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.