Cold, Raining, Murky but still an Adventure…
Sitting at home one night my girlfriend looked over at me and said “oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, me and the girls are going away for a girls weekend at the wineries… is that cool?” “Um… yes sweetie that’s fine” I reply, straight away thinking that’s a free pass for me to bugger off up the coast… “When is it?” “Not for 4 weeks or so” she replied… Sweet plenty of time to get the boys sorted!
Before the conversation with my girlfriend had even finished I had a message on my phone. It was Baxter, his fiancée was going away with my girl and he wanted to know where we were going… Righto it’s on! Time to get the rest of the crew sorted! We straight away organise two possible trips – Up the coast or down the coast- After one of our crew unfortunately had to pull out (much to his dismay) due to an engagement party, the crew was down to 3. Baxter, Dane and Myself
We mull over the decision until the week before then decide due to a very poor weather forecast we should head north to one of our favourite dive spots, with many different dive locations it gave us more chance of finding somewhere to get wet!After an evening departure from home on the Friday night we were soon on the freeway with the boat in tow, the excitement was thick in the air. With talk of who was going to catch the biggest fish and find the biggest cray, the trip seemed to take no time at all and before we knew it we were arriving at our home away from home on the mid north coast of NSW…
Sleep was hard to come by that night as the nervous excitement was hard to control, though we all knew the weather forecast was dismal at best there was always hope! By 6am Saturday morning the hope had all but faded as we arrived at the boat ramp with strong winds, cold green water and thumping swell visible in the distance. “What do we do?” Dane asked, “Well, we are here now, let’s just go and check it out” I replied, “I was hoping you would say that!” Dane said, so within minutes the boat was in the water and we were smashing through the chop out the heads…
It quickly became apparent that diving our intended locations wasn’t really on the cards; it was just too green and rough so we decided to troll around some lures to fill in the time. This quickly paid off with all of us having a ball fighting swarms of BIG bonito and Mac Tuna on line. Before we knew it we had an esky full so the call was made to head in close and pull a couple of crays to finish off the BBQ later that night… This was easier said than done due to the green water and large swell but one of our favourite spots yielded the goods with a couple of greens hitting the esky, well really one and a half as a large eel decided it wanted half of one of the crays and a tug of war was on the cards!
A great BBQ was had that night with plenty of fish left over, we decided a trip down the pub was a good idea (is it ever a good idea when away with the boys?) as the chances of diving the following day weren’t looking good. A very late night and a 3 very sore heads later we awoke to more sun than the day before, so the call was once again made to launch the boat and go see what we could make of the day. After a few bacon and egg rolls and a slower/less motivated launch than the day before we were again heading out to sea…
On the way out Dane yelled out that he saw a whale breach not far out, so we made a turn and though we would go and check it out! I grab the camera and went over to the general area we thought it was only to see its big tail off in the distance diving straight down… “She will be gone for a while now” I said as we sat in the same spot idling. Five or so minutes passed before I heard Baxter yell and off to our left saw a massive Humpback whale breach less than 10 meters from our little boat, the splash from its huge body hitting the water spraying our boat…
Panic ensued, needless to say I grabbed a hand full of throttle (as you will see in the video) and we were out of there!
Our little boat was no match for a humpback that wanted its space! We were all a little shaken up by that so we headed in close to grab some crays to take home, picking up another Bonito on lure heading back in… Another of our favourite dive spots payed off and in no time at all we each had our bag limit of crays. After washing the boat we hit the road home and all laughed about how much fun can be had and the things us spearo’s (and fisho’s) get to see that not many others do. Some people would have turned around and headed home when faced with conditions like that but with a bit of persistence a lot of good times can still be had! Sure we didn’t take the fish by spear we wanted and really only spent a few hours in the water each day, but we all have memories of a trip away with some great friends that will never be forgotten! You could say we had a whale of a time….
Scott Northwood
