Andrew Dwyer – The Cast Iron Cook

Dear Reader, it has been a while since Day Sixteen, but things have been so hectic I will have to rely on my recollections to convey an accurate account. At first light all was quiet in East Cove, Escapade riding gently on her anchor. With the ladies enjoying a lie in, Robert and I made the boat ready and quietly slipped out into the Murray Passage at slackwater around 8am and crossed over to Erith Island. The sandy beach falls steeply into deep water, so we were able to bring Escapade very close to the shore. After checking out the famous hut perched on a slope overlooking the bay, we said goodbye to the Kent Group and charted a course north west towards the Hogan Group.

A perfect morning looking across Murray Pass to Erith Island

It was a stunning morning, but sadly not a breath of wind, and we soon had the diesel sail going at around 2,500 revs, pushing us along at around 7 knots. The sea was glassy, and the hazy atmosphere prevented much of a view. Deal soon disappeared with no sign of the Hogan Group ahead. I could make out what I first thought was an island to the south, but as it gradually came closer it turned out to be an oil rig under tow, something one doesn’t see every day.

We finally made the Hogan Group at around 11am. After receiving a most hospitable welcome by the resident seal colony, we slipped into a sheltered bay on the north side of Hogan Island and dropped a line over the side. In a respectable amount of time, a fairly large wrass was hauled aboard and immediately gutted and filleted.  At least there will be fresh fish for dinner, we are getting fairly low on fresh supplies.

The seal colony at the Hogan Group

Bass Strait remained calm all afternoon, the water an eerie silver colour beneath a heavy grey sky. We motored across the shipping channel and rounded Wilsons Promontory, the summit of Mount Wilson obscured by fat clouds. By early evening we had passed Rodondo Island and the Forty Foot Rocks and were fast approaching the seal colony on the Anser Island Group, where we were to receive another hearty welcome.

The skull shaped Cleft island

The light was fading as we passed Cleft Island, a granite monolith resembling a giant birds skull. Shelling left scars on the rocks which are the result of Naval target practice during World War 2.  Fortunately it is now a National Park, although that didn’t protect Wilsons Prom from Park Management when a controlled burn got away a couple of years ago and virtually raised the entire promontory. The calm conditions gave Robert the opportunity to helm Escapade through two narrow channels in the Glennnie Group, beneath spectacular granite tors.

Robert helms through the Glennnies

Seals on the rocks looked up in surprise at our passing, I guess they don’t see yachts under sail terribly often in these waters.

As the granite receded I went below decks to cook up the Wrass, which I crumbed in Panko and served with stir fried greens and oyster sauce. Robert and Felicity would take the first watch on the long leg back to Port Phillip, from 10 until 3am, then Amy and I would take the graveyard shift. At 10 I snuggled into the Quarterberth and fell into a deep sleep.

Robert and Aimee tucking into fish and greens

Felicity awoke me at 3 am. The wind had come up during the night, and there was now around a two meter sea running. We were on a run in a good following sea, and were making good progress. Aimee and I swapped the helm every hour, and it seemed like no time before the sun was up and Cape Schank was on our starboard beam.

As we came through the Port Phillip Heads on “four fingers east” we lowered the spinnaker pole, and gibed to a course that would take us to the Portsea pier, where I was to meet Jane and end an amazing adventure. I could quote Robert Louis Stevenson’s Requiem “Home is the sailor – home from the sea”, but it will be many years before I will be able to call myself a sailor, I am but a student of the sea.

Trousers Bay

The day starts as most seem to in the roaring forties – windy. Its blowing so hard we are considering staying here for another night. I sit on the coach roof and do my ablutions – shave with the electric razor, brush the teeth, slop the block out on. We finally pull the anchor up around midday and head out around the point. The wind is blowing around 14 knots from the north east, so we close haul up the coast. We soon pass Mount Chappell Island, named by Matthew Flinders after his wife Ann. After being at sea since Boxing Day, I kind of understand why it may have reminded him of her, but I leave it to you gentle reader to be the judge of that. I will simply show you the photo.

Mount Chappell Island

Flinders took command of Investigator at the age of 27. Little did he know when he sailed in 1801 that he would not see his wife of three months for another nine years. Two years after that they had a daughter, and two years later he died of what historians suspect was renal failure. He was just forty years old. His daughter Anne never had any recollection of her father.

The Strzelecki Range recedes as we close haul up the coast. It is not the easiest coast to navigate, there are shoals and reefs everywhere. I prefer to use paper charts than the chart plotter, and occasionally resort to the hand compass to check a bearing from a local feature, but it all goes well. It is perfect sailing, just like in the brochures. We pass Wybalenna, I can almost hear the ghosts calling out and a chill goes down my spine. We fly across Marshall Bay, with Cape Franklin at its northern tip and tuck in to the only shelter in all weather on the north of Flinders Island, a beach behind Roydon Island in the Pasco Group. Flinders named Cape Franklin after his cousin Samuel who sailed with him on Investigator. It is a pretty place, in fact the whole island is a feast for the eyes. Tomorrow, if the weather is good we are going to make the passage half way across Bass Strait to Deal Island. I set to work on a passage plan, trying to work out the tides, which flow through the strait at around 2 knots, and we need to give Endeavour Reef and Wakatipu Rock a wide berth. We eat chicken and polenta for dinner as the wind howls in the rigging. The roaring forties are still roaring.

Robert helms Escapade out early. I have a big day ahead navigating. Today we enter Bass Strait. We plan to sail up the Tasmanian Coast from Point Eddystone to Musselroe Bay hugging the coastline (the scenic route). Then we plan to cross the notorious Banks Strait, the narrow  tidal passage between Tasmania and Cape Barren Island in the Ferneaux Group. We then plan to sail through the Franklin Passage into Lady Barron, a harbor at the southern end of Flinders Island. There is no wind to start with so we motor along. I am nervously running up and down the companionway checking the charts against our position to navigate the narrow passage between the coast and the numerous shoals, reefs and islets. Some, like the George Rocks and Black Reef are visible, but plenty, like Lipstick Rock and Leprena Rocks are not. Leprena rock is ominously named after a schooner that struck her and sunk in the 1920s. We pass it with only a few meters to spare. Whilst our boat speed is around 5 knots, our speed over ground is around 6.5. We are being helped along by the tide, we are being sucked into Bass Strait.

The tide in Bass Strait floods in a westerly direction from the Tasman Sea and ebbs to the east. In Banks Strait the tidal current runs at around 3 knots. It is running in our favour. Felicity and I are busy preparing a course to steer. Using the tidal diamonds on the chart we are able to calculate the flow rates and times, and therefore estimate how the tide is going to effect our heading. We calculate that although the direction we wish to travel is 320 degrees, we are going to have to sail on a heading of 337 degrees and allow the tide to do the rest. At 10.52 we change course. In the distance I can make out the hills on Clarke Island and Cape Barren Island. The wind has picked up and we have turned the motor off. The boat speed is now 6 knots, but we are hurtling along at 9.5 knots thanks to the tide. The tidal stream is causing the water to eddy, and we sail close to a series of overfalls.

Passage Plan

The map above shows our planned course to steer. The line with the three arrows at the base so our estimated tidal flow. The right hand line with one arrow is our rhumb line, our expected course over the ground, and the left hand line with the two arrows is the heading we must steer. This photo was taken at 11.30, and we are dead on course, which continued for the duration of the passage. And for the pedants amongst you, we did consult the compass deviation card, and as the compass has been recently swung the deviation is less than one degree so we considered that negligible. A modern cruise ship floats past us, and a curious converstion sparks up on the VHF. A nervous sounding fisherman at anchor is trying to contact the cruise ship, we assume the ship is bearing down on him.

By 1.30, I can see Preservation Island and Rum Island off our starboard beam. This was the site of the wreck of the merchant vessel Sydney Cove in 1797, which pre-dated the discovery of Bass Strait by George Bass and Matthew Flinders in 1798! She sailed from Calcutta with stores and a large stock of rum bound for the settlement at Port Jackson, but heavy weather saw the bilge water overtaking those pumping it, and the ships master decided to run her ashore  on what was to be named Preservation Island. The stock of rum was stored on nearby Rum Island, safely out of the way of the thirsty crew. In May, seventeen of the crew set out in the ships longboat to reach Port Jackson – 400 nautical miles away, but the boat was wrecked on the ninety mile beach in Gippsland. They commenced walking along the coast. Suffering starvation, exhaustion and attacks from Aboriginals, three survivors miraculously staggered into Wattermolla, and a fishing boat brought them to Port Jackson. The journey had taken them three months.

Little Night Islet

Granite boulders that resemble vertebrae on Long Island

Our bow is pointing disconcertingly straight at the breakers and rocks of Night Island, which is only 100 meters ahead, but the tidal flow safely drags us sideways, and we round Cape Sir John and enter Franklin Sound at high water. Confidence in our navigation skills was rewarded, the ebb will suck us back to the east towards our destination, Lady Barron, but alas dear reader I have no time to admire the scenery, just enough to grab a shot of the boulders on Long Island, which look akin to the statues on Easter Island.

Long Island

Robert wants a pilotage plan in to Lady Barron. The whole area is a maze of rocks, sandbars and tidal streams, and the plan involves picking up indistinct leads, and numerous course changes. Calculating distance run is all the more difficult because the log is inaccurate due to the tidal movement. Robert knows the way in, but lets me do the plan as an invaluable exercise, which it certainly was, and aside from missing a marker and almost running us on to a sandbank, we make it in. The final run into port involves following a set of leads until the boat is just meters from rocks, and then swinging hard to port and into the harbor.

The harbormaster is away in Launceston, but suggests we take a mooring buoy in the middle of the harbor. We raft up next to a barge at the jetty, and head to the Ferneaux Tavern for a shower and dinner. I order the wallaby with plum sauce, which was excellent, washed down with a passable pinot from the local Unavale Winery. (Their Riesling and sav blanc are excellent). The night ends at the bar with a bunch of rowdy locals and holiday makers that have been at the winery all afternoon for their annual Music in the Vines festival.

Lady Barron Harbour from the Ferneaux Tavern

The wind has been howling all night, the offshore waves frosting the water. I went to sleep early last night, but Robert and Aimee stayed up and landed sixteen arrowhead squid, my job is to clean them. Fortunately they are easier to clean than their Southern cousins, but the flesh is not as tender.  I have attracted a large mob of seagulls and one little cormorant. The seagulls can take the scraps of gut on the surface, but the little cormorant out competes them by diving down to retrieve the squid heads. It quietly goes about gorging itself, its little webbed feet propelling it out of sight into the depths. Time and time again it retrieves the squid heads, I wonder where such a small bird can store so much squid?

Cleaning Squid

Robert tries for one last fish

A tourist boat turns up and a man jumps over the side into the frigid water. On the beach I spot several girls in bikinis sunning themselves. We’re rugged up in overalls and polar fleeces. The wind is freezing, coming up from the south west. What’s wrong with these people? They would have to be Tasmanians – or New Zealanders.

Tourist boat at Wineglass Bay

We weigh anchor and motor out of the bay into a two meter choppy sea. Fortunately it is following us. A pod of dolphins send us off, darting about under the boat as we raise the headsail and bear away around a group of rocks aptly named the Nuggets that guard the northern entrance to Wineglass Bay.

Dolphin beneath the bow of Escapade

The day passes uneventfully. It takes until early afternoon for the mountains of the Freycinet Peninsular to eventually fade into the haze. Escapade surfs the swell, at one stage she makes 9.5 knots. The odd albatross glides by to check us out, its wings skimming the tips of the waves. The steep hills of the east coast fall into the sea, with ridge upon ridge folding into the Central Highlands.

In the late afternoon the wind dies down and we fire up the diesel. It is around this time the shearwaters appear every night. These amazing birds migrate all the way from the Aleutian Islands in the Bering Sea to rookeries on the coast of Tasmania and Victoria, nesting in burrows in the ground. There are estimated to be 285 colonies in south eastern Australia, the largest concentration being in Bass Strait. On Babel Island in the Ferneaux group there are estimated to be three million burrows. When Matthew Flinders sailed through Bass Strait in 1798 he noted the sky was black with shearwaters, estimating there to be one hundred million in one flock!

There are few anchorages on the north eastern shores of Tasmania. St Helens is the one port, and the bar at the entrance is so treacherous the harbour master provides a pilot to guide you in. We decide to motor past St Helens and spend the night in Skeleton Bay, at the southern end of the Bay of Fires. The problem is it will be after dark, and no-one on board has been there before. Its my turn to navigate. I plot a course inshore of a series of reefs, clearing the onshore reefs by around 300 meters, then pass by the entrance to St Helens, round Elephant Rock to the north, and then bear away to the east and south into Skeleton Bay. All goes to plan. Off Elephant Rock we lower the main sail in a rolling swell. It is as black as the guts of a cat. I can just make out land, and the spotlight is useless because there is a fine mist. A chart plotter is a handy device, but the electronic charts are unreliable, so I am busy reading the lat/longs and plotting them on the paper chart at the nav table and calling the headings up to Robert at the helm. The last few hundred meters are tense, we are relying on the depth contours. We can hear the surge of waves nearby, and drop anchor in 10 meters of water. The bay is only around 300 meters wide, so there is not a lot of swinging room, but the anchor holds. Its eleven o’clock, but I feel like something more than a cup of soup from a packet, so I fry some squid in panko and serve it with dark Chinese rice vinegar and a lettuce and tomato salad with a lime dressing. The boat rolls on a swell at anchor, and squadrons of very friendly mosquitos fly out from skeleton creek to welcome us. It is around 1.30 when we finally hit the sack.

Bullets of wind have been sliding across the water all night, but our anchor held. I have had my rank lifted to first lieutenant today, Robert has come down with something and wants to rest. Aimee and I raise the tender onto the stern and make ready to sail. Felicity is on the helm as we weigh anchor and motor off to the south to avoid numerous rocks and reefs around Point Lesueur. We head up into the wind and raise the main. We bear away in a comfortable 12 knots of wind and reach southward. I roll out the headsail. I briefly think this is going to be a nice sail. Then comes the first squall which hits us like a brick. The boat heels and the wind shifts. We tack to avoid the south shore. We have to tack three times to get out of Chinaman’s Cove, always keeping the the south of the bay to avoid the reefs. Once clear of the bay the wind dies out to five knots, and then shifts to be right on our nose. I roll in the headsail, tighten the main and unfurl the diesel sail (start the engine). We motor off up the Mercury Passage toward Triabunna.

There is a wood-chip export plant at the mouth of Spring Bay with an exclusion zone around it, which Robert says is reserved for canoeists with dreadlocks, so I helm straight past it, and soon locate a starboard marker which indicates a shoal. We pass a fish processing factory. Hundreds of seagulls are circling above the main processing building and a couple of very grubby north sea trawlers are tied to it’s jetty. One has had its entire superstructure removed and hauled on to the shore as if it were a plastic model. I pick up the channel markers and we motor in to a very tight harbour. Robert takes the helm to dock. Stan the harbourmaster has told us to raft next to a fishing boat. All good except the curtains of rain that have been coming at us from the south have heralded their arrival with a squall, and there is a submerged rock right in the middle of the harbour, which means Robert will have to turn Escapade on itself with little room to spare. At least the rock’s location is clear, it has a bent metal tripod on top of it, clearly a few boats have hit it in the past.

The dinted reef marker in the middle of Trianunna Harbour

After deftly swinging the boat, we are aboard the fishing boat scrambling over cray pots to secure lines. With fenders in place Escapade is secured with springers and we come to a rest. Shore leave, and a chance to explore the fleshpots of Triabunna.

Escapade rafted at Triabunna

This could be our last stop before home, we need to refuel, take on water and supplies, and wash ourselves and our clothes. It is lunchtime, so we indulge in the delights of teh fish and chip van parked on a grass strip directly across the road from the jetty. There is a choice of Flake, Trevally or Barracouta. I choose the flake, which is caught on long lines off the coast here, and it is very good. Memorable in fact. When fish is fresh and fried in clean oil at the right temperature it is delicious.

The Triabunna fish van - "Fresh from our boat to you"

The afternoon goes quickly, I manage a quick visit to the Triabunna Coiffure for a quick hair cut while the washing is drying in the laundromat next door. They say the difference between a good and bad haircut is two weeks so what the hell. After that I manage a quick shower at the tourist information centre. Not quick by choice, but the damn thing has a coin in the slot controller that charges $4.00 for three minutes. Ca-ching Ca-ching.
The town has a very friendly tourist information center, and a few stunning examples of Georgian architecture. The barracks ruins are a superb example.  Originally built in 1843, they housed marines that were stationed at Maria Island. From 1926 until 1955 they housed a bakery that manufactured its own yeast, but then fell into disrepair. A project to restore them into a museum and restaurant in 1969 failed due to financial restraints, and so they sit in the main street, disused and shabby but thankfully they have escaped the wrecking ball.

The barracks

We are booked for dinner at the Seafarers Inn by the docks, your typical country pub. From the outside it looks like a quaint dockside inn. The inside is sadly the victim of some uninspired 1970s renovation, where beige is the chosen colour, vinyl the chosen upholstery. I was not expecting much and I am not disappointed. The menu looks OK, plenty of seafood and a collection of steaks. I line up at the bar to order dinner. The barmaid, clearly someone not to be toyed with, slides the glass window open. “What are we having love?” In five short words she has made two errors. Firstly, I am not dining with her, and secondly she is certainly not my lover. “Is the fish fresh?” I ask gingerly. Her lips tighten and she rolls here eyes. This is clearly a question she is used to fielding and responds with a mechanical, “Its frozen fresh when we get it love, twice a week”.  The old adage used to be when in a pub order a steak, they can’t bugger that up, but experience has sadly told me they can, so I order the kangaroo sausages, which end up tasteless and dry, served with the usual soggy frozen vegetables. On the way home I think, “Fisherman Inn, Drunks Out”. Sadly a prosaic experience, an opportunity missed. The food at the fish and chip van was a third the price and triple the quality, we should have eaten there.

The Seafarers Inn

View from the deck at Fortescue Bay

I spend the morning at work on the laptop, and we breakfast at 11.45. The boat is rocking on the mooring due to a slight swell in the bay, which means the seas outside would be fairly significant, and occasionally the bay is hit with a bullet of wind coming down from the hills that whips through the mast making the whole boat shudder.

Storm across Fortescue Bay

The chronometer on the wall reads twenty to twelve, as do the two needles on the barometer, indicating the pressure has dropped from 1010 to 980 as two significant low pressure systems cross from the Southern Ocean to the Tasman. The second front is to drop away to the south, so with a bit of luck we will sail tomorrow.The HF radio tells us we can expect North West to South West winds 15 knots and upwards which should give us a window of opportunity to sail north along the coast to Maria Island. We will ready the boat tonight to put to sea early tomorrow. Robert and Aimee have donned wetsuits and are exploring the seabed around the boat, which is largely full of a fine haired green weed that has infested the area in the past few years, suspected to be an exotic import that hitchhiked on the hull or in the ballast of a foreign ship. The worst of these is the dreaded phytopthora cinnamomi, a soil pathogen causing root rot that is gradually spreading across Tasmania. But it is not all bad news. Wakame has found its way here from Japan, and it is being harvested and exported back, infinitely better than the Japanese product which grows in largely polluted waters.  A magnificent sea vegetable which is simply soaked in water and tossed into salads. It goes especially well with cucumber.

Fortescue Bay

Around mid afternoon thunderstorms roll in across the bay. Bullets of wind hit Escapade and we shudder and shake. We have to reset our anchor. Fortunately there is no-one else in the bay, we have the whole place to ourselves. Robert makes some adjustments to the stern so we can easily stow the tender across the deck. I prepare dinner, which is instant polenta with a rich tomato and garlic sauce, arincini balls baked in the oven and a salad. We are getting low on supplies, I am hoping we can pull in to Triabunna to restock. I am also keen to call home. Whilst the cellular phone network covers most of Tasmania’s east coast, the bay we have been holed up in does not, so it has been five days since anyone has heard anything of us. Dinner over, I crawl into the quarter berth and drift off into a deep sleep.