Bass Strait in the Rearview Mirror

Leaving Babel Island, Fuerneaux Group, NE Tasmania

We finally escaped the weather grip of SE Tasmania and got across the Bass Strait to the mainland. Crossing the Bass Strait is anxiety provoking. Maybe not for the hardy Tassie sailors who do it annually, but for us warm weather sailors it holds a certain intimidation factor. Part of this might be the many scenes from the famous, infamous actually, 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race disaster.

(Guardian News, 1998 Sydney-Hobart race)

This race takes place in the summer at the end of December. It’s still summer now.

Fortunately our crossing was not as hair raising or life threatening. I’ve decided that the trick to dealing with Tassie weather is not to look for a multi-day weather window to go somewhere, but to look for a good 12 hours and take advantage of it. Throw out the criteria that you don’t want to do any beating into the wind and want to minimize motoring. Then hunker down, wait for the next mini-window and continue on. With that in mind, we (finally) left the Freycinet Peninsula around 11am and motored overnight in light winds up the east coast of Tasmania. We arrived at the island group at the top of Tassie, the Furneauex Group, before light. We putted around a bit until we had some light and headed into Jaimieson Bay on Cape Barren Island. When the sun came up it was pretty clear why they named the place Barren Island. We tucked up on the east corner to minimize the swell getting into the anchorage. We had a hot shower and eggs and toast. Then it was off again, still motoring north in very light winds. The winds started to go NE and get stronger, so we decided to stop on the south side of Babel Island (pic at the top of page). Had a late lunch, early dinner and laid down for a rest. Kept watching (thank you Telstra cell) the weather station at Flinders Island Airport for wind readings. When the station reported NNW winds we set off, knowing that this was the leading edge of a front that should turn westerly as it passes. You can see the front edge in the picture at the top of this page.

The wind continued to turn NW and started picking up.  We had our staysail partially out and the main with a first reef in it. Seas were rough with the old seas from the NE on our bow and the new seas were building from the SW on our stern. After dark, when the winds started hitting 30+ kts, we decided to reduce sail. Instead of putting a second reef in the mainsail we decided to just take it down completely and sail on the staysail only-- to make things easier given the weather conditions and crew conditions. It was pitch black out with no moon. The mainsail got hung up while we were taking it down, and good and solidly stuck. No amount of me tugging at the mast was moving it down anymore and the halyard was not taking it up. It was cold and wet and dark so we decided the best course of action was to let the main out a bit more to depower it and leave it till first light, as I could not see what the problem was and I was not inclined to go up the mast in those conditions. We made a burnt offering to the sea goddess that the wind wouldn’t pick up any more.

I went below to stew a bit and try and get some rest. Selling the boat was more on my mind than resting at that point. Chris was in her offshore passage ‘fugue state’. She did the rest of the night watch till about 4am and dealt with the worst of it. She only got me up once to help deal with a 600 foot tanker who insisted on seeing how close he could come before taking our stern. The winds had laid down a bit and the NE seas were gone by the time a very chilled Chris handed the watch over to me later that morning.

Next day was a really nice, clear, warm downwind sail that makes you actually like passages. In the morning light I could see that the upper batten on the mainsail had gotten stuck behind a shroud and the batten had twisted, jamming the sail slide and stopping the sail going up or down. In the lighter wind it was easy to loosen everything up an get the batten to pop out.

We arrived at Eden on the SE corner of Australia (in New South Wales) at midnight and anchored in East Boyd. Hot shower time and well deserved smooth anchorage sleep. Next up is to get up the coast about 600 miles to the Gold Coast near Brisbane, again timing the weather windows.

Paul