Sydney Harbour: Manly Cove anchorage

We have visited this anchorage in the north harbour several times in the last months and enjoy our stays in this well known and pleasant spot.

The whole anchorage is dominated by the Manly Wharf and a continuous stream of ferries heading to and from Sydney.  Don't let this put you off and they are going so slow by the time they arrive close that there is very little wake to notice and you just have the friendly wave to the children and tourists a lot if you anchor close!  Manly wharf bars, cafes and the town shopping is very convenient and we enjoy a beer on the front watching Tiki bob about on her anchor.

It is fairly open and is not a good anchorage in southerly weather, yet in northerlies it is calm and in settled conditions a great place to swim from.  There is a swimming enclosure in the picture that is in regular use and can be used also if you are cautious of the stories about Bull sharks.  We tender up the beach and have never had any problems with landing ashore, being careful as there are often swimmers in the water.  The protected 'little penguins' come up the beach here and there is often a crowd of people at dusk waiting for a chance to see them, we have yet to see them and are still wary of running them over!  The come under a lot of pressure from foxes and dogs and there is a lot of effort to protect them and ensure they continue to breed.  They, well their support group even have their own website http://www.penguin-protectors.webs.com/

We took the picture of Tiki from the  west side of the cove at Manly Ocean world whilst having a coffee there on a warm sunny morning in March.

The anchorage is pretty large and we anchor anywhere off the beach and keeping clear of the ferry wharf on the east and we end up in 3 to 5m of water depending how close we move in to the swimming area.  It is a sand anchorage and holding is good. with sea-grass patches that can be seen and avoided easily. 

For electronic navigation we use our Ipad and are using charts from Navionics.  We also have INAVX downloaded as an app along with the charts.  We love both systems for various different reasons.  Navionics charts on the ipad now have a 'community layer' where anyone can upload chart information to the community, noting uncharted buoys, marks, changes etc to the Navionic charts. The anchor on the image is our upload of our anchor location in Manly Cove. We also use the google overlay for land features as well and find it really useful for working out where to head once ashore.  

I have put on a short video of Manly Cove so that you can get a good idea of what a lovely place it is.