Thursday 14 March Fingals Beach

Fingal beach

Pt Stephens volunteer marine rescue

Inspired by our bikes on the beach adventure a couple of days ago (and with David's bruised ankle mending nicely) we ventured off again from Nelson to Fingals beach on the ocean side. Another nice cycle path took us through park land without koalas to the beach community at Fingal. It's a fine white arc of sand backed by sand dunes and a surf life rescue base and looking out to Tomaree island and (out of sight) the Tomaree lighthouse. At low water there's a causeway allowing you to walk out to the island but we were there just after high water and the causeway was covered. I went for a swim in the sea while David made sure my towel didn't blow away by lying on it.

Our route back to Nelson diverted for a look at the holiday resort at Shoal Bay and a longer and more interesting visit to the Port Stephens Voluntary Marine Rescue (VMR) centre on the headland above Shoal Bay. VMR are a coastal watch organisation, something of a cross between the British Coastguard and RNLI, entirely manned by volunteers and with stations throughout the length of the coastline watching out for us sailors. We called this office before we came in through the heads to check local knowledge on the entry. VMR do a fine job and we had an opportunity to thank them for their watch. Dorothy made us most welcome and showed around their very well equipped nerve centre. If we were ever to get into trouble these are the people we'd call. We hope to never need that sort of assistance but good to know they're there, even if it's only to check a weather forecast.

A lovely surprise this evening; a phone call from charming Chantal & Fredy (Micromegas) to le tus know they're back from their trip home to Switzerland and looking forward to seeing us when we reach Brisbane. They plan to sail up the Queensland coast and to Indonesia this year so we can look forward to seeing them more often. We happily sailed together in New Caledonia and the passage from New Cal to Brisbane in November.