Clarence Town

Macgregor 26 Clarence RIver Cruise - Jan 2016 Part 1

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• published: 09 Jan 2016
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Part 1 of an enjoyable 9 days on the mighty Clarence River in January 2016. The Clarence River is a long wide deep river in a mostly flat part of the country. It’s perfect for some nice calm flatwater sailing – pretty much a trailer sailer heaven, and fine for cats and most keelers too – great for the power cruisers also of course. As Simon Carter states in his great Clarence cruising videos on youtube, it is very much an underutilized river. There really aren’t many boats at all, which is confusing because it is a great sailing river! There are some charming sleepy riverside towns on the Clarence, each with bucket loads of character. Each also has a great riverside pub and they have excellent free public pontoons. Overnight staying on them seems fine and there really was hardly any other boats to worry about – this was in school holiday time too! The one at Maclean has free power and water (why in QLD do we pay more for boat rego than anywhere else and yet hardly any of it seems to be spent on facilities for us, like it clearly does elsewhere – well done NSW!) Most people will think its either Maclean, or Ulmarra that have it in the charm stakes, however we were very impressed with Grafton. With its tree lined streets (some of those trees are gigantic!), majestic churches and colonial era buildings oozing buckets of character and charm, not to mention its modern shopping Centre - all within easy walking distance of the free public pontoon, it is the winner for us! We stayed at the Yamba Marina for 3 nights, price of a berth for 10 meter or below boats was $36 per night including power and water (bring your own hose as always) – cheaper than staying at the Caravan park and certainly more visually appealing! Secure car and trailer parking is $15 per night or $90 per week. Key deposit is $50. One washer and dryer in the launderette and they are $4 each in dollar coins (These prices are current for January 2016). You can buy good waterproof boating maps of the Clarence online for $7 posted Oz wide http://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/maritime/using-waterways/maps/boating-maps.html However they are not needed. Clarence Tourism produces a brilliant guide including all the maps you need, freely available to download. http://www.clarencetourism.com/media/docs/sailingandcruising_guide_web.pdf Otherwise there is a free hardcopy version of it available in the Marina office at Yamba, and this version has a fold out map of of the river. There are just two bridges to worry about on the Clarence. The Harwood Bridge (8.5 meter clearance closed and 36.5 meter open) and the other at Grafton (6.6metre clearance). The Harwood bridge can be opened with 24 hours’ notice by calling the bridge operator. It can only be operated at 06:00 and 18:00 in school holiday times. We simply lowered our mast half way down (with our gin pole) to go under it. Another option would be to skip Yamba and start your cruise at Harwood which is near the Highway, and has a large public pontoon, boat ramp and area where you could leave your rig. Launching here would let you experience the best part of the river without the Harwood bridge. A new bridge to replace the Harwood Bridge in the future will have a clearance of 30 meters. We lowered our mast to get under the Grafton bridge because this gives you access to the free public pontoons and makes you central to town where as if you stay on the Eastern side of the bridge, there is no pontoon, and you will have quite a bit further to walk. There are a couple of sets of powerlines across the Clarence at about 17 meters. There are also lines across Susan Island in Grafton at 9 meters, although most sailing boats are not going to go past Grafton so that’s not really a concern. (EDIT: I am told it is nice up past Susan Island so may be well worth leaving the mast down from Grafton to after Susan Island power lines, we will do that next time!) Susan Island is home to the largest fruit bat colony in the Southern Hemisphere and seeing the highway in the sky, of thousands and thousands of bats flying up the river each night on Dusk is something to behold. That was our fist time on the Clarence but we will be back!