Sausage Roll Table of Fame - Sorry Day

The Bloke here,

It is a sad day because two entries on the table of fame have had to be removed. One at the request of the creator of the little delights and the other because of the close of the cafe involved. It was the Orford Cafe and the owner died. His family have decided not to continue with the business so it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to the Orford Cafe and their great sausage rolls.

RIP

Sausage Roll Table of Fame - Update

To quote the great Banjo Patterson, "There was movement at the station for the word had passed around ..." and what a move. Jackman and McRoss have moved down to number 5 from number 1. Their latest offering lacks the flavour and moisture of their earlier offering. We feel that success has brought about the inevitable complacency, their once GREAT sausage roll needs some attention.

The real mover, however, has been Cottage Point Cafe. What an outstanding result. Described as having potential 4 years ago this sausage roll has come of age. Jumping from number 17 to number 2 on the Table of Fame. What a performer! A handsome offering it is, large and moist with bundles of flavour. Trent and Ange have done a fabulous job. This sausage roll is not to be missed. So if you are up the creeks in Pittwater this is a must sample sausage roll.

Cottage Point Cafe - Sausage roll, a great performer

To conclude, let me reassure my avid following that I have not been asleep at the wheel. I have been sampling sausage rolls at ever opportunity. Alas it is difficult to find a sausage roll worthy of mention and indeed I have on many occasions failed to completely consume some offering, choosing to save the calories for other dinning opportunities.

Well that is all from me as I need to rest up in anticipation of a return to Perth and the home of the best sausage roll in Australia. No sausage roll can ever take the place of those that my MUM makes.

Locked Behind Bars

We arrived in Laurieton crossing the Camden Haven bar at the appropriate time. The forecasters had done a great job and the swell height had indeed dropped to 1m making our entry an easy one.

Since our last visit, 2 public moorings have been installed off the Laurieton United Services Club. Luckily, one was unused and available to us. We grabbed it enthusiastically since we are still mentally scarred from our wind-against-tide experience that ended up in ‘keel wrap’ on our last visit. Although it was really a 24hr courtesy mooring we finished up hanging from it for 10 days.  A particularly high High pressure system of 1040hP sat in the Tasman Sea and pushed up a big swell out in the ocean. Sitting in a calm river was very much the place to be. 

Our view of 'Big Brother'

  

Fellow imprisoned sailors became happy companions sharing walks, trips to the legendary Art Deco Laurieton Cinema, bus trips to Lake Macquarie and pub food at the Laurieton United Services Club.

  

Swells and surf everywhere and more especially across the bar, and so locking us in.

Although the days were short, the sunsets were sensational.

Shorts Days with Short Hop to Seal Rocks

Since we were barely one week beyond the winter solstice - the shortest day of the year, we were endeavouring to keep our day-hops short. From Port Stephens onward, traveling north needed both swell height and the tides to be factored in. In order to access safe harbours such as Laurieton/Camden Haven or Port Macquarie we required low swell, and even then wouldn’t be able to enter any of those destinations until at least 2-3 hours into the making tide. We had already ruled out re-visiting Forster -Tuncurry. The tidal rip there making anchoring, with a decent rode paid out, very awkward and the mini-jetties, we found last time, a nightmare to lasso.  Laurieton was our target to sit out 3 days of northerlies.

 

Our anchorage at Wanda Beach was great for southerly conditions.

Departing Wanda Beach heading for the exit/entrance to Port Stephens.

We were just one of 3 boats heading out.

 

On the solstice, sunset was 4:48pm so with the shortened days we planned to leave Port Stephens and 'steal a base" by anchoring at Broughton Island. It offers a good range of anchorages. However when it came to it, the Bloke decided that we'd continue on a bit further to Seal Rocks. Why pull up at midday when we could keep going for another 3 hours? Although known to be swell prone, we thought we might get a bit of kip there before moving on.

We rather liked the look of Seal Rocks. The holding was excellent in sand and the anchor snatched in very positively. We imagine that it must be a popular spot in the summer.

The swell does sneak in through this gap,  but less so at low tide.

Definitely a gently shoaling surge beach at the throat of the bay.

Cheerful bird outside the laundry at Nelson Bay marina.

Fish and Chips at Patonga

Passion for Fish and Chips means the Bloke is frequently making destination plans around the availability of such treats on a Friday. He eagerly seeks them out as a reward for good deeds done during the week. Since our intention was to rendezvous with Southern Belle for one last weekend before heading away from Pittwater northbound, a Friday Lunchtime Fish and Chip prospect emerged at Patonga.

The Patonga Pub

 

We’d never gone across to the northern shores of Broken Bay and the tending northerly weather pattern fitted in with the Bloke's scheme. The Patonga Pub is highly regarded as a destination and to further encourage visitors using a water approach, they have 2 courtesy moorings. First come, first served. No bookings are required although anchoring is also a viable option.

The Patonga Pub has been renovated and upgraded to a very high standard and it’s not hard to imagine that it would be heaving with patrons during the summer. It was still doing a brisk trade on this chilly June afternoon. Our flathead and chips ‘hit the spot’ and required a walk around the historic village of Patonga to help ease it down before returning to the boat.

 

The old school house

A Lucky Swap’N’Go

“Use it or loose it” is a common enough saying but when it comes it plays out in wicked ways. Leaving the boat unattended in a marina is asking for trouble so returning from a month away visiting the family on both sides of the continent (by plane) left us very exposed. What woukd we discover this time?

OK so the front heads looked like the joker valve may have been a bit leaky. We’ll swap it out with a spare to stop ‘back leakage’. On the face of it, Zofia was pretty clean. The waterline couldn’t be described as a scum line. Topsides weren’t covered in bird poop. So far so good. 

Waiting first pick-up with Coles crossed off the list.

A day spent re-provisioning with the help of cruising friends George and Gail (SV Southern Belle) saw an efficient conversion of $1,000 to a pile of goods. 

Now to stow it all away - groan!

We were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. We planed to cast off the lines on Wednesday after a water top up and last minute wash. Fuel could be obtained at RMYC en route to Coasters retreat. Phew, how good would that be?

The Bloke fired up the motor. Looking good. Switching on the navigation equipment however delivered a different message. “Computer says NO!” Our Raymarine C80 Chartplotter has been a bit temperamental, occasionally displaying white lines and ‘snow’. No amount of rubbing, squeezing or blowing with compressed air would make a difference. B U G G E R! We’ve already costed the replacement of our original and ‘now superseded’ system. I’ll say it fast ~ $15K . Youch.

It does rather pay off to get to know your neighbours. The Bloke took no time befriending Jon and Prue from a larger Jeanneau further up the jetty before we’d even abandoned Zofia to her deterioration. Over sundowners he’d learned that they were up for significant rewiring after a nearby boat took a direct lightening strike. Their own boat was in the highly charged fallout zone. A Raymarine technician was on our jetty attending to their boat at the very moment we discovered that the computer said “NO”. After obtaining permission to speak with Prue’s technician, it turns out that our C80 problem was quite common. Who knew? We could wait until next week for their electrical guy to take a look and fix ours or we could Swap’N’Go with a reconditioned one they happened to to have at the workshop. 

 

Testing all the input signals - the radar sweep in purple. 

Aquatronics took our old display back to base, transferred our waypoints and returned with the replacement. There were only a few settings to reinstate via the Presentation/Chart layers menu:-

• - Radar. ON
• - AIS layer ON
• -Baud rate adjustment for the AIS display because our AIS is a Simrad via the System setup/ System integration menu.
• NMEA port settings value = AIS 38400

Happy Days are here again. From the look of it: Job done!

You don’t get much luckier than that and $325 sounds soooo much better than $15,000. And better still, just a 2 hour turn around and we were on our way! 

Michael
Aquatronics Marine

Mobile: +61 418 441 140 

Office Tel: +61 2 9905 5655

Michael@aquatronics.com.au

www.aquatronics.com.au

Consigned To Spares

We’ve been scrutinizing our anchor chain when deploying the anchor of late. Is the chain stretched and twisted? The bow rollers certainly look a bit worn. It’s a bit of a chicken/egg conundrum. What is causing what? Replacing the rollers might provide some answers, however you can’t just buy them.

We trawled through old photos. What did the bow roller originally look like? What kind of profile did they have to begin with? In any instance 97mm width replacements were nowhere to be found. They’d need to be machined for us. 

Bermagui proved an opportunity too good to miss. We would be tied up to the Fishing Co-op Wharf for 4-5 nights meaning we would not be dependent on our anchor. There's a reasonably big fishing fleet based in Bermagui and a boat yard to support it. There was a fair chance we’d be able to get a new replacement pair of bow rollers machined.

Wear was very evident on both rollers and it was quite square on one of them. No wonder the chain was bouncing under the anchor locker lid.

The Bloke walked across to the boat yard each day to check on progress and luckily they were able to manufacture the replacements. They are not white but apparently made of a much stronger material. Fingers are crossed that twisted anchor chain is a thing of the past. If not, our problem could be associated with stretched links. This would point to the need to replace the anchor chain. In truth it's probably a bit of both. Fingers are crossed for improvement and the original rollers have been consigned to ‘spares’.

Post script: The groove in the new roller was not deep enough so we had it re-machined in Bundaberg. The workshop asked for a sample of our 10mm short link chain to better model the guide channels. We are now delighted with the outcome. The chain deploys with less twists. The Blokes enthusiasm caused 3 more boats to get their rollers re/done too!