43:20S 145:59E
Tales of Amok's Adventures
Mike Jones
Wed 18 Dec 2013 19:07
First of all, sorry for prolonged lack of communication, but we have been having a whale of a time. Hopefully you will have drawn your own conclusions that this was cause of us being so quiet and have not been spending time drawing up all sorts of scenarios of liferafts, rations and the like.
We sailed into King Island on Saturday afternoon around midday. With Pandora's friend Willy Kunkle on board, we are now 5. We picked up Willy in Portland (so to speak).
We enjoyed a great sail from Portland Victoria, where we made really good time going round the top of King Island, then down the Eastern Side into a little anchorage called Grassy. There is a great man-made breakwater which was constructed from the mining overburden (all 2.2 million tonnes of it). Historically at Grassy, there was a significant Tungsten mining industry. Unfortunately, given that huge demands for Tungsten is only typically required during wartimes, once WWII was over, the demand fell as the Chinese market produced all that was required. Today, Grassy has many derelict abandoned houses, but is still a lovely quaint village with a very friendly and hospitable boat club called "King Island Boat Club". Their harbour provides a very interesting entrance, as there are several land based transits for incoming vessels, (4 sets in all). Once you work out which set is of particular interest from your specific direction, they provide clear cut direction on approaches.
Grassy Harbour is also the berthing harbour for the cargo vessel which serves the island once a week. The "Searoad Mersey" comes in every Sunday morning. We haven't worked out where is comes from yet. This vessel appears to be a container roll on/roll off ship. When it comes into the small harbour, it completely fills the entrance between the end of the breakwater and the island. It is quite a sight, but you will have to wait for our 3G cellular service to return to see the snaps.
One of the 5 sets of transits provides directions on which bit of the harbour is "anchoring prohibited". We clearly understood the need for this on Sunday morning, when the cargo vessel csme completely in to the little harbour, as it needed all of that space to turn it self around to berth. I cannot begin to imagine the scene of somebody moored in the "turning circle". There would be mayhem.
The hilarity of our own berthing/mooring experience on the Saturday was this. Once we got clear of the anchoring prohibited transit mark, we were good to lay our anchor. Just as we layed it, and tested it was snug and tight, Toby happened to see a mooring buoy beside our anchor which appeared to say "Yachts". (We took this as "yachts welcome". We then decided to cover both bases (mooring and anchor), and run a mooring line to the mooring, to provide some additional contingency. You can imagine our laughter when Toby (upon rowing over to said mooring buoy) reported back that the mooring buoy didn't say "yachts", it said "NO FUCKEN YACHTS". What a hoot. In our opinion, there was plenty of room on the buoy to spell things properly and there was no need for poor grammar (M. Rog. to note...).
Any way, we did a high speed tour of the island; lighthouse, dinner, cafe, went passed famous King Island Dairy which was rudely closed on our only day. when we tried to buy some lunch, we were told that the best lunch we could get would be at the horse races, so off we went to the horse races to find lunch.
So then departed King Island on Sunday. Because of favourable winds, we elected to give Macquarie Harbour and Hell's Gate a miss, and head straight for Port Davey.
We had very light winds most of the way down, and our impressions of the West side of Tasmania were of calm seas and variable wind. I know that we got very lucky here, as it is 3 degrees into the Southern Ocean Roaring forties, and some of the most demanding conditions possible. We definitely got lucky here. I know many people wouldn't think that variable winds were "lucky", but given that I am writing this, it is my opinion that we got lucky.
Upon arriving in Port Davey, we entered the Bathurst Channel.
We anchored/moored up in a little anchorage called the Waterfall, where a natural waterfall exists down the rock. Some very enterprising person/persons before us have rigged up a suspended gerry can with a hose, such that yachts can come along side the shear rock and fill up their water tanks with fresh albeit slightly brown water. This is located above a mini mooring. I can advise our readers that you need to have nerves of steel to do this, to come alongside a cliff rock face to get water. Thankfully, we had enough water, and didn't see the need. We did however, use the mooring ring which was secured to the rock to run our stern line, then dropped our bow anchor. this anchorage is located at the western end of the Bathurst channel, just inside Breaksea Islands.
I have so much more to write about, but will send this off, so as to keep the transmission short.
chapter 2 follows will follow once we depart POrt Davey I promise. We are doing 3 capes today (South West, South and South East) and my Captain is chomping at the bit to get going).
love and laughter,
SS
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