Oz East Coast
Wednesday 4th Feb 2009
Slipped lines at 0600 hrs on Sat 31st Feb from Middle Harbour Sydney, Hobart bound for 630 nm.
On this trip I'm trialling a service from OMNI, a weather router based in the US who has been giving me some guidance on weather forecasting for the trip.
Bob who does the routing gave me some great info, but not overly needed as we have such wonderful tools available to us in Australia, including the Bureau of Meteorology. Bob's services will come in handy when I leave our shores, like crossing the North Indian ocean to the med.
Bathurst Harbour, Port Davey with the late David Brown on the right
I am accompanied by my friend Mark Johnson from N55- 27 "Myah" and we are doing night watches of 3 hrs on, 3 hrs off. Mark has played a big part in my education with my boat and is a medical specialist from Las Vegas. His boat is in Brisbane having some additions and warranty work done.
The trip down south had us revelling in N/NE following wind and seas.
I am again at a loss why we cannot see another pleasure boat, but of course a lot of ships.
Crossing Bass Strait we had a radar target of a non AIS boat. Getting closer it looked like an oil rig being towed southwards. Getting even closer under binos we find it is the beautiful square rigger the James Craig heading for Hobart as well. We chatted a bit during the night, but as she had all canvas aloft and close hauled, we soon left her with our luxury of maintaining the rhumb line at 8 plus kts.
The wind changed to the SE just on reaching the N/E cape of Tassie and we had a tough night with not much sleep to be had off watch.
I made the decision to duck into beautiful Wineglass Bay a third way down the East coast for a decent 6 hour uninterrupted sleep before continuing on with a fortuitous wind change back to the N/NE to give us a perfect ride all the way to Hobart.
Coming into Wineglass Bay we had to rely on a local pilot book, as unbelievably no details or soundings appeared on our C-Map chart.
We split the entrance and were blown away as a departing fishing boat lit up the whole bay for us with their spotlight as a pathfinder - very kind of them.
The run to Hobart was perfect and we tied up at 0530 hrs on Wednesday, just at first light.
Quite a few things to do before we start the VDL-C on Wed 11th. Like getting the bottom scrubbed and anodes checked, installation of my Bohlken Barograph, arranging for the boat to be hauled after the rally for new antifoul applied to the underwater hull, a few electrical issues fixed, and of course having a professional cleaner to come in to do the interior making the boat spick for Marg coming down on Tuesday for the rally.
The marina at the RYCT is my favourite place and the people are so friendly. Tied up close is a brand new Nordhavn 43, Opal Lady, just down from Brisbane for the rally, and a Nordhavn 78, Voyager 111 moored directly opposite us.
Mark has gone off for a short trip with Loretta, Richard, & Kevin, all old school mates from the US, and they all come on board except Kevin on Wed for 11 days cruising northwards and around to the Tamar.
So life is good here for me except being up all last night watching the news about the bushfires back home in Victoria, and the tragedy as it unfolded.
Also had friends Peter and Margaret Bryant from my club, the WBC, make an unexpected visit yesterday, and it was nice to show them around.
This morning I had a visit on the boat from Randy Repass who is the founder and Chairman of West Marine in the US, and is the biggest boat chandlery business in the world.
I proudly showed off Skie to him again as we had met up in the Whitsunday Group last September.
Randy is sailing around the world on his PH yacht Convergence with his wife and son.
Tonight we are to attend the VDL-C briefing of skippers and will hear more detail on what lies ahead over the next 5 weeks.
