015 - The Clarence River, Scary Bar Crossing

There’s been quite a bit of activity lately on our Sailing Around Australia Adventures. After a day or so stopover in Coff’s Harbour we moved on to the Clarence River.

We found tackling the Clarence River mouth bar is not for the feint hearted. After some fear and trepidation was pumped into us by several people we had spoken to about it, we called the Iluka /Yamba Marine rescue as we approached.

The reply was that the bar conditions were pretty good, but it was up to us to decide whether or not to cross it, and whether to use the south entry path or the north.

As we talked to the Marine rescue, we saw fishing trawlers coming across the bar and rounding the southern rock wall, heading back to shore then doing a large arc to take them out to sea.

I watched the next trawler come out and as it got level with the rock wall, a large wave with streaming white water off the top, pushed right through and smashed against the southern wall. It picked up the 100 or so tonnes of trawler like a rubber ducky in a bath tub. This immediately scrubbed the southern entry for us.

Easy Tiger has what are called mini keels. That is the keels underneath are far smaller than a normal yacht, which is great if you want to go into shallow waters, but not great if you have a side on force. With a side force such as wind or current, Easy Tiger can literally be pushed sideways without too much effort.

If we had tried to go into the Clarence river using the southern entry line, powerful swell could have hit Easy Tiger side on and without deep keels to hold our line we would be swept sideways on to the rock wall.

So in keeping with the playschool tradition of selecting a window to look through, I calmly suggested to Leanne that we would use the northern entrance line today.

Across the middle of the entrance to the Clarence river, there is a large sand bank where the sand that has been carried out by the river water lies. In order to get to the northern line, we motored around this area, going slightly past the bar. What's scary about this is that waves are breaking on to this sand bar, so we are trying to go in between the breaking waves and the rock wall.

As we turned Easy Tiger on to the northern entrance line for the Clarence River, I said to Leanne to keep an eye out for any big waves. Too late. A 2 metre wave broke about 20 metres square on our port side. I spun the helm hard to starboard , but there wasn’t enough time to turn away and surf down the wave. The white water slammed into Easy Tiger and lifted the port hull up about 2 metres.

If we were on a small hobie cat, or surf cat half the fun would have been to sail along with one hull up in the air while all those on board would hang off the side. When we are in a 12metre, 9 tonne boat with all our worldly possessions on board, sailing along at a steep angle with one hull up, is the exact opposite of fun.

Fortunately, the wave that hit is passed by without pushing us sideways towards the rock wall too much. I was able to recover with some effort on the helm and continue our on the northern route into the river.

Normally, with bar crossings there is a line marked on the chart that you should follow. This day I had Leanne following on the electronic chart known as Navionics. Navionics is an app Leanne has on her Ipad, that uses GPS to show you where you are on the chart. So, Leanne would let me know which way to turn according to the line and I was able to keep a visual check.

As we entered through the rockwalls either side that create the channel we had to go diagonally to follow the proper route. I was being advised by Leanne to turn to port, but the more I turned, the more sideways the boat travelled down the channel. The ingoing tide creates quite a current that we seemed to be at the mercy of. Fortunately no harm done, just the skippers heart rate once again reaching the pounding stage.

Not far up the Clarence River, is another rock wall, that “fences” of the Iluka bay. This makes a serene anchorage with room for many boats.

There is a jetty there where we tied up our dinghy and ventured ashore to find the very pleasant small town of Iluka. Venturing a bit further we found the walk trail to Iluka Bluff, which is a very nice stroll trough some rainforest.

The next day we set out on a dinghy adventure with Neville and Amanda off Bossa Nova. The dinghy enjoyed zooming along the calm waters of the river, so we found ourselves in the town of Yamba in quick time.

After some hard work walking up a steep hill we found the Pacific Hotel. This hotel has spectacular views from the restaurant over the Clarence river entrance bar. Of course it didn’t look half as scary from there.