Passage - Return to Tasmania

[Kyle]It was still early enough in the season for eastbound weather windows to be few and far between. We had a good one coming up that shouldn't be missed. It was time to depart South Australia and move on. We left the docks at CYCSA in the early evening and headed out towards the ocean once again.

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

Exploring McLaren Vale

[Kyle]After a day exploring the Barossa Valley and one more day with the rental car, we headed out to McLaren Vale, the third of the wine regions near Adelaide. On the way, we stopped at the pretty seaside neighborhood of Glenelg, which I think they spelled backwards, and we then took a long, hot hike to the bottom of the Onkaparinga Gorge and back. That made us feel like we had at least pre-walked off a little of Maryanne's wine.

Coastal Road heading south: Glenelg

Coastal Road heading south: Port Noarlunga/Southport beach
The mouth of the Onkaparinga River

Onkaparinga Gorge - River Trail

We started the wine region proper with a visit to Coriole before our pre-booked visit to the d'Arenberg Cube. Coriole had ridiculously pretty (English country garden) setting and another friendly tasting host. D'Arenberg has been in the valley from the beginning, but the current generation's caretaker (Chester Osborn) is of a particularly artistic bent. To satisfy that side of himself, he built a giant Rubik's Cube-looking building right in the middle of the estate and filled it with an eclectic collection of art. Presently, one floor is home to a Picasso exhibit, which increased my knowledge of that man ten fold. Most interesting was that near the end of his life, when he started worrying about his legacy, Picasso was worried that his art was getting out of the price range of collectors. Against the advice of many, especially the art establishment, he decided to create several sculptures, based on his previous work so that more people could have access. These would be in limited editions of a few hundred and would be in different sizes, depending on how much space you had and how much you could pay. Some of these are actually for sale at the Cube. They had a couple of multi-story ones outside priced in the single-digit millions. The same sculptures are available inside in end table, and small shelf sizes for about one five-hundredth of that.

Coriole Vinyard and Cellar Door; another generous tasting

We liked the Cube so much that we had an unexpectedly reasonably priced lunch there and then headed to the top floor for our first tasting session. Yeah, Maryanne is definitely getting the better deal out of our driving bargain. She got some nice bonus Tawny there, too.

D'Arenberg Cube: Picasso (and other art) with a Wine tasting

D'Arenberg - the art makes it to the toilets too
The ladies were officially encouraged to visit the gents!

We stopped at a few more tasting rooms. Maryanne was looking very like a very serious vinophile by then, because she had started to use the spittoon and tipping out the rest of her glass instead of swallowing for the sake of her head. All the while, I was crying inside watching all of that beautiful wine go not down my throat. NOOOO! Sigh...

Samuel's Gorge - we were given a tour of the latest small batch being processed to add to our tasting experience

Our last stop, which was again recommended by people in the other great wineries, mainly because it had a great view overlooking the Onkaparing River Gorge, was Samuel's Gorge.

Samuel's is a small batch winery producing only a few different varieties. So far, at all of the places we have been, most of the wines have been excellent, but there's always been one or two that are 'meh!' . Even these were probably mostly good but they just weren't all necessarily our thing. None of the wines we tasted at Samuel's Gorge were 'meh!. In fact they were noticeably far and away better than everything we have had yet. We even got extra lucky there. One of the owners was having a business meeting on the premises that day. He always asks them to open a bottle of whatever he wants, which of course, was their most expensive. That one was not on our tasting list, but the lovely Mike, who was doing our tasting, got us some to try. Ooh, that was good! Since Maryanne and I were the only ones there, he even took us on an informal tour of their backyard-sized facility, complete with big vats of crushed grapes fermenting in the open air. He knew a lot and taught us a lot that we didn't know. Because they are so small and don't have the economies of scale of the bigger places, their wines are a little pricier than others. We had been generally buying the odd bottle of the best of the bunch at the other places we had been, but here, we bought two for the price of four elsewhere. It was totally worth it. That is some really good stuff.

Maxwell's Winery was closed for renovation, but the Maze was still open!

We swung by the old German-settled town of Hahndorf on the way back to the city

At closing time for the wineries, our day was only half done. For dinner, we had been invited to Colin and his wife Siti's house. Colin was another contact Maryanne had 'met' through the Facebook 'Sailing Australia' group, we first spotted his boat along the Kangaroo Island coast and then met in person at Marina St. Vincent when he lent Maryanne his car. Before his landlord canceled his lease, He and Siti owned a restaurant. It was our good fortune that they still liked to exercise those skills. He told us no table was available and marked up the wine 400%. Just kidding. It was great. Now we want to go to Malaysia just to eat there.

A blurry photo, but a wonderful memory of a great night - Thanks Siti!

They both have been sailing on the south coast for years; they had some riveting stories. Best was a reading of the children's book they wrote for their grandson about the time they had a Rat aboard while sailing in Croatia. It was harrowing, but with lots of comic relief like “Grampa always listens to Grandma when she says, “Look out!” Siti had a big chuckle at that.

Once we had finished dinner, it was late. Our bellies were full and our heads were swimming with good cheer. We weren't done, though. We still had to return the car.

We left it at the after-hours drop off and then got to experience Downtown Adelaide after midnight. It's slightly dodgy. We felt no danger, but there were definitely a few groups of drunks who were just a bit too friendly. We wouldn't have rested on a bench to take a break from the long walk to the train (we were carrying a couple of heavy bags full of wine for some reason).

We slept in a bit the next morning. While Maryanne was off on an errand, Matt from Vellamo came by. I had forgotten that during our dinner at the Cruising Yacht Club of South Australia the previous Saturday, he had told me he knew the distributor of the delicious wine he had been passing around the table. He could get it for a discount. When he asked, I said we would be happy to take a half dozen if he could get them. Now he was at Begonia with the box to add to our already well-stocked bilges of South Australian wine! We chatted a bit about Vellamo's upcoming race and our upcoming departure from Adelaide. At the end, when I thought we had finished, Matt was still standing there, looking uncomfortable. Eventually, he said, “So... How do you want to settle up then?”

Oh, jeez! I totally forgot to pay him! I was so embarrassed. During our whole conversation, I was thinking we had settled up in advance, even though we hadn't. That's what the stack of cash Maryanne had left on the table was supposed to be for. Luckily, I did have the cash handy and didn't have to make some lame excuse about waiting for Maryanne to get home. Sorry, Matt, and Thanks!