Tasmania to the Bight

NORDLYS
David and Annette Ridout
Tue 7 Mar 2006 00:25

Highs and Lows as we escape from

Van Diemen’s Land

 

 

Great Australian Bight

7th March 2006

 

Having given us a marvelous time, as shown in the photos of the previous diary, the weather closed in for our last three days in Port Davey.  The cloud base was just above the mast head.  The rain fell in torrents and the wind blew.  At Maatsuyker Island just off the south of Tasmania and only twenty five miles from our anchorage as the crow flies, or perhaps I should say the Sea Eagle as there are no crows in Port Davey, the reported actual on the second day of this weather was NW 43 knots with five meter seas on top of four meter swells.  I say no more.  We were anchored in a reasonably sheltered bay known as Wombat Cove but the chain tugged and groaned and the boat shuddered as the gusts hit.

 

On the fourth day a window of escape opened and we were off.  Cabin fever was overcome.  Twenty four hours later we were north of Macquarie Harbour and Strahan and enjoying a fine sailing breeze from the East.  The morning forecast was for ENE 15 to 20 becoming in forty eight hours time N 15 knots.  Thus with our course for Portland Victoria being NW we reckoned on a fine sail with perhaps half a days reasonable beat at the end.  It was not to be.  By early afternoon we were down to two reefs and the tiny staysail.  We had to shout to make ourselves heard as Nordlys flung herself forward with sheets only a fraction eased and 35 to 40 knots across the deck.  Moral was not high.  As if to make her feelings felt, Nordlys developed a rather alarming noise from her steering.  Investigation (an interesting exercise opening the stern locker and emptying in order to get at the rudder quadrants in these conditions) showed nothing wrong with the steering mechanism and it appeared to come from the top bearing of the rudder. There was no friction in the steering.  To be honest we were rather frightened.  Either we went back, a horrible thought, or we went on across two hundred miles of Bass Straight with the prospect of this wind going right onto the nose.  Our only way out was to run off into the great southern ocean.  A healthy dose of WD40 to the top of the rudder bearing stopped the noise and we settled down to the next 24 hours which were not the greatest in our lives however the seas never got that bad and the boat behaved fantastically.  An hour later and our trusted Monitor self steering decided to play his joker and broke his sacrificial bar so down to autopilot only (or us!).  Luckily ‘he who decides our fates’ had decided we needed a break.  The wind did not go into the north but abated and we ended up reaching in 20 knots to within ten miles of our destination into which we motored in a flat calm!

 

Talking about it together afterwards we tried to analyze why we had got so low.  We had after all been in worse on other occasions.  We think it was the prospect of having to beat into such wind or to run off into nowhere combined with the steering worry and the monitor breakage.  Perhaps we are just not mentally tough enough for the southern ocean.  Nordlys is not likely to be asked to go south of 40 degrees again in our ownership so the matter can be put to bed.

 

Portland is actually one of Australia’s earliest settlements but today is a small rather sleepy town existing only due to its huge pulp mill and loading port.  One surprise however was the most delightful and unexpectedly sophisticated restaurant.  Fine food, excellent wines with service to match in well decorated surroundings and starched table cloths.  All at a sensible price.  The ocean was soon forgotten. 

 

One morning a cry of ‘Nordlys’ brought us out to find some friends we had not seen since Fakarava in the Tuamotus.  A sheep farmer and his wife from Kangaroo Island who having got home from their circumnavigation a year ago happened to be passing through Portland by car on their way to an old school reunion party.

 

John kindly helped me transport 140 ltrs of diesel by jerry can from the garage which was two miles away and then a pleasant lunch was enjoyed by the four of us in Nordlys’s cabin. Fellowship of the sea also occurred when Ted Meissher called down to see us and  it turned out he knew both Mike and Pat Pocock and Hugh Marriott, Lymington sailors who called in here in ’93 and ’98 respectively.

 

Two hundred and forty miles of easy sailing brought us to Backstairs Passage, a doubtful name for the straight between the mainland and Kangaroo Island.  However we were alas two hours after dark and also into the last half of an ebbing tide thus we sadly decided to not wait at sea for the night but to sail on past using the fair wind and make it to Port Lincoln by sunset the next day.  I am sure a great stop was missed as was meeting up with friends but the Bight was beckoning and we wanted to get going on this hurdle.

 

Two days later we left Port Lincoln, a prosperous fishing port but in our view rather soulless place and beat into a gentle breeze but also against a 1 to 2 knot current some seventeen miles to Point Catastrophe, another doubtful name to my mind.  Rounding said point we were back into the southern ocean swells and with a freshening breeze from the port quarter we proceeded to run off 96 miles in the next 12 hours.  As I write this 455 miles are on the log and the engine has just come on due to lack of wind.  Destination Middle Island in the Recherche group which all being well we will make by the evening of the 8th, my 60th birthday.

 

So no photos this time, it was too wet to record any more of Port Davey and certainly not photo weather in the Bass Straight.  Portland and Port Lincoln were not somehow photogenic.  It is 0500hrs, Annette is asleep and we have technically just passed into Western Australia and no we have not thrown the fresh vegetables overboard!

 

Happy times

David and Annette