Getting ready to go was a lurchy, stumbly affair. The good thing about being on a mooring ball was that we did not have to add our engines to the racket. We raised the mainsail partway, leaving two reefs in, and released the port bridle line. Begonia turned sideways, filling the sail. Maryanne then released the starboard line. We slid sideways for a bit until the keels and rudders started biting. Then we turned, the keels unstalled, and we silently accelerated out of there. Aaah! That feels good!
After clearing some shallows, we turned across the wind, which allowed us to unroll the jib and speed up even more. The only problem was that the current squeezing into the same gap between Prime Seal and Flinders Islands as we were was going the other way, cutting our speed by a third.
Passing the North End of Flinders Island as we left the Furneaux Group we were surrounded by 1000's of mutton birds (Short-tailed shearwaters), and when we'd finally arrived at Deal Island (Kent Group) we were greeted by more stunning Tasmanian cliffs!
Once we were out into the open Bass Strait, the current turned to line up with the wind. That meant we had to point even further upwind to maintain our course. It was just enough of a change to turn a slightly following sea into one directly on our beam, which increased the rolling dramatically.
Since there was no longer any rain in the forecasts, I had mistakenly assumed the gray skies were going to clear up. I was all ready with my happy face, but I never got to use it. The clouds remained. Combined with the wind chill, it was very cold in the cockpit, even with plenty of layers on.
It was such a tremendous relief to finally arrive at Winter Cove at Deal Island. The wind slowly calmed down in the lee of the island, but the annoying swell did not stop until we were well tucked into the deep inlet. We finally had light winds and just a hint of a swell. We dropped our anchor onto the sand, which held tight the first time and settled in for a peaceful night. Just at sunset, Maryanne spotted a couple of pademelons hopping down the beach. Later on, after dark, we could clearly hear penguins on the shore chatting to each other as they roosted for the night.
After a "feet-up day" in high winds, we were up early for the 14km walk to the lighthouse and back. The penguins were also up early. I could her them chattering away in the pre-dawn darkness, but by the time we left, they were all gone for the day.
Winter Cove Beach - in the sunshine
Meeting the wildlife on the tracks from Winter Cove to the Lighthouse
We climbed the hill behind the bay and took the trail across the island to meet the island's caretakers, Craig and Debbie. They were in the middle of morning chores, but told us to return for a cuppa on the way back.
The trail to the lighthouse was really more of a road. It started out as a pleasant amble through the trees, stopping every now and then to introduce ourselves to one of the island's Bennet's Red Necked Wallabies. Most seemed pretty accustomed to humans walking by so they didn't startle and hop away until we were within three meters or so. Some would take off at speed. Others would hop twice into the tall grass and then lie down, becoming instantly almost invisible. They are so cute.
After a while, the lighthouse trail started a slow curve upward. Once we got used to the grade, it would get steeper. It did this until just before the lighthouse complex, where it was so steep that we had trouble getting traction. Oof!
It was a bit gloomy and overcast, but we made it to the views from the lighthouse (Decommissioned in 1992)
Craig later told us that Deal Island Lighthouse has probably the most distant caretaker's cottage in the world, being almost four kilometers from the light itself. To get the needed supplies to the light, everything was first brought up to the caretaker's complex on a whim, which in this case does not mean whenever the feeling came over them to do so. A lesser-known whim is the noun for a cart on steep rails, powered by cable turned around a capstan that is driven by draft animals. From the cottage, oil and other supplies for the light were taken on cart via the road and then loaded onto another whim for the last really steep part to the top, which we had just paralleled on foot. Near the light itself, a small crew of convicts remained on hand in a small bunkhouse to keep the light going in the keeper's absence.
Deal Island Lighthouse during its time of operation was the highest lighthouse (measured as the light height above the sea-level) in the Southern Hemisphere at 305m (1,001ft). (There are at least two in the Northern Hemisphere that are higher. The highest of which is on the island of Giglio in Italy at 507m. It ironically is right near where the Costa Concordia cruise ship foundered in 2011). At such a height, Deal Island Lighthouse has a commanding view of the whole of the eastern Bass Strait. Unfortunately, the lighthouse is closed to visitors for health and safety reasons, so it is not possible to go inside to get to the top and have a look. The base of the tower is mostly obscured in trees, so, from ground level, it is only possible to get a few very narrow hints of the amazing views. Well, at least we got to climb to the top of the island.
Back at the 'settlement' we were invited to tea and nibbles
Back at the keeper's complex, we joined Craig and Debbie for tea (and delicious fresh-made muffins and snacks from the garden). Meeting them is like meeting an astronaut. No matter what you've done in your life, you will go away feeling like you are a lazy underachiever. I think I pulled something just listening to the list of things they have been up to.
The caretaker's posts are four-month stints staffed by volunteers like them who think it's a fun holiday to wake up at dawn and do ridiculous amounts of strenuous work, just for the pleasure of being outside. The last guy got sick, so they are filling in for just two months on short notice. Recently, they had spent two winters as caretakers on Maatsuyker Island, off of the stormy south coast of Tasmania where 90kt winds are common.
Wow! Interesting!” I said. “Wait a minute, did you say Winters?”
”Yeah,” Craig said, “The weather is amazing!”
He didn't mean that in the sense I'd use the word 'amazing' (wonderful). Despite a career as a schoolteacher, the word he was looking for was 'extraordinary'. Craig likes extreme weather. Doing a stint at Maatsuyker Island is like being at the summit of Mt. Washington. Sixty-knot winds are normal. They got ninety a few times. Debbie explained that ninety knots isn't enough to pick you up, but it will definitely knock you down of you're not holding tight to something. They have been lots of other places, too, AND they have a farm, AND they do outdoor education for fun, taking kids on grueling camping trips. Jeez, we just took a day off on the boat 'cause it was a little bit windy yesterday.
Feeling suddenly like our one little hike wasn't enough, we took the short, but also increasingly steep, trail to Barn Hill. At the top of that, we were rewarded with incredible near-areal views of the islands in the group, especially Erith and Dover across the narrow and turbulent Murray Pass. All three islands have sheer cliffs covered in brilliant orange lichen that bend in and out of inlets like a giant curtain. We could also see the tidy keeper's complex and the trail disappearing over the ridge to our anchorage at Winter Cove. I like that trail way better than the one to the lighthouse. It is my favorite of them all.
Views from atop the cliffs on the Barn Hill trail
It's amazing what you can see along the trails. To the left one of the Whims, and the beetle is a feather-horned beetle (a male)
At Craig and Debbie's recommendation, we also took a short detour to see their airport.
Deal Island's airport has to be the craziest one that I have ever seen. I have spent a fair bit of time flying freight into unimproved mountain airports, so I have seen some tricky landing spots, but nothing like this. Firstly, the center of the grass runway is below the edges, which are each a different height, so there is an overall sideways slant. Then, each end of the runway is significantly below the big hump in the middle, so that each takeoff and landing is up, then over, then downhill. Lastly and most noticeably, the runway is not straight. Craig described it as boomerang-shaped, but from ground level, it just looks curved. To land, the pilot has to negotiate the turbulence coming off of the hills and then touchdown in a banking turn, preferably before the steep downhill part makes stopping harder. All of this in an airplane that is usually loaded to the gills with supplies.
Kyle was especially humoured by the boomerang airstrip (seem from afar and up close)
After seeing the airport, Maryanne finally agreed that we were allowed to go home now. Back at Winter Cove, we met four kayakers who were camping for the night. They had come in earlier from Hogan Island, forty kilometers away and were doing the seventy-kilometer trip to Flinders tomorrow while the weather was good. One of them had just beaten us back from his water run to the caretaker's cottage. They had all met while doing triathalons. Aw. Jeez! All I had to do was row back to Begonia!
Returning back to Winter Cove we met an intrepid group of Kayakers who were camping at Deal on their way across the Bass Strait - hard core!
Stiff and sore from our day of doing what turned out to be practically nothing, relatively speaking, we stayed near the boat for the next day. The guys were all well gone by first light, so we had the cove to ourselves. On Debbie's recommendation, Maryanne decided that she was going to put on her wetsuit and brave the cold for a snorkel. The seaweed gardens were supposed to be very nice and there is also the world's largest variety of cuttlefish living here, which can grow to 80cm.
Just as she was getting up the courage to begin to start thinking about whether to form a committee to decide whether it was a good idea to be going swimming in 20C (68F) water, a family of dolphins arrived and teased her by cavorting right around and even under the boat. Suddenly, Maryanne couldn't get her stuff on fast enough. She got fully geared-up just as they left. {Maryanne: We've been avoiding swimming in Tasmania's cooler waters, but Debbie (The volunteer caretaker) told me she swam most days and the seaweeds were spectacular. She guilted me into suiting up and I'm so very grateful that I finally did it!}
After coffee and a belated breakfast, Maryanne was ready to try, and only encouraged when the dolphins returned! Once they spotted her, they came over to join her. Even from the deck, I could hear her squealing with delight through her snorkel. She sounded very dolphin-like herself. They were probably trying to figure out her accent. I've been doing that for years.
After seeing this, I also decided to bundle up and go in. The dolphins were long gone and Maryanne had just finished her long tour of the shallows by the time I was ready. She recommended I do the plunge all at once because I would chicken out if I tried to go in gradually. Then she said to keep moving to stay warm as long as possible. What am I getting myself into?
Snorkelling with visiting dolphins, and among vibrant seaweeds
OH MY GOD, that water is cold! Well, what's done is done! I headed for the weed gardens at the rocks on one edge of the bay. They really are a beautiful multi-hued forest of waving fronds. After about twenty minutes, my skin had cooled, which made the cold feel not so bad, but of course it was heading for my core. Twenty minutes after that, it was time to call it a day and head back to Begonia.
I was returning via an inspection of our anchor chain when Maryanne came out on deck and started gesticulating. The dolphins are back! Okay, I'll warm up later.
Like she did on her swim, I was permitted to join with them. They hung around with me for a while, diving almost too deep to see and then spiraling up slowly towards me. They left and came back several times and always slowed down to let me keep up with them for a while before lapping me and then diving away. On one pass, I was even able to stroke one of them.
After they left for the last time, I returned to the boat shivering. Maryanne was waiting for me with a mug of hot soup. The dolphins returned several times that afternoon, but it was too cold (for us) to think about getting in that water again. Instead, we went on deck and encouraged them with cheers and waves. Just before they left for the last time, they engaged in what appeared to be a contest, where they each grabbed a piece of seaweed off of the bottom and then did a big jump and flip out of the water, showing it off.
One evening we were entertained by six dolphins each leaping from the water showing their seaweed "jewelry"
Memories of the state of Begonia's bottom paint had kept me from sleeping well. I hadn't wiped off the growth in months since the water got cold, and now there were barnacles starting to take hold. I spent all night coming to the conclusion that I was going to have to go down there to knock 'em off. Once I realized morning was only a few short hours away, I gave up and got out of bed. That's okay, we had some more hiking planned and it would be good to get an early start to beat the heat. The day was supposed to be a relatively warm one.
When it finally got only a few minutes from not being totally dark, I got Maryanne up. This was her own fault. She had been bugging me to go out after dark and try to see the penguins when they come home to roost at night, but it was always after we were dead tired from a long day, so we didn't. Now they were starting to chatter away, so I decided we could leave early and see them now.
We stepped into the dinghy on about Maryanne's third sip of coffee. We followed the penguins' calls for a bit, but it was so dark that we couldn't find them. Eventually, it was clear that most of them were gone, so we used our headlamps to begin the climb out of the bay. Maryanne may have been a little grumpy as she muttered under her breath about climbing the bloody steep hill in the bloody dark with her bloody husband who couldn't bloody sleep. Her mood brightened with the sunrise and pretty soon it was me who was grumbling about being dragged from our main goal onto unauthorized side trails. Once I realized her plan was to walk every inch of the island's trails that we hadn't tramped, I gave in and we both settled in for some more beautiful scenery.
An early start at Winter Cove got us to Pegleg Bay just after sunrise
We took the trail all of the way back to sea level at Pegleg Bay, where Maryanne guessed that it got it's name because anyone trying to negotiate the boulder-strewn beach would surely be risking a broken leg. On Craig's recommendation, we also took a loop formed between the old and the new trails to Squally Cove. He had just cleared and re-marked them as a fun warm-up for the day's real work. It was magnificent and provided many wonderful views of almost the entire island trio. I managed to convince Maryanne not to take the steep side trail to the very bottom of the cove, which was not hard to do, on the basis that we only had so much time in the day. She said fine, but then we were adding the Garden Cove trail to our list. That's the one that uses the airport's crazy runway as part of it. It was mercifully the most mild-sloped of all of the island's trails. Even so, on the way back, Maryanne allowed that her trail eyes had maybe been a little bigger than her trail stomach. That last steep downhill into Winter Cove really had our aching quads burning.
More trails across the island lead to view after view
After we got home, she cheekily flopped down on the settee and cracked open a coldie for company. I would not be joining her just yet, since I still wanted to do something about those barnacles. Fortunately, they knocked right off and the rest of the paint was still in pretty good condition. I was back in just over an hour, but I was so cold by then that I could hardly climb out of the water. She helped me wriggle my wetsuit off and handed me a mug of hot tea. That helped. It was a while before I wanted my cold beer.
As it was now Easter weekend, Deal Island started filling up. A strong blow was forecast overnight, from which Winter Cove was one of only two in the area that offered protection. Our private little two-boat cove soon had another sailboat, plus two commercial fishing boats, which were presumably doing their catching outside of the island's restricted zones. The swell increased, making for a lot of surf for a dinghy landing on the beach, so we decided to stay aboard, plan our next leg and keep an eye on everybody's swing.
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