Escapade at anchor in Fortescue Bay
Wattlebirds are cackling in the forest as Escapade rides on her mooring. The ripples on her hull and the gentle rocking of the boat lulls me back to sleep, no-one surfaces until after 9am. We have a rope snubbing line across the bow so the chain is not connected to the windlass, which makes for a smooth ride, no hard jerks. Fortescue Bay is one of the few places on the east coast of Tasmania where there is no internet access, so we have to fire up the HF radio to get the weather report. The radio operator sounds like he once worked for the BBC, but the plumb in his throat made his report easy to hear through the static. There are so many weird noises on HF one would almost suspect aliens are using it to communicate. The report is not ideal. There is a front coming in, and the wind will be from the North West for the next couple of days, right in the direction we want to go. Its either go now or stay. We elect to stay; I can think of worse places to ride out a storm, we are pretty well sheltered here from anything but a howling south easterly. And besides, it is said gentlemen never sail into the wind. The report mentions waves up to seven meters in the south west. I am thankful we are not headed there.
Breakfast is muesli and fresh yoghurt, followed by a visit from the constabulary. They are primarily interested in checking for undersize fish, and are singularly unimpressed by our performance. In Tasmania a fishing license is not required for most species of salt water fish, but there are bag and size limits. I settle down to do some work on the computer, Robert sets about putting an eye in a length of orange spectre he is going to use to replace the main halyard, which is getting worn, a job that will end up occupying him for most of the day. Aimee makes us ham, cheese and tomato jaffles for lunch. It is one of those days where time gets away, and before we know it, its happy hour! I serve up some gravelax from the Springs smokehouse on vita wheat biscuits with Philly cheese and horseradish. Dinner is going to be a chorizo and chickpea stew, which no sooner do I start to prepare when Aimee and Robert start hauling in squid. We’ll have them tomorrow, I serve the stew with another Tasmanian Chardonnay, this time a Heemskirk Tempest, a seemingly fitting choice given the forecast weather. I read a chapter on eighteenth century whaling from Geoffrey Blainey’s The Tyranny of Distance.. At that time the whales were so prolific that most of the bays around the island were inhabited by whaling crews. One story tells of a whaling boat chasing a bull whale which turns on them and charges the boat. One fellow jumps straight into the mouth of the whale and is never seen again! On that thought I retire into the mouth of the quarter-berth and drift off into a deep sleep as Robert,still at the table splices his halyard into the night.
