Passing some of the Kangaroo Island lighthouses
Sunsets, sunrises, open ocean, and circling albatross are the standard scenery
For the most part, the five-day sail was pretty good. We started with a nice run down the Gulf of St. Vincent, propelled by a warm wind coming off of the land. Once we were through the Backstairs Passage, between Kangaroo Island and the mainland, conditions cooled off enough for us to need to bundle up on our watches. Other than that, the sailing was mild enough. On the third and fourth day, we even got to put up our brand new spinnaker for its longest stint ever. It was up for thirty-six hours straight in smooth following seas before the wind strengthened on its way into the Bass Strait. Our boating-friend Rick, from Duplicat, who happened to be sailing in the opposite direction, calls it 'Champagne sailing'.
And once in a while we have VISITORS!!!
[Maryanne]On most nights we had lovely clear skies and a beautiful star show (including shooting stars). Our direction of sail happened to coincide with the orientation of the Milky Way and it felt like our sailing highway for the night - pure bliss. Kyle had quite the scare at one point during the daytime on our passage. He was asleep and I was on watch when the Man-Over-Board (MOB) alarm sounded off. Normally this is an accidental press and I yell at him to stay in bed, all is well, but I wasn't there to yell at him. He rushed out of bed, scanned the boat and couldn't see me. He scanned the sea and couldn't see me. He could hear me yelling and figured he'd just make his way back to the MOB position and hope to find me there. Eventually he spied me - I was lying on the trampoline squealing with the large pod of dolphins that had come to play in the bows. I had no idea the alarms had gone off; and had been quite oblivious to Kyle's rude awakening and stress. Still, it was good evidence that he WOULD come and rescue me if I needed it...
[Kyle]That "Champagne sailing" all came to an end as we got deeper into the strait. The wind increased enough for us to take down the spinnaker and switch to the smaller jib. When we rounded Three Hummock Island, we had to turn across the wind for the last twenty-five miles to our check-in point (for COVID) at Stanley on the Tasmanian mainland.
That twenty-five miles was absolutely miserable. The wind was being accelerated between the islands and the seas were being messed up by the strong current, We regularly saw wind above thirty and were often going above six through the water flying only a double-reefed jib, which is about 20% of our normal working area. When we finally made it to the anchorage outside the fishing boat harbor, we were soo ready to be done sailing. It was a bit rough there, but it was way better than being at sea. It was sure going to be nice to sleep in our bed at the same time.
We arrived at "The Nut" (an old volcanic plug)
just in time to anchor before dark - whew!
One bright moment of the passage was that around 0820 on the last day, we crossed the line we sailed between Sydney and Bathurst Harbor. We had last been there on the 17th of January 2020 at 1140, 402 days earlier. According to our log, we have sailed 9,745 nautical miles since then (11,214 statute miles, 18,048 kilometers). We have now officially circumnavigated Australia, the world's easiest continent to sail around! Now we can say it's good to be back in Tasmania.
Crossing our path - Circumnavigation of Australia Complete (anti-clockwise)
(around 8:20 Near Albatross Island on the NW corner of Tasmania)
Screenshot from our FollowingSea account
The statistics (e.g. 3 months, 4 days) are for our underway time only
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