We are in Pittwater/Cowan creek/Hawkesbury river area about 17 nm (30 km) north of Sydney. Coasters Retreat has been our base off and on, the home of our friends Lucie and Paul and the home port of their Amel Sharki.

Many cruisers we have met rave about this area and now we understand why.

It’s beautiful.

Full of National Parks, gorgeous endless bays, good fishing, great walks and plenty of birdlife.

Weekends are busier with other boaters and weekdays are still relatively quiet. A good balance for us😁

We plan to stay in this area exploring until the end of the year.

Pittwater and its offshoots has extensive protected bays with dozens of public moorings and hundreds of club moorings that can be used reducing the need to anchor.

Most moorings are an overnight stay keeping the many thousands of boats using these facilities flowing.

Last week we climbed to the top of the escarpment above Coasters. The views were amazing.

We walked across the top of the ridge to view the southern aspect towards Avalon, Scottish Island down to Newport and across Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park.

During the week we took a fast dingy ride from Coasters across to Palm beach and walked up to the Barrenjoey lighthouse.

Damischa Ridda, LaGecko along with Christine and Duncan from “Good as Gold” cruised together from Coasters to Patonga beach.

A slow sail got us there mid afternoon with enough time to walk around the village of Patonga admiring the artwork on garage doors and the flower litter from the jacaranda trees.

After dinner we motored up to America Bay and stayed there overnight.

The following morning we cruised up to Pinta bay for a few hours and had morning tea on Damischa.

There was enough room for three boats in the small bay and two resident sea eagles kept us entertained while they called each other. A serene special spot.

Yesterday we took a shopping trip into Mona Vale for supplies. Starting at Whitworths 😁 (where we purchased a new compass) then picking up our Dan Murphy order, and lastly the important stuff from Woolies.

Thankfully Paul picked us up in the dingy otherwise it would have been a big load to carry on and off the ferry back to LaGecko.