ANCHORING DISASTER + Diving with SHARKS in Sydney + ABALONE Catch & Cook | Our very FIRST episode!

Indexed: 2026-05-22

[00:00:07]Welcome to the very first episode of Island Drifter Expeditions. My name is Tim. This is Fran. And we are in Sydney, Australia, living on board our beautiful old 46 ft sailboat called Jiselle.

[00:00:23]We have literally poured our blood, sweat, tears, and life savings into this dream of ours to set our floating home up to be a fully self-sufficient off-grid adventure machine that we can sail around the world on. When we first moved on board, we had no working stove, no fridge, no running water, no electrical power, and our dingy was a leaky little bathtub with one ore.

[00:00:46]Basically, we were living like it was 1900. It was tough, but we loved it. We then spent an entire year fixing our home up as we floated around Pitwater Harbor just north of Sydney, converting our tired old boat into a beautiful blue water cruiser. And while we will show you more of those early days in later episodes, today we're going to take you with us as we get a taste of the cruising life right here in our own backyard. Lucky for us, our local waterways offer some of the most beautiful little anchorages, pristine bush land, and great fishing you can find anywhere in the country. But little do we know that disaster was about to befall the good ship Jazelle, and this could well be our last adventure for a very long time.

[00:01:30]>> No.

[00:01:32]Oh my god, was terrible. Look what happened in here, Tim. I I hurt Tim.

[00:01:51]I decided to have a last minute dive around the local headland to get some seafood for our trip. However, it wasn't long before the local tax man came sniffing around.

[00:02:01]This fell here is a grey nurse shark and in my experience, a pretty chilled species. I can tell it's a dude because of these dangly bits here called claspers. and he's pretty much an average to medium size for grey nurses in this area on Sydney's northern beaches. In the 1950s and60s, grey nurses were hunted to near extinction here in Australia, having been falsely labeled as man-eaters. They are now protected all over the country and making a steady comeback. However, they are still classified as endangered with only about 2,000 on the entire east coast of Australia.

[00:02:39]This area is also quite good for a favorite local delicacy of mine. So, I pick up a couple to take back to Jiselle for lunch.

[00:02:47]I picked up a few tasty treats. One of them being one of my favorite things to eat that I can catch and gather around here. Uh, keep it in my live bait tank off the back of the boat. It's basically just a net. Um, I'll do this with crabs and and lobsters and and abalone. So, what we have here is a black lip abalone.

[00:03:10]Absolutely beautiful to eat. Basically, abalone can't stop bleeding. So, once you've nicked their bodies, they'll just keep bleeding until they die. So, what I like to do is I'll go up to an abalone.

[00:03:23]Um, and I'll measure it. I'll get my little measurer out top to bottom. make sure it's a legal size before I take it off the rock because once you start to try and pop them off the rock, you can nick their skin and and start the bleeding process which will eventually kill them. So, you want to make sure they're the right size before you take them off the rock. I grew up catching these guys diving for abalone um up on the midn north coast here in Australia.

[00:03:48]My uncle used to dive for them. A lot of my friends dive for them. My cousin dive for them. So, we kind of grew up uh eating these guys. They're a bit of a staple. And I've got a few spots up the coast where I know I can get really good abalone. What I've learned is you just want to cook it really hot really fast.

[00:04:04]You want it pretty much raw in the middle. Um just flash fry it on the outside and keep the ingredients as simple as you can. You don't want to mask that beautiful abalone flavor. Let those flavors sing. Keep it super simple. My technique is extra virgin olive oil, lemon, salt, pepper, nothing else. That's literally all you need.

[00:04:34]M. So good.

[00:04:43]Now it's >> Oh my god. Where will I sit?

[00:04:50]>> It's a bit like a bathtub.

[00:04:59]Whoops. A lot of stuff here. With Fran back on board, it was time to raise the sails and head off in search for a new anchorage.

[00:05:27]Pitwater and the waterways of Cohen Creek in Kuringai National Park are beautiful. With seemingly endless protected bays and anchorages, pristine Australian bush land, a myriad of bushw walking trails, and no phone reception, you really couldn't imagine that you were less than 25 km from the CBD of Australia's largest city. And it didn't take us long at all to fall in love with this wonderful part of the world.

[00:06:12]Kuringai Chase is Australia's second oldest national park and spans over an impressive 15,000 hectares. If you would like to explore this region by land, there are a number of ways to enter by road and then proceed on foot through one of the many walking trails that wind their way through this spectacular scenery. Maps and trail information are available from the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service.

[00:06:39]>> We're heading up into a place called Yowman's Bay.

[00:06:43]>> At the moment, we're the only ones here, which is super cool.

[00:06:47]>> We'll see. We'll see.

[00:06:51]>> So beautiful.

[00:06:58]While the hazard reduction burns going on cast an eerie scene for us, it just adds to the mystical qualities of this special place.

[00:07:14]Today is the official day we are beginning our adventures in.

[00:07:22]We were a bit upset because we could not leave Sydney but in the end we are very happy because we have so many nice place around here to explore. We didn't know we didn't have opportunity to do that because we were working very hard to prepare Gizelle to go to great bar reef but we are very happy to be here too and spend some time around. Look this spot now here. Incredible. And I think we'll be very very happy to do that.

[00:07:56]Yeah. Cheers.

[00:07:58]Woohoo. Cheers.

[00:08:01]>> It's not the best champagne in the world.

[00:08:03]>> No. But man, >> better than no champagne.

[00:08:07]>> Better than no champagne.

[00:08:20]And today will be another school day for Frenzy. We will have a anchorage day.

[00:08:27]Yeah. Let's learn about this and see how it will be. Mhm.

[00:08:34]>> Look at this. We got two big motorways going either side.

[00:08:38]>> Oh my god.

[00:08:41]This is awesome.

[00:08:43]>> This is the first time we've anchored actually with the new anchoring system.

[00:08:47]And the old anchoring system just didn't work. I had to pull it in by hand on a few occasions. And what we want to do is find a nice sandy bottom, which I believe we have here now.

[00:09:03]>> Ready?

[00:09:07]>> Go, my love.

[00:09:09]No.

[00:09:11]Ah. All right. All right.

[00:09:14]>> Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

[00:09:15]>> All right.

[00:09:18]>> Oh my god. Was terrible. Oh, look what happened in here. Tim, I I hurt Tim in the first a >> Oh, this not a good result.

[00:09:31]>> Oh, my friend Fran trod on the button and my hand got stuck in the winch.

[00:09:40]>> My god. Like you couldn't take off and look at that.

[00:09:44]>> Hell, man. And I really >> tickles.

[00:09:51]>> Man, >> I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

[00:09:55]My god.

[00:09:58]>> How I did that?

[00:10:00]>> I think I need to go to a might need to go to a doctor, Fran. It's prettying bad.

[00:10:09]>> Oh, no more. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

[00:10:13]like a murder.

[00:10:16]Oh, I got one window. What can I do?

[00:10:20][ __ ] >> We have to get that anchor off the front. Um, maybe get a tissue for me or something, Fran. Probably a good thing.

[00:10:27]>> Yeah, I feel so bad. Couldn't be terrible.

[00:10:35]My first experience was like a >> I could I couldn't oh my god just a little little thing I should pay attention you know if I didn't realize that whole system will be on and I couldn't hurt herself much much worse all because of little stupid thing.

[00:11:06]>> Safe to say our uh anchoring practice was a bit of a failure.

[00:11:12]>> Terrible.

[00:11:13]>> Um and um yeah, completely minced my hand up. But anyway, we got a northeast wind that's come up and our mooring in Church Point uh basically backs straight onto a really shallow shallow sandbank and we got spring low tide coming up.

[00:11:32]So, actually going onto our moing would be more complicated than than staying up here right now. So, we're going to pick up a moing and just chill and regroup and figure out what to do. But yeah, lessons learned. I think I would just like to say that this accident was absolutely no fault in the design of the anchoring system or the windless itself, but the problem lay in the old deck switches we had on board that sit open without any protection from somebody accidentally stepping on them. As well as having two people up front, which is never a good idea with such a powerful winch in operation.

[00:12:10]Better explain what just happened. Um, we were doing some uh anchoring drills cuz Fran's never anchored before.

[00:12:17]and we're testing our new anchoring system. So, for me to do that, I have to go up and then I have to press down on the on the windless button and then pull a little bit of chain out and then let it down. And what happened was Fran was filming and it's very hard when you're filming to be completely aware all around you. It's bloody complicated. So, she's focusing on the camera and totally by accident, um, she trot on the up button and even though I was pressing on the down button, it turns out the up button actually, um, overrides the down button, it turns out. And then what happened was as I was paying it out, the up um, came on very strong and just instantly pulled my hand in between the chain and the gypsy on the windless and then minced it up. It's cleaning up all right. I don't know if I broke anything.

[00:13:09]The little fingers pretty swollen and horrible looking, but it might just be a bit of bark. Um, I don't know if we'll go back to Sydney now. I think we'll be we'll see how we go overnight.

[00:13:19]>> I feel so sorry. I feel so I I still a bit nervous like I'm bubbling. My stomach bubbling.

[00:13:28]>> My I have a hard headache now. Um, looks like this that didn't happen, you know, like was like dream or something.

[00:13:39]I could not believe. And in the end, I think we we were lucky because it couldn't be much worse. Couldn't be. Oh my god.

[00:13:50]I don't know if I just love this area so much that I had simply willed my crush hand to be better. But that afternoon, feeling much better, we set off, not for Sydney, but deeper into the national park to continue our adventure. And it wasn't for another 3 days of fishing, diving, exploring, and boat work until I finally got to hospital for that X-ray.

[00:14:12]So, um, turns out the, uh, the finger is a lot worse than I expected. I'm in the hospital now. I got a X-ray done and looks pretty bad. I didn't have any idea how bad it was at the time, but I'll show you what I mean.

[00:14:34]Come on.

[00:14:37]That's my finger snapped.

[00:14:44]Snapped.

[00:14:47]So, um, yeah, now it's surgery and it's a little bit more complicated because I took a few days to get here. Should have come straight here. Anyway, wish me luck.

[00:14:57]kind of regretting not washing my hands before I came into hospital cuz I had this cast on and look down.

[00:15:08]I'll see you on the other side, guys.

[00:15:12]During surgery, while I was having a plate and six screws put into my broken finger, the surgeons also discovered that I had severed over 60% of the tendons in the next finger over and badly crushed the hand. So, I needed the tendons reattached and a pin inserted down to the second knuckle as well.

[00:15:30]Basically, I am lucky to still have my fingers at all.

[00:15:35]We learned some valuable lessons on this adventure. And while there is yet another speed hump in the road for us, we will continue preparations for our journey. No. So, make sure you tune in next episode as we team up with Michael and Jesse from Sailing Papau here in Pitwater to do the ultimate Sydney mud crab catch and cook.

[00:16:04]Heat.

[00:16:10]Heat.