A Muted New Year's Eve at Sea

[Kyle]We departed Lady Barron on the morning’s high tide. We had left under our normal working sail, expecting an increase in the wind that would soon require reefing. After a few hours when it didn’t come, we switched to the spinnaker and had a marvelous, easy downwind run to the south along Tasmania’s east coast.

The sea was littered with these large jellies (I think Lion's Mane Jellyfish)

The New Year arrived when Maryanne woke me up for my night watch. We did a Happy New Year high-five and then she went to sleep. We were far enough from any population centers that we didn’t see or hear any hint of a celebration at the big moment.

A pleasant sail south in Tasmania

The wind was supposed to increase rapidly after sunrise, so we switched from the spinnaker to the jib. It was a good thing we did. Twenty minutes later, we had to roll another reef in the minute we got back into the cockpit from doing the previous one. The wind was blowing into Wineglass Bay, but it was only supposed to be for the day and we remembered from our last visit that the little spit at the south end of the beach made for a surprisingly calm spot in such conditions.

Our hope was that there would be no one else around to try to squeeze with us into the tiny calm patch, like the last time. We weren’t so lucky. The bay was in full New Year’s Day party mode with several rafted-up runabouts and a couple of big cabin cruisers. Later on, another catamaran came in and squeezed in right next to us. Even though they were there for a whole day and they were only two boat lengths away, I could never get them to return a wave, nor acknowledge our presence in any way.