Prime Seal Island

[Kyle]The night after we arrived at Prime Seal Island, the wind swung to the west and built. By morning, we had recorded an overnight peak of 44.5 knots. It stayed in the mid-thirties the whole next day with moderate rainfall. There was so much background noise that we could only hear each other if we were sat next to each other. The swell took a little time to turn to the new direction, so it was a pretty rolly day.

By the following morning, the wind was into the teens and the rain had decreased to an occasional drizzle. We decided now was our chance to get ashore and have a look around.

Prime Seal Island is the 5th largest of the 100 or so islands of the Furneaux Group. It is not currently populated, but has a flock of Merino wool sheep roaming its hills and a homestead for their visiting farmers. It was apparently not named such because it was a nice place to go ashore and watch the antics of the many adorable seals there. It seems that 19th Century explorers only knew how to do one thing when encountering animals in the wild. Maryanne did see one seal swimming in the water near Begonia as we were preparing to put the dinghy down. That is the only one we know is left for certain (Although it was reported to have a LOT of seals back in 1827).

Ashore, we joined what our topographic map showed as a trail, with the idea of making a big loop around the center of the island. The trails were really foot (and sometimes tractor) tracks that ran alongside various fences for the purpose of building and maintaining them.

We soon found ourselves unwittingly herding several shaggy Merino sheep that bolted as soon as they saw us and then did their best to stay at least a hundred meters ahead. The flock ran up the hill past our first turnoff and seemed to be very relieved that we had given up our low-speed chase. From there, it got hard to tell for sure where the trail was at all, so we just picked our way along any convenient sheep path that seemed to be going in generally the right direction. That worked for the most part. The only downside was that there was a lot of spinifex type tussock grass around and I had only worn shorts for landing the dinghy on the beach, so my poor legs got stabbed and scraped a lot.

In addition to the sheep, we also saw a few pademelons and I'm pretty sure I saw about a third of a second of a wombat diving into the bushes, I was surprised by how fast the little guy could run. {Maryanne: More hope than reality I think; we certainly didn't spot any of the characteristic cube shaped scat around, more likely a pademlon}. We also were occasionally startled by flocks of some quail-like birds that would suddenly come booming out a bush that we had approached too closely. All of the animals we encountered were exceptionally skittish. We were hoping the same was for any unseen snakes. In lots of places, we saw spent shotgun cartridges lying on the ground, which may explain it. We were hoping it wasn't some antisocial hillbilly trying to keep the tourists out. The only buildings we saw were unoccupied and there were no other boats pulled up on the beach beneath them, so we were pretty sure we were the only two people on the island.

After completing most of our loop, we took a side trail that looked like it was heading generally in the direction of the next ridge, where we figured we might get a good view. That trail was also clearly for fence maintenance, although it seems like it had not been used in a while. Lots of the adjacent fence was down and there were several places where we had to negotiate our way around downed trees. We again startled lots of sheep and a few pademelons.

Despite the recent heavy rains, the ground everywhere was dry; It was also scattered with bones, mostly from these two animals, although we did see a few from birds. As they are the last parts to degrade, they represent decades of those who were shot, injured or who couldn't make it through the winter.

At one spot, I found a fairly fresh lamb carcass. As I approached, it twitched. The poor thing was still alive. It could move a little, but seemed too stiff to stand. The only injury we could see was a bloody spot where the eye facing us had been, presumably already removed by a scavenger. As we neared, it wriggled at the sound of our approach, but seemed to have no flexibility at all. We wondered what could have happened. Was it bitten and paralyzed by a snake or is there some sort of disease that does this? Maybe it got injured during the storms we had just had.

We realized it would probably be best to put it out of its misery, but this whole section of island had no good rocks or clubs at hand. I could throw some sod at it or scrape it with a bush, but neither of those would do anything other than increase its distress. In the end, we realized we couldn't do anything other than just let it die in peace. Another storm was due that night and it seemed like it would not be making it through. {Maryanne: We did report our find, along with coordinates}.

We continued on until our map said the trail had ended. We had actually crossed the intervening ridge and had descended to the floor of the next shallow valley. At that point, Maryanne came up with a great idea: Why don't we leave the trail and try to find our way over to the newly grazed field along the coast? That way, we wouldn't have to climb over so many downed trees to get back. Sure, I thought. What's the worst that can happen?

It wasn't actually that bad. The sheep had grazed down a lot of the undergrowth. We only had a couple of places where we had to push our way through thick trees. We also may have technically got lost, but it's an island. We're bound to pop out somewhere we recognize.

When we finally did pop out for our last time, we had a much easier walk back through open fields that had long views all of the way to the beach where our dinghy was resting. After cresting a couple more rises, we were back on the sand taking the obligatory one-end-to-the-other beach walk before returning to Begonia to ride out the next storm, maybe two.

{Maryanne: We even spotted some peafowl on the island, and since we are staying in Peacock Bay, that seemed apt; we understand that they were introduced at some point in history and are clearly still thriving on the island}.

Trousers Bay, Flinders Island

[Kyle]Nobody really knows why they named it that. The leading theories seem a little thin to me. I think someone had had a little too much grog and was getting sick of naming places. Nonetheless, our next destination was called Trousers Bay on Flinders Island.

The sail from Spike Bay was more of what is getting to be too much of the usual around here: 20-30 knot headwinds. The forecast had been for fourteen. Typical. I'm starting to get a little weary with every day being a real sail stretcher. We also had wind against tide crossing the gaps between islands, which made everything even less comfortable. We were both relieved to find it relatively calm in Trousers Bay.

A BIG weather system was heading down the New South Wales coast and wreaking havoc there. The entire east coast of mainland Australia was experiencing once in fifty-year floods. Large debris, like pieces of buildings, was being washed out to sea, creating hazards for shipping. Our current weather on Flinders Island was way out at the leading edge of all of this. It was expected to be terrible here as well, but not for a day and a half or so. With this in mind, we were up early to do the top thing on Flinders: Climb the big hill.

To be honest, neither of us was really sure we wanted to tackle the climb. It was still cold and gusty and most of the time, we couldn't even see the tops of the mountains as they were enveloped in cloud. Still, we knew that we only had one chance, so off we went.

After rowing ashore, it is a 3.5km walk along the road to the trailhead. During that portion of our hike, which took about forty minutes, we saw exactly zero cars, but quite a lot of really sad road kill (wallabies and wombats).

After climbing over a stile, we encountered a boot cleaning station. There, we filled out the trail register and our flat hike turned immediately into an uphill one. We were headed to the summit of the Furneaux group's highest point, Strzelecki Peak.

The mountain is named after Sir Pawel Edmund de Strzelecki (a Polish explorer and geologist) by his friend Capt. Stokes of the HMS Beagle. Strzelecki is responsible for exploring huge swathes of Australia, including virtually every summit in Tasmania. I could find no direct evidence that he climbed this particular hill, but it seems unlikely that he didn't, considering the amount of time he took to get from Tasmania to Sydney and his proclivity for climbing everything along the way. {Maryanne: Actually he’d did climb it on the 13 January 1842, and while I’m interrupting Yes he was on the same HMS Beagle that Darwin sailed on, but about four years later}.

As the trail steepened and transitioned to big stone stairs (thanks, Park Service!), I imagined Sir Pawel bounding upwards, dressed in the style of the 19th Century, wearing a waistcoat and a cravat and remarking to his companions what a jolly good morning walk this was. I think Maryanne and I would characterize it more as relentless.

Still, once you put your head down and get into the groove of it, the climbing becomes a vigorous way to pass the time. Every now and then, we would break out of the forest into a clearing, which rewarded us with ever better views for our efforts.

Ascending Mt. Strzelecki to a cloudy, blustery top

Just before the summit, that all came to an end. We had entered the cloud base, which was whipping past us and turning everything wet. Since we were almost at the top, we decided to continue anyway, just so we could say we did.

When we got to the top, just fifteen meters short of the summit of Mt. Rugby, our other big Tasmanian climb, we could see no further than the edge of the summit boulder. We knew from looking up at it from Begonia the day before that we would fall halfway back to sea level if we took one step too far into the mist.

It was much too cold and gusty at the top for us to want to linger any longer than necessary, so we were quickly on our way back down. At the first lee we could find, we stopped for a few minutes for a snack and got lucky enough to see the cloud lift out of the way for just a few minutes. We could see the whole of the Furneaux group and even all of the way back to our last mainland Tasmanian anchorage. We were pleased to see that Begonia had stayed put in all of the day's gusty winds.

Views from the Strzelecki Peaks; the clouds parted for a few minutes allowing for a few pictures!

The way down was easier than going up, but not much faster. When climbing, the mountain is right in front of you, so it's easy to find and use hand and footholds. On the descent, it takes a great deal of care to keep momentum from carrying you off if you make a wrong step. We did well for the most part, with only a few minor slips. Just before we got off of the really steep part of the trail, I stepped on a rock that looked flatter than it was. My ankle rolled. I remember thinking that might hurt a bit, when my leg bent backwards and I fell on it. I'm pretty sure I felt my foot hit me in the back. That is not something that I should be able to do unless, of course, my leg had just snapped. Without the support of that leg under half of me, the rest of me did a forward roll right off of the side of the trail. Luckily, there were trees there to bring me to a stop. As I lay there upside down, unable to turn over because I had pinned most of my limbs under me, Maryanne's first words to me were, "Do you still have your phone?" followed by “Hold on. Let me get a picture.” She swears that she really does love me.

Following the photo, she did help me right myself and regain the trail. To my amazement, I was completely uninjured. Nothing was broken or punctured. I wasn't even sore. I was sure I would discover a serious injury later on, but for now, I was good to go.

On our walk back from the trail to the boat, we were picked up by a local, who saved us the last half of the walk. Even though we both were really starting to stiffen up by then, we knew we had managed to get away with something and decided to make up for the difference by doing the 1.9km Trouser Point Coastal walk as our extra credit assignment. We were both glad we did. It was wonderful, passing through fragrant causarina forests and over boulders covered with bright orange lichen. It was also nice and flat, which our sore muscles greatly appreciated.

Trousers Point Coastal Track

By the time we really were headed for the boat for real, it was getting to be that time of day when the wallabies were coming out for their evening meal, giving us plenty of excuses to stop and say hi. The four steps up the back of the boat from the dinghy felt almost as bad as the morning's climb. Almost. We certainly did sleep well that night!

[Maryanne]As for the name, there are two theories (according to one of the park notice boards. First (which I find the least likely) is of a fisherman who was anchored off the point and dragged ashore, he apparently scrambled to safety in the nick of time before his boat was lost, and found himself ashore without his trousers. The second (more plausible) is that a different wreck discharged a bunch of cargo ashore, including a large crate of trousers. But nobody really knows so you can go ahead and imagine your own scenario!

Flinders Island has three of Tasmania's 60 Great Short Walks. From Trousers Bay there are two readily accessible, and Kyle and I had disagreed on which one we'd do and 'negotiated' on the tougher 'Strzelecki Peaks' trail. Amazingly we managed to squeeze in BOTH during our day ashore, leaving us both happy (and exhausted).

[Kyle]The weather deteriorated overnight. By morning, it was blowing hard and raining in sheets. The 'eye' of the closed low-pressure system heading our way was now forecast to pass almost directly over us. This meant that, not only were we going to get the strongest of the winds, they would also be shifting rapidly from one direction to another. The east coast of Flinders does not have any anchorages that are protected from all sides, so it would be necessary for us to move to keep the land to windward.

Our first reposition needed to be done before dark, but it was a short one. All we needed to do was go around to the north side of Trousers Point peninsula to Fotheringate Bay and anchor there. Despite being nearby, conditions there were very different, likely due to our exact spacing with the mountains and valleys upwind. Half of the time, the wind was nothing, the other half it was gusting to thirty, sending us skittering all over our anchoring circle.

Overnight, the wind shift stabilized the direction and then it just blew hard. The wind started in the thirties and built. We recorded a peak of 46.9 knots. By morning, it was raining so hard that we couldn't even see the beach. A check of the weather revealed that the eye was now just about over us. We would then have three or four hours to get to our next anchorage on the east side of Prime Seal Island before the wind starts picking up again, this time from the west.

We pulled up the anchor in heavy rain, which stopped and then moderated for the trip to Prime Seal. The wind dropped to less than ten knots, which unfortunately wasn't enough to get us there before dark so we had to leave one engine running the whole time to keep our speed up.

We arrived half an hour before sunset, picked a spot that didn't look too weedy and set the anchor. Since we knew it was going to be blowing hard, we used a lot of power to back down. We thought we had it set, but then on our last big tug, we dragged. When we pulled it up it was choked with weed. Aaaugh! Second and third attempts gave the same result. By the fourth, it was getting so dark that it was hard to see landmarks for judging whether we were moving or not. Seeing all of this, the other boat at the island (Pipi), who was on a MAST (government) mooring, called us and said there were two empty fishermen's buoys behind him. I told him we would give anchoring one more try then consider it.

One more try later, we were milling around trying to find the buoys. With help from the other boat's spotlight, we were able to locate and pick it up. It turned out to be another regularly maintained government buoy. Most of the information we had said that there was only one here, but later research found reference to three buried deep in their website. That took some of the uncertainty out of wondering how old and sturdy the mooring is. It had been almost two hours since we had arrived at the island. Time to relax and let out a big breath, thankfully homemade potato soup was all ready to serve.

Spike Cove, Clarke Island

[Kyle]As has been usual lately, we left Foster Inlet as soon as it was light enough to do so. This time, the reason was the fast current that streams through the Banks Strait, the ten-mile gap between the Tasmanian mainland and Clarke Island, the southernmost in the Furneaux group. We were supposed to have slight headwinds for the crossing, which would be fine as long as we didn't have to fight the current as well. If we did that, we would end up tacking for hours and slowly losing ground in the process.

There were two problems with having the current with us. The first was that its speed would be added to ours, making it seem even windier than it already was. The second and main one was that it was going into the wind, which would heap up an even bigger sea for the same reason.

In preparation for the inevitable mess we were going to have to sail through, we put the reefed mainsail up in the calm of the anchorage before even lifting the anchor. That way, we would hopefully have no need to go forward when things were wild.

We got a little bonus. Before the current turned to flow through the strait, it ran parallel to the coast. As soon as we left the anchorage, we had a three-knot boost. For the above reasons, it did get ridiculously choppy as soon as we entered Banks Strait and I was soon rolling in our now too-big jib. With the help of the current, we were able to aim just a little upwind of our anchorage at Spike Cove in Clarke Island while still being about fifty-five degrees to the wind, which is much faster and slightly more comfortable than our usual forty degree minimum. After only three hours of slower-than-we-could-have sailing, we were in the lee of the island, stowing the sails for our arrival.

We weren't really sure what to expect from Spike Cove. One of our guides had a couple of pictures of some nice rocks, so we thought it would be more interesting than just a broad, sandy beach, but you can never really trust the marketing until you can see it for yourself. Spike Cove turned out to be so much nicer than that.

The Furneaux is a granite ridge that was uplifted about 370 million years ago. After aeons of wind and water erosion, what remains of Clarke Island is a jumble of giant boulders perched atop expanses of bare rock, The shallower parts of the island have a layer of shallow, sandy soil to support scrubby growth. Common to the area is a particularly brightly-colored, orange lichen that grows on the rocks above the high tide line.

This description does not do justice to how impossibly pretty this whole place is. Firstly, there are the boulders. They are sculpted into the most beautiful, curving shapes. Many are perched on pedestals of a few smaller stones, looking like they could topple at any moment. Up close, the rock face turns out not to be smooth, but a conglomeration of gleaming quartz crystals oriented every which way, giving it a sparkling appearance. It also has the side benefit of being an especially grippy surface on which to scramble from scene to scene. Best of all is the orange lichen. The color makes every scene pop, especially as a compliment to the light blues of the sea and sky. It covers the rock almost as if it had been airbrushed on, adding shading and depth to every vista.

Despite being tired from our early start, before which we did not get enough sleep, we both couldn't resist getting in the dinghy and taking a closer look around, particularly since we knew today would be the nicer of the two that we were planning on staying.

What a simultaneously wonderful and painful excursion! Our first landing was a tiny beach at the end of a tiny cove hemmed in by giant boulders. The beauty there was almost too much to take. We took three steps and the whole scene shifted just enough to have us gasping at it all anew. Then we took three more and it happened again. We spent the whole day in this manner, swearing we would be finished after this spot or the other, only to end up scrambling over the big boulders two ridges beyond, Eventually, we ended up at a wall of pretty impenetrable brush that we couldn't find a way through without going in. I have longer legs, so I persisted for a little while, but again found it too thick. With fresh memories of our last snake encounter, I decided not to push it. We finally had an excuse to make the long scramble home.

Going back was almost as bad as the way out. Every few steps, our legs would lose the will to keep moving so that we could stop and gape at the scene ahead of us. “We've already seen that,” I said, “AND we took about forty pictures of it.” Still, we couldn't just pass it by.

It's amazing how that can be. After all, it's just a bunch of rocks, some water and a little layer of growth to liven things up. That stuff is everywhere in one form or another, but our human brains were somehow convincing us that we had stumbled on somewhere so special that we just had to sit there and admire the perfect composition of every view. Sometimes it's sand, palm trees and ocean. Sometimes it's mountains, pines and lakes. There are so many places that are almost too beautiful to bear and this was definitely one of them. It got us over and over. Later on, I would be doing the dishes or something otherwise pretty mundane and then I would look up and see where we were and it would hit me again like it did the first time. WOW!

Then the sun started going down, casting even more orange light on an already orange scene. This is too much! Then we saw the green flash right before it disappeared below the horizon. That's it! Time to go to sleep before something happens. Always end on a high note.

Foster Inlet, Northeastern Tasmania

[Kyle]We had one good day of strong westerlies in a whole two-week forecast. If we were going to move east, we had one chance to do it now. We left the anchorage at Supply Bay in the Tamar in the darkness just before 3am at the start of the ebb. It was a good thing we did. The headwinds were blowing so hard that, with one engine going, we were often slowed to below two knots by it. If it weren't for the following current, it would have taken us a whole day to reach the mouth of the river.

While it was good to have a current in our favor, I must admit that I was more than a little worried about the timing. In order for us to make the best use of the day's wind, and arrive in daylight, we needed to leave the Tamar pretty much at maximum ebb. That would have been fine, but there was thirty knots of wind blowing against it and I was really worried about being swept into dangerous standing waves. We battened down everything as securely as we could, expecting a wild, scary ride. The only reassurance we had was that we had arrived going the other way in basically the same conditions and had lived to tell the tale.

It was not that bad after all {Maryanne: It wasn't nice!}. As we turned into the teeth of the wind on the last, roughest leg, the wind was strong enough to stop us completely from moving through the water. Our rudders lost effectiveness and the force of the single engine gradually started turning us toward the shallows. I had to start the other engine to balance the asymmetric thrust and keep water moving over the rudders. We then had a pretty terrible couple of miles before the current spread and died out and things calmed slightly. Then we turned downwind and down wave and the ride improved dramatically.

We had such a fast sail that we arrived at our anchorage at Foster's Inlet too early. The west facing anchorage was completely exposed to the three-meter swell that had been whipped up by the day's winds. It was forecast to swing to the southeast at sunset. We found a spot just clear of the surf and set in for a few hours of being thrown around. It was definitely 'one hand for the boat' conditions, but by the time it got dark, the wind was blowing off of the beach and the remaining swell decreased to just enough to lull us to sleep.

In the morning, it was flat calm and we had the whole place to ourselves, plus a few campers on the beach. By the time we really got out of bed, two more boats had shown up. We think they had come up the east coast and were waiting for the next wind shift.

We deployed the dinghy and headed ashore for a bit of exercise. The beach was a big beach. We walked its length, plus enough extra to know we don't like having our legs stabbed by spinifex. We then walked the campground's access road past a bunch of huge, impressive wind turbines that put out about a thousand times what Begonia's little model can manage. I think I remember that each one of the big ones can meet all of the power needs of three or for big houses, more on a windy day like this.

Exploring around Lemons Beach, Foster Inlet, Cape Portland

We thought we were mostly putting in the miles for some exercise as there wasn't too much of great interest to see, but at the end, Maryanne spotted a scary, venomous two-meter snake, so we got to see a bit of wildlife other than birds. When she stepped a little closer to see if it was alive (still six or seven meters back), It decided she was close enough and bolted straight in my direction, eventually diving under a crack in the concrete walkway. I was well behind her, so it got nowhere near me, but I did see it long enough to verify that it was a live snake. The thing was going pretty fast, too. I would have been able to outrun it, but not without breaking into at least a fast trot.

The tide had come up by then, so it was necessary for me to wade out to our anchored dinghy. It turned out to be a bit deeper than I had hoped, so I was not able to keep my shorts dry. That water is definitely colder than I would have liked. Oh, my poor bits!

As I approached the dinghy, it became apparent that I needed to take off my shirt and jacket to keep them from getting them wet, too. I pulled them off over my head like a t-shirt. In the process, I lost one of the fly nets that was in one of the pockets. Those things are worth their weight in gold in Australia. It went floating away, but my priority was getting the dinghy into shallow enough water for Maryanne to get in without getting too wet. We thought our net was gone for good, but on the way back to Begonia, she spotted it floating and tried to capture it with a long bamboo stick we had handy. In the process, she probably knocked the last air bubble out of the bag and it sank. Since I was already wet and shirtless, it suddenly became my job to dive down and get it. It took me a few seconds to screw up the courage to jump in and then to submerge my head so that I could retrieve the head net from the sand. I did not like it, but I guess I did end up taking the full plunge in Tasmania, despite my insistence to Mark from Jonathan that I would never do it.

Leaving the River Tamar (slowly)

[Kyle]Leaving Launceston, instead of the calms and fog we had on the way in, we motored into strong headwinds. As we made our way down the river, its color changed from that of chocolate milk to murky gray.

On the advice of Gratton, whom we had met in Devonport, we decided to stop in at the Rosevears Hotel for a little treat. There is a public dock right across the street, where we could tie Begonia up without having to go through all of the trouble of anchoring and then taking the dinghy to shore. My plan was to have dinner in their restaurant and then maybe get a room for the night where Maryanne especially could enjoy the luxuries of a long, hot bath and a bed big enough to really sprawl out. We could sit out on the balcony and enjoy a bottle of wine while overlooking the river with Begonia docked below.

Why oh why, you must be wondering, does a guy who will gladly walk three miles to save a two dollar bus fare suddenly want to stay in a fancy hotel within sight of his own bed? Well, it was kind of a special occasion. Maryanne and my 18th wedding anniversary was in a couple of days and we generally like to do something a little special to mark the occasion. The stop at Rosevears Hotel seemed just like the thing.

When I revealed my plan to her after tying up Begonia to the dock, she was not as excited about the hot bath, big bed, wine-on-the-balcony thing as I had hoped. She wondered out loud what the point was of spending a bunch of money to sleep 100 meters from the boat with a view of the same river we can see from Begonia for free. Plus, she said, she would spend the whole time worrying about leaving the boat unattended on an unsecured public dock for the night. Double plus, we would have to pack for our night away, would probably forget something and end up going back and forth to the boat anyway. That would not be much fun because it was supposed to rain all night, versus already being tucked in at home.

Okay, then, what to do? I was already prepared to fork out the dough without giving it a second thought. She offered a compromise of really enjoying our dinner. We would order a bottle of wine, appetizers, dessert, aperitivos, the works. In the end, I think we only saved about twenty bucks from booking a room. It was nice to be able to sleep in the next day without worrying about checkout time.

Rosevears Hotel, an easy stop with a lovely restaurant for an evening meal out, and then a bakery to fortify us for the morning departure

In the morning, Maryanne remembered that the hotel has a bakery. We ran up between rain showers to get a nice, warm breakfast, right out of the oven. There went that other twenty bucks.

While we didn't have to worry about checkout time, we did have to worry about the current, which started to ebb at about 2pm. That is also, coincidentally, when it started to really rain in earnest. It did that for the whole two hours we were going down the river and stopped just before we got back to Supply Bay. This time, instead of anchoring way out in the middle of the mud flat, we dropped the hook right off of Marion's Vineyard.

The rain was all gone the next morning, replaced by bright blue skies. Today was our actual anniversary. We rowed ashore to the big pier at Marion's and then walked up the hill to see what they had on offer. For some reason, we had expected the place to be pretty quiet. There were only two boats anchored off of the pier and we were the only ones that went ashore. At the pier, it was clear that we were the first people to have used it for a while. At the top of the stairs, we had to squeeze past an orange construction fence to get through. It was there that we first saw the sign warning that the pier and stairs were condemned due to unsafe conditions. Hmmm...

Walking up the steep drive, it looked like many of the vineyard's buildings were in disuse, although the vines were all in good shape. At the top, we came upon the tasting room, which was beautiful and made of hand-hewn wood, golden with fresh varnish. We were met by the American son of Marion, who recently had his fifteen minutes of fame on the Australian TV show, The Farmer Wants a Wife. He was in the process of slowly making improvements to the property building by building. He's about 25% of the way through now.

Unlike its access from the river, Marion's is right off of the main road on this bank, so they had an almost constant stream of road visitors messing with our expected solitude. Once we had made it to the front of the tasting line, we were able to take our glasses to a lovely table overlooking the vines, the river and Begonia below. Marion is originally from Cyprus and the place had the very Mediterranean feel of a Greek Taverna. One especially nice touch was the trellised grape vines hanging from the ceiling. If you wanted a break from your cheese plate, you could always reach up and grab a couple of Pinot Noir grapes to clear your palate.

Marion's Winery, River Tamar

We had a leisurely game of backgammon, which I lost. Just to prove it wasn't a fluke, Maryanne beat me one more time. She's so competitive. At least she refrained from jumping up, pumping her fists and yelling, “In Your Face!”

On the way back to Begonia, we swung by the other boat anchored off of the pier, Jonathan (named after the bird, you know, from the '70s), and met Mark and Caro. They were busy, but we invited them over for tea later. At some point, we must have also mentioned we were leaving early the next day, so they made a point of coming right over.

Wow, what interesting adventures they have had! We knew something was up when Mark said he had cleared into Australia at Hobart. This was as far north as they have been this year. They were trying to go to New Zealand when Covid hit, so they have spent their whole year in Tasmania. They weren't trying to go to the normal parts of New Zealand. They were heading to the Auckland Islands, well south of our furthest south at Stewart Island.

Where did they come from? They cleared in from Antarctica. They spent four years doing charters there out of their base in Puerto Williams, Chile. They have been to the tropics, but it seems like it was only long enough to get through to the higher latitudes. Before that, Mark, who is Dutch, sailed out of Spitsbergen to the Arctic. He is one of only three people we have met who have cleared into the United States at Point Barrow, Alaska after having sailed in from the north. He had just sailed from Greenland via the Northwest Passage. He met Caro in Vancouver, B.C. On his way south from there to Patagonia. They have been to some amazing, beautiful places, but I'm afraid I like my t-shirt weather a little too much to be doing very much of that. It was good to have met them in our narrow zone of overlap, although we still seem to be miles away from them on what constitutes an acceptable water temperature for swimming. We will definitely not be snorkeling in the kelp forests of Tasmania.