Passage: Tasmania to Queensland

[Kyle]We made a point of waiting until we could see daylight coming through the hatch above our bed before we left our normal diurnal sleeping pattern behind for a while. Our winds were supposed to be primarily out of the southwest, but they were being funneled through the Banks Strait (the gap between the Tasmanian mainland and the Furneaux group of islands to the north) and were arriving at Eddystone from the northwest. That gave us headwinds for the start, but they gradually backed as they fanned out to the east. Our initial course was northeast. By nightfall, we were sailing fast on a very broad reach in winds that would not stop increasing.

I went forward and clawed down the mainsail entirely, which helped a lot as the forces on it were no longer fighting the rudders. Without it blocking the jib, we could also turn downwind a few degrees to ease the motion.

That only helped a little. The winds ended up in the high thirties, with occasional gusts into the low forties. Two different wave trains were being heaped up and smashing into one another. We were surfing down one of them and slamming into the other. It made for a very stressful and uncomfortable night where neither of us were able to grab more than a few moments of sleep at a time. We felt robbed. Downwind sailing is supposed to be smooth. At least we were going fast.

On our second afternoon, the wind finally started to let up a little. As soon as it hit the maximum for our spinnaker, I rolled up the jib and switched to it. That helped in two ways: We were able to run dead downwind without fear of an accidental gybe and we sped up 30%, which kept the waves from overtaking us as fast. Within a few hours, the wind was in the normal, comfortable range for the sail and we were shushing smoothly over the long swell off of the continental coast. Ahhh, that’s what I’m talking about!

A passage of sky gazing:Moon-Dogs, Sunsets and Sunrises.

This lasted all through the next three watches. The skies were clear, if a little chilly, and we both rapidly caught up with our sleep on our off-watches. We would later remember this as ‘the nice day’.

In the last hour of my Day Three night watch, the wind started backing all of the way around to east. I turned with it to keep from waking Maryanne with all of the noises of me changing back to our white sails. By the time it was her turn, we were sixty degrees off course. I woke her, then went stomping around on deck to get us sailing into the wind again.

By the next day, we had found the three-knot countercurrent to she southbound East Australian Current (EAC). The countercurrent was hovering about a hundred and twenty miles offshore and would give us a much-needed boost northward. The wind turned with us as we arrived, keeping us close-hauled in rough seas as we rocketed north, enjoying double-digit speeds.

The good news was that the water we were in had just changed its mind about going south and had turned around to head back toward the tropics. Within twenty-four hours, I went from sitting my night watch in the full gear, which kept me from freezing, but didn’t exactly keep me warm either, to shorts and a t-shirt, and thinking maybe I should ditch the shirt. Just like that, the winter clothes were no longer necessary. It was as if we had stepped off of a flight from Canada in the Caribbean.

At around the latitude of Coff’s Harbour, our back eddy ended alongside the thinnest, slowest part of the EAC. We changed course to angle across it into the slower current of the shallows just offshore. Because we had to crab into the EAC, we still ended up close-hauled as we crossed. This time, we were doing well if we saw four knots over the bottom. It took us another long day to cross the whole thing. The new forecasts told us that the two days of tailwinds we had been looking forward to would now be more like crosswinds at best. Also, they were going to be a lot stronger. Ugh! Make it stop!

Stronger winds mean bigger seas. Now our destination at the Southport Seaway was starting to look like it may not be safe to enter when we got there. We decided to enact our backup plan and head to the northern end of Moreton Island. The good news is that the extra wind would give us enough extra speed to get us there by dark on the same day.

The extra wind never materialized for our sail up the coast. During my night watch, our ETA at Moreton gradually worsened from where we could just make it by dark to definitely not until pitch-black dark. Time for another change of plan.

Since the rising tide at Southport was not until afternoon and since the weather seems to be milder than forecast, we were now going to slow way down, have a look at Southport and make a decision there.

As my night watch ended, I was feeling like that ant (he’s got HIGH hopes!) These were promptly dashed when I emerged from a nap a couple of hours later in anticipation of our transit through the entrance. The wind had arrived. We had almost no sail up, but it was still too much. The waves were three to three and a half meters, with about every tenth one or so topping four and a half. Aw, crap! We would really have preferred one and a half for this.

We had a phone signal, so I pulled up the Southport bar cam. It had just gone offline. If we were to go towards the bar and decide aginst it, then we'd have to fight strong headwinds and a flood current to escape from the lee shore, it was frustrating that the camera wasn't working so we could 'see' without having to actually divert course. We also knew that tide had yet to turn, so we were expecting some slop (that would reduce and maybe even disappear once the flood started). I called Seaway Tower to ask what it currently looked like at their end. Expecting to hear what height the waves looked like, I got the usual non-committal answers: “We can’t advise you. It’s your decision.”

I know it’s my decision. I just want some information so that I can make one.

After a few pointed questions, I was able to determine that no one had gone in or out for hours, which wasn’t necessarily bad because the entrance had been ebbing all morning and had not yet begun to flood. The woman there also revealed that the entrance was completely spanned by breakers. When I asked about what size (one-meter are fine, five is BAD), I got a, “Not sure”.

”Roughly, I mean.”

”I can’t really tell.”

This probably means “won’t tell”, because someone might sue if they get bad info. I guess it’s better if nobody gets any information. Where’s the St Helen’s guy when I need him? I was then told it would be best if I came in and had a look myself. She even offered to have a couple of rescue boats on standby right inside the entrance if I wanted. Now if they had offered to check it out and tell us all about it, THAT would have been helpful. Since breakers are a lot harder to see from their backs and since by the time we figured out we didn’t like it, trying to turn around would be a really dangerous thing to do, we decided to wait half an hour for the flood to establish and see if things improved. {Maryanne: Once the radio officer suggested rescue boats on stand-by "just-in-case", I was 100% ready to bail. I've no idea if this is policy, or if she thought the conditions required it}.

Half an hour later, standing on deck when Begonia was in the trough, I still couldn’t see over the crest of the approaching wave. Damn! We had both started to be really looking forward to spending the night safely anchored through the approaching night’s grim forecast. Now we would be sailing through it. We turned into the wind, called Seaway Tower and told them we were going around.

The bad weather – the really bad weather that we had to leave Tasmania so early to avoid, had been slowly edging down Australia’s east coast ahead of schedule. Had we made it into Southport, we would have beat it. Now we were about to hit it head on. The very moment I got finished talking to Seaway Tower, she keyed the mic and announced the weather forecast would be broadcast on channel 72.

We listened in. It sounded like the arriving conditions would be pretty dire: Winds 25 to 35 knots, with gusts well above 40. She didn’t say how much, just “well above”, waves three to four meters, with isolated breakers double that height, dangerous surf and flash flooding. Also, extreme rainfall (some places had already seen a month’s worth in a few hours) and widespread lightning.

I let out a sigh of relief. I had been particularly worried about golf-shoe sized hail.

Since we would need to be sailing close to the wind, I went on deck to raise the double-reefed mainsail. I got it about a third of the way up when I felt a familiar and very unwelcome pop in my lower back. I let out a yell, dropped to my hands and knees and gingerly crawled off of the cabin top. Maryanne thought the boom had hit me. I wish. I could have shaken that off. The back thing was going to take me out of commission when I needed to be able to use it the most. Just then, some dolphins surfed over and wanted to play. Bad timing, guys. Come back later.

So Maryanne finished the job for me, cranked in the sheets, and we accelerated toward the wall of black cloud on the horizon. Since it was now technically her off-watch, she left me to it while she attempted in vain to get some rest.

My job didn’t turn out to be that hard. We had the minimum sail up that would allow Begonia to make progress upwind in seas that size – two reefs in the main and three in the jib, about 30% of the total. It was still too much for the wind speed, but any less of either sail would have us slowly coasting to a stop, so we had to just ride it out. All I really had to do was hold on and hope all of the seams and hardware would hold.

The rain arrived and I’m pretty sure it was the heaviest I have ever seen. It didn’t pelt or fall in sheets. It hissed as if someone had tuned the radio to a blank station and then turned the volume up to eleven. It did this continuously for hours. The good thing was that the force of it mashed down the crests of all of the big waves rolling under us.

Had we been farther out to sea, we would normally heave-to in weather like this and wait it out. Here, we didn’t have the option. We didn’t have enough room to leeward for that or even to turn downwind twenty degrees and risk losing our hedge against wind shifts. We stayed as far offshore as we could without tangling with the EAC, but we still ended up fighting half of its full force. We were overpowered and lurching from one wave to the other, but out speed over the bottom was so slow. It was terrifying. All I could think was, ‘We need to get the hell out of here!’

That’s what we were doing, of course. I guess what I really wanted was for the weather to get the hell out of here and leave us alone. It wasn’t going to, which is another reason heaving-to would not have worked. We would just be parked in the middle of it for days.

The wind strengthened more and backed to the east-northeast. That would expose the anchorage at the northern end of Moreton Island to the full force of it and the swell. Well, anchoring there wasn’t going to happen anymore anyway. It would be dark by the time we got there now. No moon and five miles of cloud cover would only make it worse.

There is a channel that runs down the protected western side of the island. It’s the one we have usually taken when arriving to and departing from Moreton Bay to the north. It’s shallow at the entrance, though, and we were worried about the big seas breaking there. In the dark, we would never be able to see them until it was too late. Our safest option was to sail another eighteen miles to the entrance to the deepwater shipping channel and enter the bay there. Then we would have to beat our way back to the protection of Moreton Island.

Maryanne woke me – let me rephrase that – got me out of bed (I wasn’t sleeping) just after making the downwind turn to the shipping channel. Her watch had been like my previous one, except that the lightning had started. She did not have to sail through complete darkness, but instead a kind of horror disco where strobe lights would illuminate scenes of big waves bearing down on her and sideways rain twenty times a minute.

The wind picked up after the turn, so that was no better, but at least we had a smoother angle with the waves. The shipping channel was too narrow and upwind for tacking, especially with my back the way it was, so I rolled up the jib, sheeted the main to the center and started an engine.

At the first upwind turn, it became apparent that wasn’t going to work. The wind stopped us completely and the engine torque pushed us to the side of the channel. Once I got the other engine warmed up, we were making one to two knots against it.

It was a long few hours before it was time to get Maryanne out of bed. The shoals to windward had reduced the waves to about two and a half meters, but it would be another fifteen miles before we would be in the lee of any actual land. In the meantime, the rain continued to strafe us. The visibility hovered between 1/4 and 1/8 of a mile. There was no one on radar or the AIS. We had a good enough signal to check Marine Traffic and we were the only boat within a hundred miles that was underway. Even the heavy shipping was staying hunkered down where they were. At least we weren’t having to doge ships in the channel.

Wind, rain, and lightning striking all around for the last day of the passage.

We made it into the protection of Moreton Island right after daybreak. The wind was still strong and even gustier, but it did get rid of those awful waves for us. I wanted to get as far south in the bay as we could in order to protect us from strong southerlies behind the monster system. We now had the ebb against us, to which was added all of the runoff from the floods. It soon became apparent that we would not make it to the next protected anchorage past Sand Hills before dark.

The winds were still gusting into the mid-thirties when we arrived there, but the water at the anchorage was nice and flat. We both let out huge sighs of relief. It can rain all it wants now, we don’t have to go out in it.

Not so much for everyone else. The radio finally started coming alive. The Brisbane River was flooding and it sounded like the Marine Police had their hands full chasing down floating debris and steering it away from marinas and anchored boats. Someone posted a video of a drifting houseboat that hit a dock and sank in three seconds. There was someone aboard at the time, who managed to be rescued with only minor injuries. The river was full of boats, concrete docks and other flotsam, all bouncing their way downstream. Being underway at night is not going to be a good idea for a while.

Eddystone Point

[Kyle]It was a beautiful, flat calm morning in Binalong Bay. By the time we were finished with breakfast, a light breeze was blowing in from the north. We dropped our mooring and were soon tacking up the Bay of Fires.

It started pleasantly enough. Then the wind increased, we sped up and it got a little boisterous. That’s fine. We were expecting that.

The passage was made delightful with a LOT of dolphins passing and leaping about (not so easy to capture by camera)

Then the wind continued to build and build until we were eventually down to two reefs in each sail and punching into two-meter seas. What I had thought would be a long, but pleasant trip up the coast was turning into something we both just wanted to get over with. Oh, I am really starting to get sick of all of the wind in Tasmania being double the forecast (I should really know better by now).

On the last tack, we finally sailed into the lee of Eddystone Point, where the wind halved and the seas died off to a nice, slow swell. Wow! Eddystone is really pretty, with the bright white paint of the lighthouse standing over orange boulders that rise above the blue sea. It looked like the perfect place to explore, but the surf on the beach was still too rough to want to risk landing the dinghy.

It looks calm, but no such luck on the beach itself

We had originally planned to stay at Eddystone at least a couple of nights, get ashore to see the lighthouse up close, and then maybe sail north to the Furneaux Group, but a check of the weather was making it pretty clear that the ONLY chance we had of not beating to windward the entire way to Queensland over the next couple of weeks would be if we left for Queensland in the morning. We would still have to be close-hauled for a third of the way, but the wind would be far enough to the east for us to be able to stay on one tack and point where we were going. The rest of the time would be strong tailwinds. Ugh! I wasn’t quite mentally ready to say goodbye to Tasmania just yet, but I also didn’t want to get pinned down for weeks waiting for a weather window that might just be another maybe. I spent the last of the daylight converting the dinghy into lifeboat mode.

Binalong (Bay of Fires)

[Kyle]John and Shelly (owners of the Major Munchies cafe in St Helens) insisted that we just had to take Begonia around the corner to Binalong if the weather would allow it. We had one more day of winds from the south in the forecast, so we would be able to squeeze in one afternoon there. We were planning (hoping) for at least one anchorage in the "Bay of Fires" so we decided to follow the recomendation given and head for Binalong.

Waiting on traffic while departing St Helens, and near the main entrance: the pretty 'Little Elephant Rock'

Our departure from St Helens was fighting the flood this time, so we had a long time to chat with the extra friendly guy working Marine Rescue on the radio. Once we dispensed with the initial parts about what the bar camera at the jetty was showing, we switched to the short versions of each other’s stories. He seemed genuinely impressed by what we had done and said he hopes to be out there with us some day. For the moment, he’s living in a house on the beautiful shoreline we would be passing in an hour or so. The conversation reminded me of those rare times flying over remote areas in the middle of the night where pilots and air traffic controllers have no business to do and so spend a few minutes getting to know someone who is always right in their earphones, but about whom they know almost nothing. It helps pass the time and keep each other awake. Most of my favorite controllers have names like Cleveland Center or New York Approach. It’s kind of nice to find the occasional one called Kathleen or Daryl.

Our conversation tapered off when a deep draft monohull requested a guide into the harbor from sea (it is subject to a few shallow patches). Things were getting busy again. Back to business. We passed on our report of the bar when crossing it, and then it was "Contact Newark Tower, one one eight point seven..."

Binalong is a small town at the southern end of the 50km length of coastline know as the Bay of Fires. The "Bay of Fires" got is name from the early European explorers due to the many aboriginal fires seen on the beaches ashore, but it could have been named instead for the proliferation of all of the bright orange lichen covering the boulders just above the high tide line. We have been lucky enough to see lots of this in Tasmania's remote areas, where it never ceases to stun us, but the Bay of Fires is accessible by road and covers a large area, so it is understandably a must-see stop on any tours of the state as well as a popular destination and second home location.

Binalong Bay was only going to be calm until the next morning, so we wasted no time getting ashore for a look around. Most of the other popular parts of the Bay of Fires were out of walking distance, so we expected our excursion to be a relatively short one, since everything was pretty much right by Begonia.

Well, sort of. Once we got ashore, we quickly realized that the view from every direction was different from each boulder. There were plenty of pretty coves within the town itself, and we spent ages scrambling over them and admiring each new vista. We kept walking from one scene to the next until we made it to Skeleton Point, and beyond that until we had practically walked back to St Helens. We got as far as the entrance beacon for the harbor there and decided the only chance we had of getting home by dark was to take the direct route over the headland along a relatively boring dirt road with few distractions. By the time we got back to St Helens, the light was just amazing, so we re-explored all those coves we had started with. Ahh the beauty!

Bay of Fires from the trails around Binalong Bay and Skeleton Point

St Helens

[Kyle]At Bryans Corner, in the afternoon, at about the time the onshore chop was starting to get really annoying, we upped anchor and headed north as the last straggler in the crowd that had all left by dawn.

A pretty sunset as we waited for the right weather anchored to move on from Bryans Corner

It was actually a pretty nice sail. Once we were sufficiently offshore, we changed from reaching under working sail to running under the spinnaker. Apart from a few lumpy areas where the currents roughed up the surface, it was smooth and pleasant downwind sailing. It was even clear enough to get one last look at the southern lights before clouds and decreasing latitude would hide them from us.

The entrance to St Helen’s is shallow and dangerous in anything but offshore (south through northwest) winds. I called St Helen’s Marine Rescue as soon as they opened and the friendly guy there said the bar conditions were the calmest he’d seen in a long time. There was only small surf on the edges of a wide swath of flat water in the channel. When I told him our draft, he said there would be no reason for us to wait several hours for the tide to come up; we could go in now.

Great! The flood had us zinging the eight miles to the town center. There, we found the public pier to be completely full, so we retreated to the edge of the adjacent mooring field. We found a spot in only 1.3 meters at low tide and dropped anchor.

The weather was supposed to be heavy rain the next afternoon, Maryanne had said that she wanted to do some provisioning and laundry, so I was up in the dark preparing to go ashore as soon as it was light out so we could get to the stores when they opened. When it came time for her to stir, she took one look outside at the rapidly approaching gloom and decided to put all of that stuff off until tomorrow, when it has all passed.

Begonia anchored off the town of St Helens

That morning was much brighter. We both practically leapt into the dinghy to go ashore. We decided to skip the little laundry we needed to do and save loading the backpack with provisions until we were on our way home. In the meantime, we thought we would pop into a café for a pre-walk snack. This quickly morphed into a search for toast.

Like ice cream, toast is one of those things that we just don’t get aboard. Before anyone writes in, we know that you can get special racks to turn a gas stove into a camping toaster. We have tried them and never got satisfactory results even remotely similar to what a $5 electric toaster does. Thus, toast has become a special shore treat.

Toast is actually hard to find. We found lots of places that offered to toast a muffin or a sandwich, but we got apologies when we asked if we could dispense with the ingredients and just get a toasted air sandwich. “No. Sorry, Love. They’re all pre-made.”

After much asking around at different places, we were finally told to try Major Munchies. Major Munchies is not a café, but kind of a takeaway fish and chip/burger counter with a couple of basic tables by the soda machine. When Maryanne asked if they had toast on the menu, They said that they didn’t, but that they served toast with breakfast. Maryanne asked me if I wanted another whole breakfast.

“Well, I guess I could.” I turned to them, “What sorts of things do you have for breakfast?”

“Right! One breakfast coming up!”

My mistake. Instead of having a Breakfast Menu, their menu had a single item in that category called, simply, ‘Breakfast’. No other description. Well, this should be interesting. I was trying to remember if I had heard anything about traditional Aussie or Tassie breakfasts including anything like tripe or sheep liver.

It did not. It was a basic fry-up: eggs, ham and bakedbeans served over toast. While they were making this for me, we met the owners, John and Shelly. They were each super friendly. While John helped us figure out what was worth seeing in the area, Shelly cooked my breakfast and then brought it out with a special overflow plate of toast for Maryanne. We talked for a bit more (they are SO nice!). When Shelly noticed Maryanne finishing her last slice of toast, she dashed back into the kitchen to produce a refill for her. She seemed to really enjoy Maryanne’s joy at such a simple thing.

We strolled around the foreshore walks, and visited the museum in St Helens
The giant egg is a Time Capsule created in 2006 (to be opened in 2026)

Our subsequent forays through St Helen’s between waterfront strolls, we met lots of other really nice people, all of whom just couldn’t do enough for us two weary vagabonds. Friendliness seems to be some sort of local characteristic. Come to think of it, all of Tasmania is like that, but the people in St Helen’s even stand out then.

Freycinet National Park

[Kyle]Anchored off Maria Island, a change in Begonia’s motion in the pre-dawn darkness signaled that the wind had reversed direction. We now had tailwinds for the day’s leg north. We reluctantly dragged ourselves out of bed and got going.

To begin with, Freycinet was a fairly long sail north. In addition to the sail itself, we were also planning an intermediate stop at Ile des Phoques, also known as White Rock, which is strange because Ile des Phoques translates to Seal Island in French. Anyway, it has lots of fur seals and seabirds, but it is also riddled with giant caves that are big enough to take a boat inside and even through to the other side of the island. Begonia’s mast is a bit of a problem, but our dinghy would fit just fine. The water surrounding Ile des Phoques is all too deep for anchoring, so our plan was to each go in the dinghy in turn, while the other one loiters nearby in Begonia.

Once we got there, though, our plans changed. The leftover swell from the previous few day’s winds was still running. When it approached the island, what didn’t explode into spray on the rocks magnified as it entered each cave. It was quickly apparent that it would NOT be safe to enter any of the caves. Well, that’s a real time saver. We decided instead to do a lap in Begonia.

We spotted plenty of fur seals and penguins in the waters around Ile des Phoques (Seal Island)

We watched the swell enter and leave the big caves, accompanied by lots of spray and big booming noises. Around the (sheltered) other side, we found the bulk of Ile des Phoques seal population. The little island is just a big chunk of rock with no access other than up sixty-degree slopes of bare rock interspersed with tiny ledges. Most of the ledge space was occupied by seals all of the way to the summit. Put a pair of mittens on me and my legs in a sleeping bag and I seriously doubt I would be agile enough to climb that rock. Going down looks especially harrowing. As we passed by, enough of the seals were spooked by us that we got to see several examples of how to flee the cliffs for the safety of the water or vice versa. The most common mode of egress seems to be the Spaghetti Method, where they shoot out of the water onto the wall. If they’re ready, they’ll stick. If not, it’s back into the ocean for another try.

As we were happily enjoying all of these antics, we drifted into the island’s lee. WHEW!! The ammonia smell of the guano nearly knocked us on our feet. Someone had just cracked open the world’s biggest tube of smelling salts. We’re awake! We’re Awake! Time to get outta here!

After a few more miles sailing in the refreshingly fragrant lee of southeastern Tasmania’s eucalypt forests, we arrived in Coles Bay. Coles Bay is a small settlement, but it is the biggest thing around. The roads and trails entering Freycinet National Park begin here, so it hosts a scattering of supporting infrastructure.

We have been on most of the trails within during our visits to Wineglass Bay and were hoping to walk something new on this, the opposite side of the peninsula. My first instinct was to go up Mt Amos, the northern bookend to Wineglass Bay. After a bit of research, though, it seemed like some parts of the trail could be pretty hairy, particularly if there was any chance of precipitation whatsoever, which there was. We decided instead to do a big loop to Cape Tourville Lighthouse and the adjacent lookout.

At the Tourist Office, I went to ask the woman behind the counter about the hike. She started by giving me driving directions to the trailhead at Cape Tourville. When I explained that we were walking, she looked at me like I was a tedious idiot and repeated the same directions, emphasizing that there were trails at the end. When I explained that we did not have a car, she must have decided I was lying because how do you get to Coles Bay without a car? I then got a third retelling, only a bit slower this time. ”Okay”, I smiled, “Thanks so much!” Well at least I gleaned that part of our journey was going to be on a drivable surface.

We walked across the peninsula on a beautiful day

It wasn’t bad. We only saw about five cars the whole way and it was nice to walk on a good, improved surface. After the lighthouse, with its view of the southern half of Wineglass Bay, we returned via a much quieter 4WD route that deposited us at the opposite side of Coles Bay from Begonia.

We visited the Cape Tourville Lighthouse where a small group of lizards appeared to befriend us and beg for food(?) at our feet when we stopped for our packed-lunch with a view

We were now pretty tired and hungry, so it was such a great coincidence (or was it?) that we had to pass right by the town’s only pub. The kitchen would not be open for forty minutes, but we were invited to order drinks at the bar to have while we wait.

That went okay, but then Maryanne noticed that almost all of the other tables in the place had ‘Reserved’ signs on them. It appeared that the entire population of the adjacent RV campground were planning to join us soon. To get a jump on this, Maryanne decided to see if she could put our order in now for when the kitchen opened. She was met with an entire staff who were doing that airline gate agent thing where they would occupy themselves with some small task while completely ignoring the person standing right on the other side of the counter from them. It took her half of our wait time just to get an acknowledgement of her presence. Our orders came out right as the crowds arrived and to be fair, the food was really good, but we knew it would be faster to buy our desserts from the convenience store on the way home than to try to catch someone’s eye at the pub.

Views of The Hazards (the mountains in the distance) from trails around Coles Bay

A storm was on its way. Like the last, this one would be screaming out of the north, then be replaced with southern winds. To better position ourselves for this, we moved a few miles down the Freycinet Peninsula to Bryans Corner. There, we inadvertently intercepted and were suddenly swallowed up in the Van Diemen’s Land Circumnavigators. This mini rally left from Hobart a few days behind us for their counter-clockwise lap of the state. We had previously seen several of them on AIS and just thought it was because it was a nice weekend, not realizing that they were all travelling as one group. Had I known Bryans was their destination for the night, I might have chosen somewhere else to avoid the Cruise Ship Day atmosphere, but we got there before most of them showed up.

We chose a spot amongst the few boats already there that was both protected and spaced so that none of us would run the risk of dragging into anyone else if any anchors started letting go. Then the rest of them showed up and nixed that plan. Apparently, the key to safety in a storm is to be able to jump onto the adjacent boat’s deck if something goes wrong with yours. Suddenly it was New Year’s Eve in Sydney again. Well, okay, not that bad. We have been getting pretty spoiled lately. If we ever make it back to the Caribbean, an anchorage like this will make us wonder, “Where is everybody?”

Most got the spacing pretty even, with the exception of the guy at our port bow. He really wanted to be tucked into the quite reasonable space between us and the next boat instead of behind us in the wide-open spaces with the plebs. On the fourth try, he finally got his boat where he wanted it, less than ten meters from us. I guess he figures that if he makes a running jump, the big trampoline is a safer landing spot than the deck hardware on the monohull opposite him. To his credit, he did keep a watchful eye on things. Every time our boats would approach while sailing on our anchors, he would come out into his cockpit and stare at us for a while before deciding we weren’t going to hit and returning back down below. From his expression, I always got the feeling he thought we were doing something wrong. Maybe he was just concentrating.

The storm turned out to be a big dud. I don’t know if it was because the land to windward did a really good job of blocking the wind or if there just didn’t turn out to be that much of it to begin with. That kept us from having to take part in any anchor dragging drama, I suppose. The day ended up seeming like just a slightly choppy one. We probably could have risked going ashore, but we had stuff to catch up on and it was still Cruise Ship Day on the beach.

With the peak of the storm past, my real worry was what would happen to all of us at the 4am wind reversal. My answer came when a very nearby clunk broke the silence. I suspected it was our neighbor’s anchor coming home on its roller. I emerged to find his lights receding into the darkness. He wasn’t the only one. Three more sets could be seen forming a line in front of him. We now had plenty of space, so I went back to bed.

When we emerged later, every other boat in the bay had gone. I was relieved to have our new-found privacy until I checked on them and found them all heading north along the coast like circus elephants holding each other’s tails. Uh, oh. Maybe they are going where we are going. They are ahead of us on bigger, faster boats and they might take up all of the berthing and anchoring space when they get there. Oh, I don’t like this one bit!

To see our other visits to Freycinet - see our trips to Wineglass Bay in Jan 2022 and in Feb 2020. We managed to do see different areas on each visit (lots of hiking, and great views).

Return To Maria Island

[Kyle]As I had said when we left the last time (in January this year), I definitely wanted to spend more time at Maria Island.

Sailing from Bruny to Maria (via the Tasman Peninsula)

We did an overnight sail from Bruny Island, crossing Storm Bay. My night watch was particularly good. Almost as soon As I went out to the helm, I was joined by a big pod of perhaps twenty dolphins. They streaked through the bioluminescence like so many heat-seeking missiles heading for a warm spot under the trampoline. They followed us for hours, peeling off and circling back. The glow from their wakes actually made their underwater movements easier to track than in the daytime.

That would have been great in itself, but I also got to finally, FINALLY get an unmistakable view of the Aurora Australis. So far, every time the Southern Lights have been active and we have been where we actually have a chance of seeing them, it has been cloudy or we have been too close to a city. We were headed northbound again, so our chances would only decrease from here. I so wanted to be able to see the ‘other’, southern ones, too. I don’t intend to be annoying at parties, but it’s nice to know I could be.

When the morning twilight ended all of that fun, we had a few minutes, then passed by Tasman Island at sunrise. The Dennison Canal route is shorter, but the dramatic scenery going the long way around is just the kind of stuff sailing dreams are made of. We passed way under the cliffs of the island and even further under the cliffs of Cape Pillar before passing the columns at Cape Huay, this time with no tightrope walker in evidence, before making for Riedle Bay on Maria Island.

Maria is like a mini Bruny in that it is two large land masses connected by a skinny isthmus. Riedle Bay is the eastern compliment to Shoal Bay/Chinaman’s Bay on the opposite, western side. It is there that we had anchored on the way south. Being on the exposed side of the island makes Riedle deeper, subject to more swell and less populated than Chinaman’s Bay. We tucked in to the calmest corner and dropped anchor next to a lone commercial fishing boat.

The sky was clear again (and cold!), with no artificial lights. The aurora was still going and was even stronger than the night before, even sporting a few well-defined curtains shimmering away {Maryanne: Normally in Tasmania the aurora is only seen using a camara with a long exposure, so it was extra special to see a glimpse of it with the naked eye; I can only imagine how it special it might have looked if long-exposures would work from a moving boat}.

Since we had last walked north of the isthmus (Point Lesueur), this time we decided to take the trail south to Haunted Bay. The walk over the island starts off with a grade so shallow that is almost unnoticeable. It peaks way on the other side and then plunges steeply back down to the water. There’s little hint of what’s to come until the end, then it emerges into a world of sculpted rock covered in bright orange lichen that contrasts the deep blue water below. We scrambled left and right (and up and down), amazed at the perfect photogenic positioning of each new vista. The start of the walk back was tough, but it was so worth it.

Stunning Haunted Bay

Back at the isthmus, we realized our mileage (kilometerage?) for the day was only in the teens, so we decided to do tomorrow’s trail now and headed to the end of the other southern trail on to Robey’s Farm. There, we met another American, another Brit and some German guy, who were on a day trip all of the way from the other side of Maria Island at Darlington. We told them Haunted Bay was really cool, then realized they didn’t have enough daylight left to go there if they were still going to make it to their ferry. Oops!

Robey's Farm and some wildlife along the trails

A peak at Shoal Bay (across the isthmus)

And the wilder Riedle Bay

We had a lazy day aboard and then moved the boat across to the North side of Riedle Bay at Whaler’s Cove. There, we found a deep spot just big enough for our swing and dropped the anchor. Instead of sand and surf, Whaler’s is surrounded by bright orange rock formations like a smaller version of Haunted Bay. There are no hiking trails here, so Maryanne pumped up the new kayak and we headed out in that. There are lots of cool nooks and crannies, but the best of them was the big rock window eroded through one of the adjacent islets. I dropped Maryanne off and she scrambled around taking pictures of me in the kayak while I took pictures of her on the rocks.

We also did a short hike up the riverbed that feeds into Whaler’s Cove. It petered out long before we were able to consider our walk exercise, but it was a pretty diversion from paddling. Our big find there was a meter-long snake sitting on a rock on the other side of a downed tree we were trying to traverse.

Exploring around Whalers' Cove

Tasmania has three species of snake. Two are venomous, the other is not not venomous. That last one is the white-lipped snake. Ours looked like that one, except that I got a pretty good, long look at its face and didn’t see the telltale white lips, so it may have been one of the other two. The white-lipped snake is a forty-five-minute snake, which is almost double the amount of time you would have to make your peace if you were bitten by one of the other two.

We’ve heard they don’t really want anything to do with us, so we tried being loud and obvious. It was completely unbothered by this and after a long enough pause to let us know so, it slowly slithered right at me (for some reason, I was in front). This did not worry me, since I assumed it was just headed for the cover of the tangle of branches on the opposite side of the intervening log from us.

What was a little unnerving was when it emerged from the tangle to escape up the bank. It was going away from us, so we were in no danger, but it just appeared silently and slid up the log. There was no warning, no rustling, just a nice-looking place to step one second and a meter-long deadly snake the next. That’s when we realized they could be anywhere. They could be everywhere! Every rock, leaf and twig was the object of much suspicion on the way back to the kayak.

In the morning, we were up early for the short sail to Maria Island’s main harbor at Darlington. After a few tacks to make it out of Riedle Bay, we sailed the rest of the way on a beam reach. We were close enough to enjoy detailed views of the island’s amazing geography, which dates all of the way back to when it was a polar part of Gondwanaland. Several eroded sections of the multi-colored sandstone opened up into big caves where crashing waves exploded into spray, sending a boom that arrived to our ears half a second later. We finished that leg with a close pass under the Fossil Cliffs. They are not as impressive as the ones behind us, but those are not accessible on foot. These were topped by brightly colored specks who would occasionally take pictures of us as we sailed below.

Darlington is not a town there, per se, but instead a park ranger’s office, a campground and bare bones backpacker accommodation in the old convict cells. The ferry from Triabunna lands there and as such, it is the starting point for most who explore the island. {Maryanne: I had been expecitedly expecting a nice tea-shop in the grounds, since the maps clearly showed a building called "The Coffee Palace", however when we arrived we found a it was a museum dedicated to feeding of the past visitors. You could even sit at tables piled with food from different eras of the island... So close!}.

We had originally planned our arrival day to be a sailing day, with the next day set aside for hiking, but a closer study of the tide chart and the weather revealed that it would be better for us to split up our three planned hikes into two days.

Our first was a hike across the grassy, rolling hills back to Fossil Cliffs. There, we got a closer look at what we had sailed by earlier. Now we were two of the picture-taking specks. About 290 million years ago, a mass extinction event caused many of the bivalves (clams, scallops and such) to fall to the seabed, where they eventually became fossilized for posterity. There were some places where almost the entire stone layer was made up of petrified shells. It’s not as exciting as finding big dinosaur bones, but it is still an important data point for understanding the region’s past.

Fossil Cliffs

Wombats

We doubled up our Fossil Cliffs loop hike with another up to Darlington’s water source, a reservoir built by convicts, then it was a nice meander through forest back to Darlington. Happy that our day’s mileage had reached the respectable range, we were heading back to the beach when we spotted some wombats.

Every time I see one, I can’t get over how impossibly cute they are. Their scientific name, vombatus ursinus gives a clue to this. Ursidae is the family bears occupy. Bears are, of course, killing machines, but on the surface, they look cute and fluffy. That’s why Teddy Roosevelt’s stuffed bears became ubiquitous children’s cuddle toys, the Teddy Bear. Wombats are little, vegetarian, Teddy Bear-sized bears that spend their days going around being adorable.

The one’s we found seemed pretty accustomed to humans and would basically go on with their grazing without any regard to us, so long as we kept low and more than arm’s length away. Thus, our short trip to the dinghy got waylaid by a couple of happy hours of sitting next to them on the grass while they slowly made their way by, keeping it trimmed to an even length.

At the next morning’s low tide, we set off to do the relatively short loop to the Painted Cliffs, a particularly nice section of sandstone most easily accessed at low water. We took the long way there via the ruins of the Oast House, where hops were dried when it was a farm. The best part of that trail came a little further on where we found lots of cute little Padrmelons surprised by the day’s first humans. That’s the real unsung attraction of that seldom-used trail. I decided they should call that section the Pademelon Paddock.

Painted Cliffs

We saw no cute wombats on the way home that morning, but we did encounter a family with a little girl about three years old who boasted to Maryanne that her sandwich was Vegemite. Holy Hell! You can’t do that to a kid! I’m a grown man and I’m traumatized by just the smell of the stuff.

General views from our time exploring the trails around Darlington