Cruise: Sailing the Adelaide metropolitan coast

My home town, Adelaide, is blessed with frequent southwesterly winds throughout the summer, which makes for excellent sailing up and down the predominantly north-south metropolitan coastline. In fact, it blows from this direction more than 50% of the time every afternoon during the summer, as you can see from the wind rose below. My favorite day trip is sailing from North Haven to Seacliff Beach, about 26 km (14 nautical miles) to the south, which takes in most of Adelaide's long metropolitan coastline of lovely sandy beaches. One can anchor easily almost anywhere along this stretch of coastline with good holding on the sandy seabed. Ideally drop anchor in a gap in the sea grass meadows, or a "white hole" as locals call it.  It's fun to try out new fishing spots or just enjoy the water.

Bombs away! That's me on the left.

Adelaide's beaches slope gently, which often means being 500m off shore to find 5m depth of water. For cats, such as Arriba (which draws only 1.1m), it poses absolutely no problem to get in close. Just remember that in a southwesterly you'll be anchoring off a lee shore! Gulf St. Vincent packs a mean punch with choppy seas if it has been blowing from the SW for a while, so stay far enough off shore to have room for error.

I like to anchor right in front of the Seacliff Hotel, or "The Cliff" as it is known to locals. It's a short swim or dinghy ride to the beach for any essential victuals.

Seacliff Hotel.

There's usually lots happening on the water at Seacliff Beach, with dinghy sailing and windsurfing both very popular. Another nearby landmark, just to the north of Seacliff, is the Brighton Jetty.

Brighton Jetty with Seacliff in the background.

The original Brighton Jetty, like most jetties of its era, was constructed with wooden pylons and was completely destroyed by a gale in the 1990s. The new concrete jetty is the result of  lobbying by locals, including my Mum, and the support of a mobile phone (cell phone) carrier, hence the tower at the end of the jetty.

Heading south into a south-westerly means pointing on the outbound leg of the trip, but one's reward is a splendid broad reach all the way home.

Wind rose for Adelaide during the Summer at 3pm.

And one is usually back at home port in time for sunset and happy hour.

 OVER.