Oz East Coast
Sunday, 8th March - Strahan, Macquarie Harbour 42.09.04, 145.18.52 E
We steamed from Beauty Point at the mouth of the beautiful Tamar River to Devonport after saying goodbye to our new American friends Loretta, husband Dick, and Mark.
Loretta and Dick joined the boat at the Rally kick off in Hobart along with Margaret. Mark Johnson had been with me since Sydney helping to get the boat down to Hobart.
It was great to have Mark on board so I could pose a lot of questions to someone qualified, having an N55 himself, about a lot of possibly dumb questions.
Mark has crossed the Pacific twice and is a good manual reader, but I tend to give manuals a cursory glance, and get right into them when I have a problem. So far very few problems found at all with the good ship SKIE.
Margaret left from Beauty Point as well as she had to get home to see how the house renovations were going, and to give Elliott and the grandkids some big cuddles. Little did she know she would be arriving into a serious bushfire environment which we monitored as well as we could on the boat using our Sat TV link.
She was very cautious and moved into the city to stay with our son Chris, leaving our heavily treed 22 acre property in a potential hotspot. The first fire event claimed over 200 lives and 2000 houses.
From Beauty Point I was joined by Iain Couper and John Shuttlewood, both owners of N47's, Bacchus, and Dauntless. They were to stay on until first Stanley at the top of NW Tassie, and around through the Hunter Group, and South to Macquarie Harbour, which was an overnighter.
This trip was met with some difficult conditions, as the wind was gusting 35 kts, and worse for the sailing boats as they had it right on the nose, and had to keep tacking out to sea to gain south.
When we got through the Hunter Passage we found a 4 kt following tidal current colliding with waves and swell from the SW, and right on the nose. We had one brave sailing boat behind us, and just before we could alert them what they were in for, turned around and prudently returned to Stanley, to join another ten smart boats.
Arriving at Hells Gate just on dawn after slowing down to 5 kts for a while, we followed the Nordhavn 40, West Wind through the tricky passage, and said farewell to them further along the passage when we changed course to head to the source region of the beautiful Gordon River our destination for three nights.
Gordon River meeting the Franklin River
Eventually 8 boats joined us, and we were to experience only two dangers, the first on weighing anchor with a tree attached, close to the shore, and 5-6 kts of current whooshing down the river after two days of heavy rain.
The other danger was being invited over for a drink on one of the 3 boats from the Geelong contingent who were rafted up to a sandbank.
The danger came in the form of a 49% proof Scotch, that they felt I had to drink for helping them out on an issue in Stanley.
We visited the Sir Johns Falls, and took the dinghy right up as far as we could go skirting rapids in the Franklin , until the current velocity and depth sent us back home - very fast.
Sir Johns Falls
A memorable event, and something I would like to definitely do again.
We went back to Mill Bay at Strahan where Peter O'Brien was to join me, and Iain & John headed back to warm Coffs Harbour & Brisbane.
Peter and I leave tonight for the overnighter to Port Davey where we hope my son Chris will fly in on a hikers plane from Hobart unless he has to play in the baseball Grand Final next weekend. (afternote: They got in -and won)
Lunch at Strahan Pub, blue lipped mussels with Thai Sauce
Tony setting lobster pots