Category: Uncategorized

February 8, 2017

We’re in Stewarts Bay – a bay in Port Arthur, Tasmania – but Cyndi started calling it our wombat hole and I like it. She calls it that because, while the predictions are for about 30 knots of wind from the NE and we’re seeing lots of wind waves outside our bay, we have just about zero knots and almost glassy water.

Here’s what’s on PredictWind right now…

And this is a picture from our boat…

A closeup (over-zoomed and pretty blurry, sorry) shows a sea full of whitecaps just outside our anchorage…

What’s a wombat? What’s a wombat hole?

Below is an interactive Google map that shows where our wombat hole is located…

February 1, 2017

Enough said!

OK, not quite enough… As you can see, this is a beautiful bay. It’s usually everyone’s first Tasmania destination after crossing the Bass Strait. What no one told us is it’s not all that protected and if the wind is from a direction that has no west in the name, it gets rolly and uncomfortable. so much so that we passed it by on our way and opted for a spot about ten miles further south.

When the weather changed, Cyndi insisted we go back and try again. Thank you Cyndi. The two wonderful nights we spent there were well worth the effort. (You can click to enlarge/scroll through images above.)

Here’s an interactive Google map showing where this wonderland is located. -Rich

February 2, 2017 on a walk around Swansea, Tasmania…

My couch was on this track…

We’ll leave the pronunciation to you. We’ve just been calling it the Looney Tunes track. -Rich

January 31, 2017

I was checking up on some friends on MarineTraffic.com (OK, snooping) and was shocked by this image…

I filtered out all but pleasure boats and this is what I got…

Keep in mind that these are just boats with AIS (Automatic Identification System – kind of like air traffic control for boats), with their AIS on in the recent past, and within range of a shore station or picked up by a satellite. This is a tiny fraction of pleasure boats worldwide.

Here are the pleasure boats in Australia and New Zealand…

And Tasmania…

I’m surprised at how many pleasure boats there are with active AIS in Tasmania. I guess I shouldn’t be. The Wooden Boat Festival starts in ten days and there are a lot of boats that come down here for that – in the order of 300 registered boats plus a lot of spectator boats.

We were going to go, but we think we’ve changed our minds. We look at it this way: We could have a couple of days of fun – great fun, I’m sure – at the show, or weeks of quiet, beautiful anchorages to ourselves since everyone else’s gone to the show.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about…

There’s only one boat right now in Wineglass Bay on the Freycinet Pennisula, and that’s us! Just a few days ago, we heard there were ten boats here. Our devious plan seems to be working! -Rich

January 23, 2017

We left Lakes Entrance on the south side of the continent of Australia almost a week ago, spent time at Flinders Island (see post below) and arrived in Tasmania yesterday. We’re tied up at the wharf in St. Helens now and it’s good to be in. It was not an uneventful arrival (though nothing serious).

First, our Plan A anchorage was too exposed to conditions. The Plan B spot was St. Helens and we weren’t sure we could get in as it’s pretty shallow through the channel. We called St. Helens Volunteer Marine Rescue to ask for advice and they offered to meet us in a small boat and lead us over the bar.

We rendezvoused at 6 PM outside the bar and followed them into a place they call The Paddock, just inside the entrance, where we spent a very comfortable night. We couldn’t get in any further as the evening high tide wasn’t high enough to get us over the shallow spot at Pelican Point and into Georges Bay. That we did with the 6 AM high tide this morning.

We’ve already walked through town and eaten lunch out. The town is small but very nice. We think we might stay here a week or so. -Rich