Bart Bear's Blog

The most exciting and scary part of our trip out to Montague Island was getting out through the breakwalls at the mouth of the river at Narooma and into the ocean. The passage is fairly narrow and it has a sand and rock bar across it under the water. That makes it very rough when the tide and wind are wrong. We hit it on a rough day and the waves were taller than our boat. The captain, Andy, waited just inside the breakwalls and when he saw a gap in the breakers he gunned the motor and "The Sherrif" went like a speedboat. We hit the gap and literally flew over the wave crest into calmer water. Dad tried to take photos as we went over the bar but the camera got splashed a lot and he was busy hanging on, so this is the only one that is OK and it doesn't show a really big wave. The run out to the island was fairly smooth after that. By the time we went back across the bar on the way home the sea was a lot flatter and Andy just surfed the boat across. On the way out to the island I had a go at fishing. Nathan, the crew, set a couple of lines out behind the boat and set me up to mind one of them. During the day we caught three big snapper. Actually, I felt a bit sorry for the poor fish, but it was pretty exciting as well.

Labels: boats, New South Wales, south coast