Everything we had planned for our Tasmania trip has happened without any hitches (fingers and toes crossed), the last on the to do list was to anti-foul here for the simple reason the hardstand lift was a fraction of the cost of mainland Australia, so after getting the bum cleaned we started watching the weather so we could make a transit across Bass Strait and back to germ infested civilization. Left Kettering on a subdued cloudy Sunday and ventured over to Port Arthur. A lumpy ride over but hoping to see the penal colony ruins from the water side. Rounding the entrance to get into Port Arthur you are met by the Organs.Awesome sight from the water! These are pillars formed by the wind and sea into the shape of organ pipes. Found a nice mooring buoy for the night and no access to go and view the ruins without forking out $40 each. Even the Island of the Dead costs $20 each with a guided tour.  We could see the gravestones on the Island of the dead from the boat and hard to believe that 1,000 souls are buried on this small island.

Chinaman’s Bay was our next stop, it was a protected, quiet and calm anchorage with a hand full of other boats. The bay borders the ocean side by a narrow strip of land, maybe 50 metres wide so you can walk over to the ocean and view the pounding surf, we followed a hiking trail to … you guessed it, more ruins of prisoner cell blocks (they definitely had their fair share of convicts in Tasmania).  We had left (Maddie) the dinghy up on the beach so it would be easy access when the tide came in (that’s if Jacqui had gotten her low and high tides correct!) and set off on our hike to the ruins, about a 6km easy walk along a sanded path. The walk turned out to be twice that! Had to stop a cyclist going the other way to see if we were going the right way.

Found the ruins. Unbelievable how the prisoners were treated. The small cells are barely large enough to stretch out in. These prisoners on the island had the task of farming and raising sheep. Snapped a few pictures and the highlight was the elusive wombat that we never saw on the Overland track, there was our first wombat mooching around without a care in the world.

Found the dinghy well and truly beached. Seems the tide was on the way out and not on the way in. Dragged that sucker over the sand back to water! On the boat, checked the tide tables again on the Raymarine Chartplotter, discovered that the time setting was wrong, well … I guess Jacqui wasn’t entirely to blame, but probably a good idea to double check the equipment that has been powered down for a quite a while!!

Spent 2 days in Chinaman’s Bay before heading over to Triabunna to wait out some bad weather that was coming our way. Tasmania seems to be full of bad weather, especially this year. All the locals tell us they haven’t seen it like this for a long time. Just our luck.

We hung out at Triabunna (Jacqui has to say ‘try a banana’ to remember how to say it) for 3 days and the bad weather we expected was nothing…. a bit of a trend we are noticing, the gusting 35-40 knot forecasts don’t seem to be quite as bad, but manages to screw up the sail plan for days. Another boat, Beatrix we met also waiting for a Bass Strait weather window opted to stay for another week due to the forecast but unfortunately our berth was not available for us to stay so we upped and left and decided to slowly cruise up the east coast until we saw that perfect window ….. you know the one that looks like this 12 -15 knots S / SW, seas 1 metre and swell 1 metre for 2 days straight, lets see if we can find it. 🙂