The sail there was mostly nice. We were again in the lee of the island, with good wind and flat seas. At the entrance to Napean Bay, we lost the island's protection. Then we were back to tacking with only the barest scraps of sail up and wondering why the afternoon sea breeze always seems to be double the forecast. It was with much relief that we snaked our way up the channel between wave-damping shallows.
The channel markers end abruptly about half a mile from a stone breakwater protecting a launching ramp. The nautical charts of the area are vague at best and show most of the area as drying flats. This was obviously not true. Our depth sounder was reading two to three meters more than the chart said it should have, and there were clearly some deep draft boats anchored between the marker and the breakwater. We headed for the biggest one, figuring if they could get there, so could we.
Wrong! Our depth sounder went to 1.5m, then 1.4! Yikes! This was 0.8 meters above low tide. We made a note to ourselves not to leave that way. Bay of Shoals, indeed.
Once we got near all of the moored boats, the depth stabilized at about three meters. We found a spot sufficiently far from them to let us swing and dropped anchor.
Shortly thereafter, the tide started to fall and the shenanigans started. The strong wind was fighting the tide and all of us were darting around in every direction. The wind turned us broadside to the current, which took hold of our keels and pushed us to the end of our rode on the upwind side of our anchor. That just happened to be almost the spot where a big, steel monohull, straightened into the current by its long keel, was pushed by the wind to the downwind side of its rode.
Since neither the wind nor the current were constant, neither were our positions. We each kept zipping around as one force or the other became dominant. We would all be nicely spaced and then we would look out and see thirty tons of rust-stained paint coming straight at us at four knots. We were going two, they were going two. Just before Maryanne and I were about to run out and start fending, our anchor would slew us away, while the monohull's would mush that boat to a straight-ahead stop with about ten meters to go. We pulled in ten meters of chain, which made things a bit less nerve wracking until the tide reversed again and we all went back to being fifteen boat lengths apart.
Australian Pelican and Black Swans - just some of the bird life
The following morning, we made our way ashore for the walk to Bay of Shoals Winery, which we could see spilling down the hillsides towards the harbor. The grounds were nice, but by the looks of the landscaping art and the gift shop, it looks like the owners are more into boats than wine making. It was explained to us that the owner races in the Sydney to Hobart every year. Oh, I sense a fleecing coming up! I hope they at least know the difference between methyl and ethyl alcohol.
Bay of Shoals Winery was just a short walk from the boat ramp
I turned out to be wrong about the price. Everything was actually quite reasonable; comparable with the other wineries we have been with the exception of a cheese plate that must come with a take-home gold ingot. They seemed to not be too bothered about having to make a profit.
The wine tasted like wine. Some were good, some not so much. They all seemed to be ethyl, which is good. The service was more like going to a bar than a wine tasting, “Here's your drinks. Come back for the next one on the list.” Okay.
At least the grounds were pretty. The owner is a keen boater, so the grounds are littered with old wooden boats for atmosphere. I would have considered buying a bottle of each of our favorites, but we had some more walking to do and didn't feel like carrying bottles of wine around all day. We compromised by buying a glass of each and enjoying them on a bench overlooking the harbor past the vines. We could see that the day's shenanigans have begun again.
From the vineyard, we walked over the hill to the back side of Kingscote. First impressions were that the town appeared to be more functional than quaint. Most of the architecture was squat buildings with little added flourish and evenly spaced in the manner of quick-and-dirty post-war developments.
We walked down to the shore. There, tucked in under the cliffs was a cordoned off area with a mix of built nest boxes and natural holes in the rock. These were for the benefit of nesting Little Blue Penguins. Their numbers have been in sharp decline over the last few years, which has led to the site falling into disrepair and a cancellation of the nightly guided tours.
Adjacent to the site is the town's main pier. This used to be the stop for the ferries from the mainland, but silting has made it unusable as such. Now it is slowly sliding into dereliction with plenty of missing planks and fenced-off areas marked as unsafe to enter. Now, it seems to be the sole province of a few hardy fisher folk huddling in the windbreak of the old ferry's boarding shelter.
Kingscote definitely projects the image of a town in decline that has given up on being attractive to the tourist dollar. The best parcel of waterfront land is given to the island's hospital and the car park in front.
There were a couple of bright spots, though. They have a community garden where visitors are invited to help themselves and to trade seedlings with each other. The other was a really good pizza place, which absolutely deserved to be as popular as the constant stream of patrons indicated.
We headed back to Begonia via the shore road, which went through a nice but eerily empty park. It was hard to tell if the town was really empty or we were just being watched by a bunch of curtain twitchers.
The forecast was calling for high winds and rain. We had originally planned to wait it out here, where the protection would only be marginal, so we now decided we had seen our fill and were ready to move on. We elected to move on to American River, just a few miles to the east.
After a pleasant upwind sail in flat seas, we arrived to find a busier, but much more photogenic anchorage. There were more trees and less mud out the window. Time to get Begonia ready for her first real rinse in weeks.
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