The swell flattened out as we rounded South Cape on our way back East from Port Davey. The wind was behind us, a preventer on the enormous boom to insure against mishaps. The stars came out.
Night watch
C Watch grabbed some sleep between midnight and 4am, and then again after coming off watch at 6am (love these short two-hour watches!), waking to glorious sunshine as we rounded the dolerite stacks of Cape Raoul.
Rounding Cape Raoul
It was a beautiful day, but somehow bittersweet. Our little group of disparate travellers had spent the last week together in the wilderness of buttongrass country. With only ourselves and our wits to rely on, we had weathered storms and breakdown, supported one another with good humour through times of hard toil and not a little pain. We had learned one another’s little quirks, and had knit ourselves together into a cohesive and reasonably effective sailing team.
But now, rounding the Cape, our telephones reconnected to the outside world. Messages appeared that had been waiting days to be delivered. The crew started to interact with loved ones and civilisation outside of the boat, and the group began to lose cohesiveness. We were still effective, but we were aware of the outside world and the outside was aware of us; in the back of our minds, we knew that the end of the trip was approaching.
We headed north and into more sheltered waters, although there were still almost no other vessels to be seen. We passed Mount Brown and Crescent Beach, with views across the to the Tasman Peninsula, home of the Three Capes Track.
Mount BrownCape Pillar and Tasman Island
The buildings of the historic colonial site of Port Arthur hove into view. We could see people moving about, the first humanity since we bumped into those pilots half way up Mount Rugby. We dropped the pick and took the dinghy in to the end of the jetty.
Supplies had been low on Silver Fern for some days, and the crew were keen to hit the restaurant and eat some fresh food. I started out with similar intentions, but quickly felt uncomfortable with all the unfamiliar faces of the milling tourists. I left the others to it, and instead wandered off to explore the farther reaches of the historical site.
The Port Arthur Penal Colony was active from 1833 to 1877 as a place of incarceration for repeat offenders elsewhere in the colonies. The curators of the historic site have done a great job of bringing the characters to life, whether convicts or the military or their families, through historical and court records. I had a very pleasant time ambling poking around in the extensive gardens and restored buildings.
I hadn’t eaten lunch, of course, but my watch were still looking after me. Knowing that I prefer more fat and protein than were available aboard, they brought me back a big bag of nuts and fruit, as well as some left-over wine. Thanks, Ange and Mish.
Back aboard Silver Fern, we nipped around the corner to Safety Cove, and dropped anchor for the night.
An advance party swam to the beach, and the rest of us joined them in the tender for sundowners.
We were really plumbing the depths of the ship’s stores now, with sweet white wine and mid-strength beer, so I was delighted to discover a forgotten bottle of Jaraman Merlot at the bottom of my kit bag.
There was much hilarity and general fooling around, until finally we launched the tender into an increasingly rambunctious surf, getting thoroughly soaked in the process.
Impromptu swim while launching the dinghy
Brendon and I had already pre-prepped dinner. Again, supplies were really low, so we had to get creative with chopped-up beef sausages, butter chicken sauce, and frozen vegetables. For the vegetarians, we made a packet coconut vegetable curry topped with fried tofu. It all actually tasted pretty good.
We woke to a lovely morning in Schooner Cove off the Bathurst Channel, with fair winds forecast tonight for a run back around the South Cape. It was bittersweet, but we would have to move on.
Exploring Schooner Cove
We still had a full day before the weather-window opened, and Silver Fern had run out of drinking water. We had been wary of running the water-maker in the brackish black buttongrass peat water of the Bathurst Channel. John and Liv decided to take the boat out into Port Davey to run the water-maker for a few hours in clean salt water, a trip that would take most of the morning, so I volunteered to take the dinghy to explore Schooner Cove, and most of the crew hopped in.
We tied up the dinghy on a handy beach, and had a long and mostly enjoyable romp over the now-familiar low scrub, looking for an ‘aboriginal cave, ochre and midden’ which was marked on a mud-map in Ian Johnston’s excellent book The Shank. We never did find the midden, but did end up on a very pleasant little beach close to the site on the map.
A stroll around Schooner CoveWet socks are a feature of the terrain
Rather than hike back over the hill, I took off my boots and waded back along the shoreline to fetch the dinghy, picked everybody up, and then did a boat tour around the cove ending at the ‘swimming hole and fresh water’.
The swimming hole was a small bay inset into the larger one, fed by a small spring that ran over the narrow shingle beach. I went for a very pleasant swim in the sun-warmed waters of the bay, then dug a shallow basin below the spring and washed my sweaty clothes for the first time, hanging them out to dry on the bushes above.
It was a glorious day, and we knew that we were leaving tonight, so we all took the time to just sit by the buttongrass water and soak in the peace.
The crew of Silver Fern, at rest in Schooner Cove
Down Bathurst Channel to Port Davey
The Bathurst Channel
Silver Fern returned to Schooner Bay in time for lunch, and we spent the afternoon tidying ship and making ready for sea. As dusk fell, we weighed anchor and motored out of Bathurst Channel and into Port Davey, with the teeth of the Breaksea Islands looming out of the ocean ahead. Here’s a short movie clip.
We were all a little contemplative as we watched the quartzite rocks of Port Davey fall away astern. Bathurst Harbour is a magical place, satisfyingly hard to get to, and we were well aware that perhaps we might not be able to visit again.
Out in the Southern Ocean, we were greeted by three-metre swells and a flotilla of albatross and petrels. A fur-seal popped out to perform back-flips and then raced to catch up, farewelling us to sea.
Still looking astern, the comforting words of Deny King, the famous bushman who lived here for most of his life, ran through my mind:
‘Those who drink the buttongrass water always return.’
We awoke stiff and creaky after our ascent of Mount Rugby, and worked our way through a quiet breakfast. The wind started to build, hitting 50 knots out in the harbour. We could see the white-caps further out, but all was calm at our Kings Cove anchorage.
Clearly we weren’t going anywhere today. Some of us dozed. Pieter fixed the vacuum cleaner. Ange taught herself knots, and replenished the coffee supply by emptying endless pods from the Nespresso machine (which isn’t that useful as it only works when the generator is running). I fixed the cutlery drawer (again). Stuart busied himself making quesadillas and pies. Mish baked scones.
Pieter repairs the vacuum cleanerReinhard and the cutlery drawerMish baking sconesAnge saving us all
Later in the day, we played some cards and finished the last bottle of wine. This prompted us to turn out all the cupboards and fridges and freezers and bilges, not specifically looking for wine (honestly!), but because we had run out of fresh food and menu-planning was starting to become a problem. We located a handful of carrots, some frozen chopped vegetables, assorted cans, a trove of curry sauces, a number of unlabelled soup packets of uncertain vintage, and – somewhat incredibly – some frozen chickens and joints of pork. We even found some more wine.
Liv and John enjoy Mish’s scones
Live-action filming in Bathurst Harbour
By the next day, the storm was blowing itself out, and the wind was down to 35 knots. Skipper John wanted to make an instructional ‘Man Overboard’ video for the company, and we all agreed that this would be fun.
John provided a script and we had a rehearsal, and then headed out into the open water of Bathurst Harbour. The weather cooperated splendidly by blowing a gale and whipping the water into white-caps, which made the whole thing more visually appealing while tending to drown out the dialogue, some of which we had to dub over afterward.
Since Shien was an accredited cold-water swimmer, we had originally planned for her to be the casualty (suitably dressed in an immersion suit). We had got clearance from the owner via satphone, but in the end we used a rather natty dummy, which was just as well because it was a bit rough and we needed to do a couple of takes. In the end, though, everyone was happy with the result, and we called it a wrap.
Liv and Mish filmingAnge calls MaydayPieter brings the casualty aboard
This is probably as good a point as any to discuss the broad practicalities of sailing something the size and weight of Silver Fern. The reason that John wanted to make a movie, was that most instructional Man Overboard videos feature a slick fibreglass yacht crash-gybing and a burly crew member hauling the casualty up over the rail. This is all very well out on the lake, but Silver Fern is 72 feet of steel and her boom – which is comfortably wide enough to stroll along – weighs well over a tonne. Even a gentle gybe in an ocean swell would bring it smashing across the deck, and something would break. Far better to calmly bring her round in a circle and send a swimmer down on the end of an electric winch, as we had practiced on our first day.
I’ve mentioned before that she is easier to steer on auto-helm than by hand, due to the lack of feedback from the hydraulic rudder. Another steep learning curve for me was that it takes at least four people to tack, and at least three just to furl the foresail. Putting a reef in the mainsail requires most hands on deck.
One of the hardest things for me to learn was that, when operating a winch on a boat this size, all you can see is that winch. Mostly the other end of the sheet or halyard is out of view, so you have no idea of progress. It all comes down to the skipper calling out commands; “grind” and you grind, “ease” and you ease. You don’t know when to stop until he says “hold”. Even furling the foresail, you can’t even see that from the winch aft of the cockpit, so you have to rely on the skipper to tell you when it’s rolled away.
This all means that the skipper is conducting the orchestra in intricate detail, a grind here and a sweat there and an ease over there, and he needs to get everybody’s move perfect every time otherwise an electric winch will be merrily grinding away until something breaks.
Breakdown in Schooner Cove
With the film in the can, we set sail for Schooner Cove, westward along Bathurst Channel towards the sea, and away from Bathurst Harbour proper. Since the winds were still up in the mid thirties and the river channel relatively narrow, we were motor-sailing on the main. With Schooners Cove ahead, all hands came on deck to drop the main, and we prepared to anchor.
It was at this point that the engine alarm went off. The temperature was showing over a hundred centigrade and there was a smell of burning rubber from the exhaust. John switched the engine off and we unfurled the genoa to make what was suddenly a very important tack. It quickly became clear that we weren’t going to make it round, so despite it still reading 109 degrees, we fired up the engine for just long enough to clear the shore, then off again.
We were going to have to tack our way in.
Tacking this big vessel on foresail alone in high winds and limited sea-room calls for intense concentration and a strong skipper. Those of us in the cockpit stayed focussed, those below stayed quiet and listened. Together, under firm command, we pulled off a good tack. Then another. Then another.
The wind howled. I was entirely focussed on the port winch and sheet. I think Rob was on the starboard winch and Brendon was tailing for us, but I wasn’t looking up from my task, I was in the zone. None of us could see what was happening out there in the world apart from John, calmly calling out the action, “Grind… grind… ease… ease… hold”. We cocked up the fifth tack, losing power on the turn, but recovered in time for the sixth. A few minutes later, John commented in a slightly strange voice, “OK, this one matters. This one needs to be perfect”.
The seventh tack was perfect, and we slid by an arm’s length from the shoaling beach. “Furl the foresail, drop the anchor!” We had arrived.
Tacking into Schooner Cove
We needed somebody to swim underneath to check the propeller for lines or kelp. Rob had a go, but remember that the water is totally black with button-grass peat, and he couldn’t see anything. Shien, our cold-water specialist, got kitted out with fins and mask while we rigged a hand-line under the boat. She was easily able to hold her breath in the cold dark deeps, but was handicapped by never having seen the underside of a yacht. Each time she came up, I tried to make sense of what she was feeling with her hands, and attempted to explain how the rudder and propeller were arranged, while worrying that she was going to smack her head against some unseen sharp edge. She was starting to weaken with the cold and went down for one last attempt. There was a delay of nearly a minute, and then up she popped, triumphant. She had found the propeller, and had turned it freely in both directions.
John and Pieter had been labouring in the engine room, which although nicely appointed, is still a hot and cramped space to work. The obvious target was the impeller, but the housing was partly hidden behind a loosely hanging pack of electronics, and not at all easy to get to.
Eventually they got to the impeller, which of course was jammed solid onto its shaft, and it took some effort to finally prise it out.
It was completely shattered.
Silver Fern’s impeller, not looking too great
Looking closely at the impeller, I found that it was a cheap copy. This was odd, considering that there were half a dozen genuine spares aboard, any of which could surely have been used at the last service, but there we were.
We certainly hadn’t found all of the missing blades; presumably some of them were inside the heat exchanger. We hooked up the anchor-locker deck-wash and led the hose all the way aft down to the engine room (it only just reached!) and reverse-flushed the exchanger. Several large chunks dropped into the inspection tank until it ran clear.
Then it was simply a matter of sliding a new impeller onto the shaft…
Perhaps two hours later, the new impeller was still only half way into the housing. John and Pieter had improvised an ingenious compression clamp from cable ties and a filter strap, and it had worked up to a point, but there just wasn’t enough space to get any leverage. They came up for air, and I climbed in to have a look.
I have probably fitted more impellers than anybody else aboard, and muttering the twin mantras “If in doubt, find a bigger hammer” and “give me long enough lever, and I can move the world”, I went hunting for something that would work. Eventually I put together a kit comprising a long steel bar, a socket of about the right diameter, a sizeable piece of wood, and – of course – a very large hammer. The impeller took one look and slid gracefully into place.
And because nothing is easy, on the way in I must have snagged a lead, which had torn away from the earth rail. Simple enough to solder a new connection, but the ship’s electrical toolkit had vanished. While the crew turned the lockers upside down in the cabins above, we were gloomily contemplating twisting some old bits of rusty wire together… but then a cry went up from the saloon and down came a complete set of soldering and crimping equipment.
She started first time, and ran at a steady 72 degrees. We emerged blinking into the daylight, to applause and a roast dinner.
The expected storm was building up outside Port Davey, but it was flat calm as we motored up Bathurst Channel. Even so, we were anticipating 35 knot winds even in these protected waters by lunchtime, so we went deep into the river system toward Bathurst Harbour to find a good anchorage.
On either side of us reared stark rocky hillsides, brushed with startling patches of the white quartzite schist which is a feature of these parts.
Quartzite schist exposures
The water itself is dark brown from the acidic peat of the ubiquitous buttongrass, a dark freshwater layer above the salt, forming a shaded haven beneath for species that would normally be confined to the ocean depths. When we arrived, the dark surface had been recently stirred, and was punctuated by white chunks of flocculent bigger than my fist.
The black water is caused by acidic run-off from the button-grass
We anchored in King’s Cove, looking up at the steep slopes of Mount Beattie, which stands a little over 200m above sea level. On the other side of the channel rears Mount Rugby, well over 700m high.
The crew were tired after our night passage, and so after a leisurely breakfast, we relaxed until lunch. Pieter and Shien went for a swim, then Pieter and I pottered around fixing various hinges and catches that had come loose during the passage.
Mt Beattie
We had read in the anchorage guides that there were trails up both of the nearby mountains, so after lunch, a few of us took the dinghy to shore to tackle the smaller one as a ‘practice run’ for the larger.
Mount Beattie beckons
The path was a bit notional in places, but sloped steadily upwards through the buttongrass, and stands of flowering honeymirtle and swampheath.
Forging a trailPink SwampheathSilver Fern at anchor in Kings Cove, Bathurst HarbourLooking back from Mt Beattie toward Claytons CornerAt the summit of Mt Beattie, with Mt Rugby in the background
The weather started to bluster, so we scurried back to the boat, made some dinner and opened some wine. Rain set in. We had some more wine. The sky turned angry purple. Liv said she would only put ‘Purple Rain’ on the stereo if we all sang along…
Mount Rugby
We made a gentle start to the morning, eating breakfast and then putting together stuffed wraps for lunch. Up came the anchor, and we motored around to a small bay to the North of Bathurst Channel, which put us within dinghy-strike of the path up Mount Rugby.
The climb is hard and unrelenting, on wet buttongrass peat. The path appears to be kept open largely by wombats rather than people, so each step is a choice between putting one foot directly in front of the other in a narrow boggy crack, or of hopping from side-to-side hoping that you don’t slip. Some stretches can only be navigated bent over double through scraggy forest.
A deceptively easy startLiv and John in a copse
Thankfully the hillside was lined with small sturdy trees, so we hauled ourselves up hand-over-hand, slipping and sliding in the treacherous mud, until we reached a small outcrop of quartzite that was level with the summit of yesterday’s Mount Beattie.
With spectacular and unobstructed views of the whole 150-square-kilometre expanse of Port Davey / Bathurst Harbour, we knew that we were the only vessel in this incredible untouched wilderness. It was a surprise, then, to hear an unfamiliar voice and then to see an unfamiliar face. A young couple strode into view. “Where on earth did you come from?” I asked.
They explained that they were the pilots of a charter plane which had just dropped a handful of clients at the Melaleuca airstrip (a short band of crushed quartzite occasionally visible in the distance). They had a few hours to kill and had borrowed a spare boat from their company, and thought that if they made haste they could get up and down the mountain before their clients returned. I stepped off the path to let them through, and off they scampered, making me feel old and slow.
Back in the real world, the going got harder, every foot placement necessarily more intricate. Often the track was obscured by tufts of button grass, so you never knew if your questing foot would encounter solid rock, slippery mud, or a quartzite slurry akin to quicksand. At about a hundred vertical metres from the summit, we stopped for a breather and a bite to eat.
View of the distant anchoragePandaniMountain Needlebush
After that, the trail got really difficult. Every step was steeply upward, either on mud, tree root, or quartzite. Some of the route was bouldering, some genuine rock-climbing, particularly closer to the summit where we were climbing over or crawling under huge fallen boulders.
Attempting an interesting traverse, I encountered the pilots on their way back down. Spreadeagled against the quartzite and reaching for a toe-hold, I glanced up as the lady slid down on her bottom and the man slipped in mud and tumbled down the slope. “I’m getting too old for this shit,” I joked. The man looked ruefully at this mud-stained trousers. “Youth isn’t helping me at all!” he said, before sliding down the next section.
I’d been dawdling, playing on the rocks and taking photos of the plant life, but eventually caught up with the vanguard of our group, who had stopped to rest on a large flat rock. However, the summit was within sight, so I clambered up the final stretch, and found myself standing at the top of the world.
The views were truly astonishing. Most of our crew have travelled extensively, and we all agreed that the 360-degree vista from the top of Mount Rugby was equal to anything we’d seen, anywhere. Click here for a 360 degree movie.
Views from the summit of Mount RugbyThe crew at the summit of Mount Rugby
It had taken us three hours to reach the summit, and it took us another three to get down again. Going down was, arguably, even harder than coming up. Visibility of the steep and occluded path was even worse from above, with the added complication that our feet had stirred up the mud on the way up.
We fell, and fell again. Sitting or lying on the undergrowth and contemplating the sky for the umpteenth time, it was sobering to reflect on how easy it would be to sprain or even to break something, but we made it almost to the bottom in relative safety.
Close to the bottom, just above the anchorage, is a small subsidiary peak. For reasons that remain obscure, John and Rob and I set off to climb it while the others continued on down to the boat.
There was not even the hint of a path, and the going was very hard through low-growing scrub and soft wet peat. We fell, and we bled, and we fell again, but once more the views were rewarding.
Looking back up at Mount Rugby
Back aboard Silver Fern, we motored back around the corner to Kings Cove. We were expecting a big wet storm and we already know that the holding was good and that Mount Beattie provided protection from the West. A hearty dinner, a few glasses of wine, and then we all drifted exhausted to bed.
We woke with the dawn at our anchorage in Deephole Bay, to confirm that the tiny predicted weather-window for our westerly run to Port Davey was holding steady. The three of us that enjoy a cold-water swim were treated to clear skies and a beautiful sunrise.
Sunrise over the d’Entrecasteaux Channel from Deephole Bay
We weighed anchor and ate breakfast as we motor-sailed out past Southport Bluff, site of yesterday’s hiking, and with views up to the King George monument that John and I bumped into yesterday. It was a lovely day for a sail.
Brendon avoiding the reefs and hidden rocks
Threading our way between some private fishing boats, Deepwater Bank, and the ominously named Black Reef, we turned inland around the bluff and anchored in Recherche Bay. We could see snow on top of Arthur’s Peak that hadn’t been there yesterday, but were now positioned in the most Southerly safe anchorage that we could find.
At anchor in Recherche Bay
Consulting the forecast, we were excited to see that the Westerlies out in the Southern Ocean were predicted to abate overnight, picking up again tomorrow at midday. We settled on a plan to start our westerly passage at dusk.
What to do in the meantime? How about a nice picnic on the beach?
Silver Fern crew, November 2024, at Recherche Bay
Recherche Bay
We had the rest of the day to kill. We found a path behind the beach, which led to a statue of a whale and a 1792 quotation from Admiral Bruni d’Entrecasteaux:
It would be vain of me to attempt to describe my feelings when I beheld this lonely harbour lying at the world’s end, separated as it were from the rest of the universe – ’twas nature and nature in her wildest mood…
We were enjoying a similar state of mind when we were surprised to encounter a gaggle of tourists, so there must be a road somewhere close by to “world’s end”. We also bumped into a pair of grey nomads who were attempting to walk the trail to Fisherman’s Point, which seemed as good a plan as any, so a few of us set off behind them along the marked path.
The track was only indifferently signposted, and much of it was below the tideline of the beach. After a number of false turnings, the people in front gave up, but we ploughed on, just enjoying the views and the sunshine.
Recherche Bay
At length we arrived at the point, marked by a light and some cairns. A few steps inland was a ruined building, apparently once part of a pair of infamous pubs, both called the Sawyers Arms. Today there were only some brick walls, some lilies, and a rather surprised black Tiger Snake which swiftly slipped away to shelter.
On to Port Davey!
As dusk fell, we secured Silver Fern for sea, hoisted the main, and poked our nose out of the heads. The persistent westerly gale had, as promised, died away. Perhaps ironically, this gave us no wind to sail with, but we had plenty of fuel and a big engine and a short window of safety to get around the South Capes. Motor-sailing, we took it.
Time to go!On whale watch
To lead us on our way, a pair of humpback whales, probably mother and calf, breached off the bow, played around for a while, then swam beneath us to pop up astern. A little later, a lone dolphin caught up to investigate. An albatross took station, swinging endless circles around us as we motored into the light swell.
Darkness slowly fell. It wasn’t my watch, but I stayed up anyway to see the sunset and enjoy the feel of the ocean. Venus rose, followed by the first stars. At 8pm I was joined by the rest of C Watch for our official two-hour stint, rounding South Cape and setting course for the Maatsuyker Islands.
Rounding South Cape
At the end of our watch, we grabbed some bunk time and were woken as planned by A Watch at 2am, to calm seas and a diamond-dusting of stars glittering over our phosphorescent wake. Every now and then, we caught a flash of white as our albatross crossed in front of our running lights.
I always revel in a night passage, but this was a first for my watch-mates Ange and Mish. We soon got them set up with blankets, cushions and (just in case) sick bags, and I think that in the end they enjoyed it.
Silver Fern, like most modern boats I suppose, is equipped with a touch-screen electronic chart at the helm. This gives the helmsman a clear moment-by-moment picture of the entire situation, with instant overlays of radar, AIS, and a whole host of systems information available to the fingertip (except, in our case, for wind instruments, which were all out of commission due to a wiring fault). In the past, I have been used to regular forays down to the chart table to check that we are where we are supposed to be, and to commit to memory any upcoming reefs or shallows before my next visit below, clinging to the chart table and trying not to vomit while attempting to focus on blurred marks on fiendishly furling paper… I found that I didn’t miss it.
Just as our watch finished at 4am, the barometer fell by 4hPa and the stars forward started to haze over. According to standing orders, any fall of more than 1hPa per hour triggers waking the skipper, so we got John out of bed and then, feeling slightly guilty, went down to our bunks.
I woke naturally at 6am and made my way onto deck, to find that we had passed through Port Davey and were cruising up Bathurst Channel.
Sunrise over Port DaveyEntering Bathurst Channel
The weather was still fine. The falling barometer had presumably just been heralding the forecast change later in the day, but it didn’t matter what happened now, there are endless safe anchorages within Bathurst Harbour. We had made it!
For my significant birthday this year, I have gifted myself a sailing trip into the Southern Ocean with Ocean Sailing Expeditions. Our aim was to sail from Sandy Bay near Hobart, Tasmania, down the d’Entrecasteaux Channel into the Southern Ocean, around the South and South-West Capes and then up to Bathurst Bay and hopefully on to Macquarie Harbour.
The rest of the crew were flying in from the mainland, but the expedition yacht Silver Fern was moored only a hundred metres away from my own Cheval de Mer, so on the appointed afternoon I strolled across and gave a hail.
Skipper John popped his head out, and almost immediately I found myself repairing a broken flag mount. Over the afternoon the other seven paying crew members arrived, along with the yacht’s mate Liv. Everybody seemed interesting and agreeable, and together we fitted the furling genoa which had just come back from being repaired. At some point in its life, it had been converted from a regular genoa, and thus had far more batten pockets than you might expect, aligned in different directions, but in the end we got it sorted. Unfortunately it was clear that there were still some areas that were worn out, so we’ll have to hope for the best in the Roaring Forties.
Getting the battens inShe’ll be right
The next task was to hank on the staysail, which was an easier job, but it soon became clear that the sail itself was full of holes so we took it off again and replaced it with an orange storm jib.
Having been assigned our bunks and our safety gear, we assembled a chicken risotto dinner, washed it down with beer and wine, and then popped out to the local pub for a pint.
The crew retired to quarters. My bunk is in the bow, upper starboard. Instead of a lee cloth, the upper bunks have pulleys that allow them to be folded up at an angle, trapping the occupant safely in a small space against the hull when at sea. I’d not seen that configuration before, and while it seemed practical, I wondered how much space would be left for me and how I would ever get out again.
Forepeak cabin. My bunk is top right.Mid cabin
The bedding consists of a sheet and a single thin blanket. We had previously been assured by the owner that the temperature below is maintained at a steady 21 degrees, but in fact the boat is unheated and next morning those of us who had not packed sleeping bags woke shivering. Presumably the owner is used to the South Pacific and has not encountered Tasmanian conditions.
Luckily, as the token Tasmanian aboard, I still had access to my car, so I drove a bunch of us in to the Hobart camping shops to purchase sleeping bags and fleeces.
The tasks for the morning began with a trip to the fuel dock to fill the tanks with fuel and water. She’s a big boat – seventy-two feet – and the wind was up and the crew untested, but with the help of the bow thruster and willing hands, we warped her in. I was given the task of checking the spare jerry-cans lashed to the deck, and found that they were nearly all empty, so we fixed that.
To Quarantine Bay
Out in the Derwent, we practiced our man-overboard procedure on a sacrificial fender. With a big boat like this, you can’t crash-gybe and stop dead in the water and haul the casualty back over the rail. The boom itself weighs several tonnes and you really don’t want it moving quickly, and the freeboard is far too high to reach somebody in the water. The plan was to drop the sails and motor back to the victim, winch Pieter in a waterproof survival suit into the water to grab them, and then winch them both out. It all worked rather well.
Approaching the “casualty”Bringing the “casualty” aboard
On the way down the Derwent to Bruny Island, we spent some time getting used to Silver Fern. The steering wheel is connected to the rudder by means of hydraulic rams, which give no feedback at all to the helm. The only way to understand the rudder angle is to keep an eye on the electronic display on the binnacle. Generally it seemed that the easiest way to steer was to use the controls on the auto helm.
While hoisting the main, it had quickly become clear that the first reefing line had lost its integrity, with the core separated from the sheath and about as much use as a wet noodle. On the way in to Quarantine Bay, with the main still up, we spent about an hour replacing it. We needed to attach a new line to the end of the old one and thread it through the system, but there wasn’t enough room to get a splice through the pulleys, so we needed to sew the two ropes together. This took a few attempts, but luckily Mish had been a trauma nurse and was a dab hand with the needle.
Mish sewing the lines togetherForedeckies sorting the lines
Finally we dropped the pick in Quarantine Bay in North Bruny Island, not so very far from our starting point but with a lot of essential tasks under our collective belt. The bay promised shelter from the current northerly and the forecast westerlies.
The anchorage was calm and comfortable, and in the morning Shien, Pieter and myself dropped into the water for a refreshing ocean swim.
Shien’s morning cold-water swim
Breakfast was a free-for-all from the available ingredients, but once we had cleared up, we all separated into our assigned watches. We have three watches, with a four-hour rota during the day, which is more about cleaning and food preparation than navigation, and two-hour cockpit watches if on passage overnight.
Ange on the daily vacuumPieter washing up
Then it was time for passage planning. Up until now, we only had a vague plan that we would head South, round the South Capes and then try to spend some time up the West coast in Bathurst Bay or Macquarie Harbour or both, but we knew that there were a bunch of fast-moving lows in the Southern Ocean.
Silver Fern has a Starlink internet connection, so we use Windy to forecast the pressure systems. Usually this displays average wind speeds, but for the Southern Ocean’s extreme conditions it is more helpful to use the gust overlay. On the Windy snapshot below, pinky purple is around 40 knots and blue is around 60 knots. It is clear that we won’t be going West into the teeth of the storm today, but there is potential for a gap opening up around Tuesday.
We settled on a plan. We would squeeze as far South as we could manage while remaining in the sheltered d’Entrecasteaux Channel, and wait for a weather window.
Our nominal driveway junction exits onto a nominal road. Both of these have been variously constructed and reconstructed over time, both by myself and by the farmer on the other side of the road.
I have never been entirely happy with the initial turn-off into my property, which is fine for my Land Cruiser but not traversable by lesser vehicles. I’d taken some advice from a proper landscape engineer, and the junction needed to be reshaped to be less of a curve and more of a ninety-degree turn-off. I had hired an excavator for the weekend to sort out the creek crossing, so I seized the opportunity to do something about the junction, too.
An early attempt to ease the camber of the driveway junction in 2021Driveway to the left, nominal road to the right
Part of the problem was the nominal road. Why do I call it ‘nominal’? Before I purchased the property, this end of the official road existed only on a map. On the ground, there were only a winter creek and lots of trees. I asked a friend with a bulldozer to push the road across the creek and about half way up the hill, giving access to a small track into my property. Much later, I had a new driveway cut on a better route, and at the same time my farming neighbour pushed the nominal road further, over the hill between our properties and down the other side. This gave him fire trail access to some of his farther fields; you can see the extended road to the right of the photo above. The road is fine in itself, but it is steeply sloping clay and it sheds water across my driveway junction, washing away and undercutting the exit.
The other part of the problem was that the gravelly surface of the turn was heavily cambered and just too darn steep for a two-wheel-drive car to navigate.
I decided on a two-pronged approach. Firstly, I would try to reshape the junction to make it easier to navigate, and secondly, I would put a French drain across my driveway exit and pipe it all the way down the hill to the creek.
I used the digger to remove the upper edge of the curve, to straighten it out so that the driveway met the road at right-angles instead of curving into it. Then I used a mixture of forest earth, spall, road base and blue metal – basically whatever came to hand – and raised the level of the driveway junction by about a third of a metre.
Road base mixed with ‘organic stuff’ Raising the surface of the driveway, to make the junction less steep
This photo gives quite a good perspective of how much I lifted my driveway junction above its original height.
Since the treads of the excavator have a tendency to rip up the surface, I tamped down the surface by repeatedly towing a trailer full of rocks over it.
Tamping down the surface
So far, so good!
Now that I was happy with the height of driveway junction, I dug it up again to put in a French drain.
Digging it back up again!
At around this point, my friend Pete arrived with a shovel, which made things go a lot faster because I could focus on driving the excavator, loading Pete’s trailer and barrow, and pointing at things.
We took advantage of the natural rain gully that had formed on the upper side of the driveway, and teed it into a trench that we dug coming down from the top road. This part is a proper deep French drain lined with 20mm aggregate and containing a sleeved and slotted ag-pipe. There’s a bit of excess sticking out in this photo which has since been cut off.
Two French drains come down from left and right and meet undergroundThis drain (pale rock) used to be the steep driveway, but now will be re-wilded
Pete and I were pretty tired now, so we set up camp for the night, ate steak and drank negronis by the fire, and then retreated to Pete’s van when the heavens opened.
Pete enjoying the wet and windy night
We wondered if all our hard work would be washed away by the torrent, but in the morning both the creek crossing and the half-finished French drain had coped admirably.
Back on the tools, we led the combined run-off from both French drains all the way down the road to the creek. I didn’t put quite so much effort into digging and lining this channel, as it’s nice and steep and exists only to move the water down the side of the road.
In fact, by the time we (well, Pete) had shovelled our way halfway down the hill, we were knackered and called it a day.
Rough channel at the bottomDropping in the ag-pipe
In the event, other projects intervened, and it wasn’t until some six months later that I was able to return to finish up. Even with just bare ag-pipe for the bottom stretch, it was clear that the French drains at the top were working as there was no erosion across the driveway junction and equally no erosion down at the creek.
Hand-selected blue spall from my 10 tonne pileNone of this has washed out……but I’ll protect it anyway
On this second visit, everything had to be done by hand, because the bottom stretch is so steep that it makes working with an excavator quite tricky. I had hoped to rent a skid-steer but the rental place told me that theirs wouldn’t be able to work across the slope, so it was out with the rake and shovel.
I had Duggans quarry deliver another 12 tonnes of 20mm drainage aggregate. I had kind of hoped that they would be able to pour it out of one side of the truck as they drove up the hill, so that I could simply rake it sideways into the trench. That wasn’t an option, but the driver did a great job of backing across the road and dropping the load in a series of piles to make my life easier.
Great piles of aggregateThe trench is finally filled
The raking and shovelling was still a lot of work and it took me all of the morning. Once I’d finished the bottom half, leaving some excess on top as I had nowhere to put it (I’ll put up road markers to stop people from driving on the crunchy bit), I still had quite a few tonnes of aggregate left over about half way up the slope. I tried to barrow it up the hill but it’s far too steep to push. I could have got the trailer and shovelled it in, but it had already been a long hard day and the gravel isn’t going anywhere, so I’ll save that task for another day.
I have finally come to that part of the rebuild process where I have dealt with all the big stuff – the engine and the windows and the larger leaks – and can focus on fixing the little things.
The Switch Panel
I had already spent some time already tracing mysterious electric lines around the interior, stripping out the unused ones and labelling the useful ones. One of the tasks that I kept putting off was to decipher the switch panel, because behind it was just a huge ball of loose wires. It was impossible to get my hand in to unthread them, because all the earth leads had been wired into a single brass block that lived in the middle of the snarl.
Snarl behind the switch panelEvery single earth went to this
One sunny day, I arrived with my soldering iron, some reels of wire, and a lot of patience, and began to unravel.
The reason for the snarl was that, although generally the wiring on the boat is sound, it had had decades of additions and changes, every one of which had all been led back to the same switch panel (and especially to the same earth block).
I slowly traced all the wires, and labelled each one, and excised excess cable and replaced it where it was a bit short. I made up a wooden board with more earth blocks than I will ever need, so that each earth wire is separate from the others and easy to distinguish.
No beauty prizes, but that’ll doJust need to secure the panel
Cheval’s Eyes
Cheval has these lovely old chromed navigation lights on either side of the bow. The lenses are faded, the starboard one is smashed, and neither of them are connected to the electrics, having been replaced by a modern unit on the pulpit.
Nevertheless, I rather like them, so one day I took them off and had a think about how I could make them look a bit better (and less leaky).
My first task was to fix the starboard lens, which was broken. I had some Pinkysil silicone left over from another project, so I made a mould of the inside of the port lens. Then I strapped the broken lens into the mould, and filled the whole thing up with F-190 polyurethane.
Of course, the starboard lens was now solid instead of being a transparent shell, but this was fine because I wasn’t going to use them as navigation lights. In any event, the lenses were so degraded from decades of sun that they had barely any colour.
I popped out the repaired shell, and – after quite a bit of experimentation to find something that would stick to both acrylic and polyurethane – discovered some spray paints that gave a bright finish, and gave them a few coats.
MendedPainted (nearly)Modelling the new eyesCheval de Mer’s eyes are back in place
Leaky Lazarette
The locker hatches in the cockpit will, naturally, allow rainwater to seep in along the hinge line and down the edges. There are supposed to be drainage channels to catch it and shed it into the cockpit sole, but some of them had rotted completely away, allowing rainwater to drain into the bilges underneath the engine. This would have been part of the problem that caused my oil leak.
Some new wood, a lot of elbow-grease, some industrial glue, and some left-over window sealant saved the day.
We went away for 7 weeks and came back, and the bilges were bone-dry.
Keeping it Tidy
I bought some No-Wear chafe guards to protect my new paintwork. They are flexible stainless steel with a strong adhesive backing, so you can mould them to the shape of your boat. Handy if you don’t have hard gunwales, and your boat is made from soft plastic.
I added some rope bags and a solar-powered extractor fan…
The final touches of deck paint
I’ve been slowly moving around the deck, checking fittings and filling holes, applying two-pack undercoat, and finally finishing off with either Kiwi-Grip textured non-slip deck paint, or Norglass Weatherfast gloss enamel. It looks OK, I think.
She just needs some soft furnishings, a bigger solar panel, and dinghy davits. She’s almost good to go!
Long-suffering readers of this blog will remember that I have spent a lot of time over the years working on the creek crossing at the bottom of my access road. Since the last road rebuild, a lot of wash has come down from the neighbouring farm, and has eroded both the road and the causeway. In addition, my neighbours have dammed the winter creek upstream for their sheep, which changed the character of the creek from slow seepage to a more continual flow. I needed to install some drainage pipes to protect the road surface.
One fine weekend, I arrived on site with a trailer-load of drainage pipes, and a digger from Mal’s Hire. In preparation for the delivery of several truck-loads of material from Duggan’s Quarry, my daughter had painted up a lot of helpful signs. I doubt that the quarry drivers were accustomed to such artistry, but they certainly obeyed the instructions.
The creek crossing was originally built about ten years ago using a base layer of tree trunks, then aggregate, then soil. It has worked well for most of this time, but a combination of clay filtering down into the wooden sublayer and increased water flow from the neighbouring farm’s new dams, has meant that some water runs over the top and has a tendency to wash away the surface of the road.
The winter creek fills and then seeps across the causeway
Digging away the substrate by hand would have been a thankless task, but the digger made it easy.
Starting on the drainage trench
Before long, I dropped in some drainage pipes, and got instant gratification in the form of the creek diverting through the pipe and out onto my property.
I finished off with 20mm drainage aggregate, and made good with excess mud and stone. It was still pretty boggy – after all, the mud was already saturated – but I left it alone to give it a chance to dry.
Loading the trailer with 20mm drainage aggregate
Hopefully all that mud will dry off…
That night, I put up my tent and cooked myself a nice supper by the fire.
All’s well that ends well
On the following day, I had other things to do with the digger, so it wasn’t til later that I got to have a look at the creek crossing.
It was still boggy.
This was when I discovered that there was a second flow of water coming down from another new dam in the farm next door. It was running invisibly under the ferns and then draining across the creek crossing, slightly higher up the slope. I couldn’t see it before, because the whole thing was wet, but now that the bottom half had drained, it was obvious.
It was far too wet to bring in the digger, which would have just churned everything up, so a couple of us dug out a rough new ditch by hand.
It originally looked like a seep, but once we’d dug a channel, there was a significant amount of water, which we lead down to the drainage pipe that I’d put in the day before.
Surprise seepage from the new damPipe entrance, creek flow lower, dam upper
The ditch is a bit impromptu and unlined, but I didn’t really want to start landscaping on my neighbour’s side of the road, and anyway we were tired.
Four months later, everything was looking just fine.
I spent an extra day shovelling in a layer of 20mm aggregate and topped it with blue spall to keep out falling debris.
Each cabin complex on the Three Capes Track has an identical dorm setup, so every night I was sharing with the same people in a carbon-copy of the same dorm cabin. As usual, I had claimed the bunk that nobody else wanted, in the darkest corner farthest from the door, which I crawled into like a yacht’s berth. This gave me my own corner of darkness while the rest of the guys were bumbling around with their bright head torches.
I am sure that head torches are wonderfully useful for those who choose not to let their eyes become accustomed to the dark, but I find them annoying in company because humans are always moving their heads, looking around, momentarily distracted by any noise or motion, and shining their lights into the eyes of anybody they want to talk to. At least with a small pencil torch, it remains focussed on the task in hand, and doesn’t bother anyone else.
I woke as usual six hours after going to sleep, in this case at one in the morning. Rather than get up, I just lay and listened to the wind hammering past outside. The forecast was for a blustery day with 50km/h gusts, and it certainly sounded like it as the occasional flurry of rain pattered on the tin roof.
By seven, I was up and about and making Aeropress coffee. What a fine device this is; lightweight, neat, unbreakable, and capable of quickly extracting every last millilitre of caffeine from a few spoonfuls of grounds. The second-most common comment on my travel kit this week has been, “Oh I wish I’d brought my Aeropress too” (the most common comment was, “Oh I wish I’d brought wine and rum too…”)
The fourth day of the Three Capes Track is acknowledged to be ‘the hard day’. Not only does it begin with the climb to the top of Mount Fortescue, a vertical rise of just under 250 metres, but it also has the psychological stressor of a scheduled bus waiting at the end of the walk to take us back to Port Arthur. We had booked on the later of the two buses, but nevertheless, the timetable was a niggle at the back of the mind.
There was rain in the cold and blustery air. We donned our waterproofs and set off. The showery weather matched well with the ecology of this side of the mountain, which tended to drippy rainforest and ferns and moss.
A nice pellet fire before we goReady for the mountainUp the steps to Mt FortescueStill climbing
The climb wasn’t as bad as advertised, although there were a lot of steps and it got a bit tiring. However, there were many mosses and ferns to look at, and when we finally got to the top, good although misty views back to yesterday’s Cape Pillar.
Mossy trees on Mount FortescueLooking back to Cape Pillar, from Mount Fortescue
The rain forest environment was quite different from the Banksia and She-Oak ecology that we had experienced on Cape Pillar. There were no Spring flowers here in the gloom, but instead an abundance of ferns and mosses.
Tasmanian Soft Tree FernTree fern overheadShiny Filmy-FernKangaroo Fern
We followed the path across the top of Mount Fortescue, and then steps leading down the other side. Abruptly, we emerged from the rain forest into young stands of Sassafras trees
Down the other sideInto the Sassafras
From here, we quickly dropped to a cliff-side path with the more familiar impenetrable jungle of bush plants, scattered with Spring flowers.
Looking back toward Mount FortescuePouched Coral-FernOyster Bay PineCaterpillar Acacia (I think)No idea what this is
The rain had died off, but now the wind picked up. It got pretty blustery out on the exposed rocky outcrops.
Windswept view back to yesterday’s Cape Pillar
Most of the Three Capes Track is private, in the sense that Parks & Wildlife only allow ticketed groups of 50 trekkers at a time, one group per cabin. The only faces that we have seen for the past three days have been familiar from our time on the trail and in the communal areas of the cabins.
The ranger at Retakunna had explicitly warned us that, near the end of Day Four, the Three Capes Track joins the public track to Cape Hauy. He mentioned that many people like to leave their packs at the junction and pick them up on their return, but pointed out that we should be mindful that – if left – they wouldn’t be as secure as we had gotten used to, because there would be other people about. In fact, when we reached the junction and encountered our first group of day-walkers, it was quite a shock to see the first face “not from our village”.
Most people left their packs anyway, wrapped in plastic to confound the currawongs, which apparently are prone to figure out zips and buckles in their quest for food. I carried mine anyway, for the same reasons as yesterday.
Bags in the bush
The wind was still gusting, but the weather was warm. The track to Cape Hauy is beautifully constructed of local stone, mainly in the form of steps. It was very pretty, but daunting to find that, whenever you turned a corner, there was more track stretching away to the horizon.
The endless steps to Cape Hauy
We followed the path until it wound its way to the summit of Cape Hauy. Buffeted by the wind, we stood and admired the dolerite stacks, the views, and some passing whales. Since Cape Hauy is a public area, there is a little guard rail around the top, something that has been deliberately omitted from the controlled parts of the Three Capes Track. Leaning on the rail, facing the mass known as the Candlestick, you can look down on the Totem Pole, popular with climbers.
The Candlestick on Cape HauyThe Totem PoleEnjoying the wind on top of Cape Hauy
The ascent of Cape Hauy really marks the end of the Three Capes Track experience. From here, it is but a gentle return to sea level at Fortescue Bay.
It had been a pleasant experience. Hardly a trek, more of a gently curated four-day amble through the bush. Parks & Wildlife have struck a careful line between tourist attraction and introductory hiking experience, with plenty of interesting tales without dumbing anything down. The paths and boardwalks are a necessary evil which insulate you and hold you aloof from the nature all around, but this is to some extent offset by the deliberate lack of signs, fences and guard rails away from the trail, which would otherwise detract from the wide sweeping vistas. The feeling of being part of a small nomadic village was a pleasant surprise, and enhanced the notion of being away from the stresses of civilisation.
Journey’s End, at Fortescue Bay
Even though we’d booked ourselves onto the late bus, we made it back to the Bay in time to catch the earlier one, but unfortunately that vehicle had been run off the road by a logging truck. Nobody was hurt, but the bus was now bogged in the roadside verge and couldn’t be moved. Pennicott Adventures did a great job of prioritising the walkers who needed to catch onward services, and used spare buses to ferry us all back to Port Arthur, tired but in good spirits.
I slept well on the second night of the Three Capes Track. I woke naturally at one in the morning, feeling refreshed, and went out for a little walk. Brush-tailed possums stared at me as I pottered about in their night-time territory. An incredibly bright star shone through the cloud layer. I wondered what it was, but it didn’t feel right to get out my phone and launch the star map, so I simply accepted its beauty and walked on.
Eventually I returned to bed, woke at dawn to light rain, and used the ingenious camp shower that I had noticed yesterday. I met Elizabeth in the kitchen and we brewed an Aeropress coffee, followed by fresh fried eggs over reconstituted Mexican beans.
One of the popular features of the third day of the Three Capes Track is that, because it is a there-and-back trip, you can store your pack in a dedicated hut and walk without it. I thought about it for a while, but in the end decided that I was perfectly happy with my pack, which was only a little over 20kg and had everything in it that I needed. I had carefully chosen its contents and I knew how to get to them instantly, so it seemed silly to try to strip it down any more. Just to show willing, I parked my sleeping bag and spare water bottle in the hut, and took everything else.
Day Three takes you out to on the narrow peninsular leading to Cape Pillar, tending to impenetrable Banksia bush on squishy mud. Reg and Tim, the locally famous bush-bashers who had spent several years breaking this trail, had found it very hard going. The ubiquitous boardwalk made it all rather easy for us.
Hurricane Heath, with views to Cape Pillar
The route is necessarily linear and windswept, and probably a bit miserable when the weather comes in, but today it was bright if overcast, and perfect for walking.
Once the path reached the Southern coastline of the Cape, it began to get rather spectacular, tending to dolomite columns and crumbling stacks.
Tasman Island hove into view, complete with lighthouse. There are harrowing stories about the difficulties of getting families and supplies up the sheer cliffs in the basket of a flying fox, before the light was automated.
Tasman Island
Almost at the end of the path, there is a short side-climb up onto The Blade, with marvellous views all around.
Steps up The BladeCape Pillar, from The BladeElizabeth on The Blade, with Tasman Island behindReinhard very pleased to have arrived at The BladeLooking back the way we have come
And now, the final short stretch to the end of the Cape Pillar Track and the Southernmost point of the Three Capes Track. But just because we were walking through dense Banksia on the thin end of a crumbling rocky peninsula, didn’t mean that there weren’t any more flowers.
Bushman’s Bootlace and Golden BushpeaGolden BushpeaMountain Pinkberry
But all good things come to an end, and our path ended here, on the cliffs above Cape Pillar.
Dolorite stacks at Cape PillarClaim Your Moment
We ate lunch on one of the stacks overlooking the sea (rice and fish again, it seems to work well), and headed back the way we had come, re-climbing The Blade on the way back (because why not?)
Day 3 was to give us one last surprise. The gentle boardwalk that we remembered lolloping effortlessly down this morning, turned out to be a long, long slope back up to Hurricane Heath, inflexibly hard stretches of boardwalk punctuated by little steps. My hip began to complain loudly for the first time today, and I sneaked some extra pain killers about half way up.
Passing Munro cabin, where we had awoken that morning, we picked up our stuff from the luggage hut, and continued on our way to Retakunna cabin, where the amenities were every bit as delightful as at Surveyors and Munro.
Relaxing at Retakunna Cabin
It got a bit cold later on, but we lit the pellet fire to warm the kitchen, then sat and drank coffee laced with rum as the rain came in over the scrubby mountain gums outside.
At the first hut of the Three Capes Track, I had a comfortable night’s rest and woke before dawn. I quietly left the cabin and limped out along the wooden boardwalk to the toilet block, which features beautifully clean dry toilets, the waste dropping into Apollo-shaped pods which are taken away by helicopter.
There was a warm desert wind blowing from the North. My hip was sore from an earlier injury but the painkillers were kicking in, so I did some gentle stretches in the pre-dawn light, and then made my way up to the helipad, which is a simple square of clean gravel at the edge of the compound, to watch the sunrise.
As the first rays of orange moved across the sky, a handful of other people slowly drifted out to stand quietly and widely separated on the pad. Each in our separate bubble of contemplation, we quietly watched the dawn of our first day on the trail. As the sun finally lifted clear of the horizon, the wind changed and brought with it a flurry of rain. Exchanging small private smiles, we sauntered slowly back to the cabins. Time for breakfast.
Elizabeth and I both like to enjoy our first meal of the day, so we had packed half a dozen fresh eggs each as a little luxury. Mine were in their cardboard carton, and one had broken, but it remained salvageable. We scrambled four eggs in ghee with cracked rice in one of the kitchen pans, served with fresh coffee from my Aeropress. Not bad at all.
We washed up, composted the shells, and packed everything else away. The weather outside had turned cool and blustery. We hoisted our packs, and set off.
The second day starts with the ascent of a double peak (Arthurs Peak / Crescent Mountain) connected by a low saddle. I was curious to see how my duff leg was going to cope. It’s only a 200m climb and the path is manicured into stone steps, but I was still a little puffed at the top of the first one. The painkillers and back brace were great, but presumably the tendon was still taking its toll inside.
To take my mind off that, Spring flowers were blooming everywhere, especially the Erect Guineaflower and the local subspecies of Hairy Boronia which is endemic to this peninsula.
Across the saddle to Crescent Mountain, the climb rewarded us with lovely views across the aptly named Crescent Bay, and beyond to Cape Raoul. It is a curiosity of the “Three Capes” Track that it actually follows the perimeter of just two capes, Pillar and Hauy. The third, Raoul, is only ever glimpsed in the distance.
Looking across Crescent Bay toward Cape Raoul
We stopped to admire the view, and then began the climb back down, following a beautifully constructed staircase of local stone.
The road ahead, along Cape PillarHiking down from Crescent Mountain
From the twin peaks, we descended into a flower-laden valley, where yellow-tailed cockatoos feasted on the ubiquitous banksias. The boardwalk made it easy for us, but the first walkers to break trail here spent several years forcing their way through impenetrable Banksia and She-Oak. Much of the work was done by a colourful couple called Reg and Tim, who named many of the features along the way, including ‘Where-the-freaking-hell-are-we Ridge’, which gave this basin its current name, Ellarwey Valley.
Much of the Three Capes Track is now protected by wooden walkways, and these do a great job of keeping everybody to the path and preventing erosion bogs, with the bonus of lifting you a little above the landscape so that you can see over the top of the scrub, but they are tediously hard and flat underfoot.
Boardwalk into Ellarwey Valley
Today, the valley was beautiful and the Spring flowers delightful, but it was very exposed, and easy to imagine that it would be a harsh trudge if the weather was coming from the Southern Ocean.
At the far end of the basin, we ascended Tornado Ridge where a short side-path led to a series of delightful benches overlooking Tornado Bay. Here we paused and put together a hearty lunch of pre-cooked rice and tinned fish.
Tornado Bay
Back on the main path, we followed the path alongside the plunging cliffs. A squall came in across Tornado Bay which had us scurrying for our waterproofs, but it swiftly passed by to one side.
The flora varied between wet and dry sclerophyll, but was still sprinkled with Spring blooms. The ground underfoot would have been boggy without the boardwalk. However, the wire-covered hard wooden surface had taken its toll on my boots, and I had to do a swift repair job. Thank goodness for cloth tape.
Arriving at the Munro cabin, we found that it was all pleasantly familiar. Several beautifully appointed fire-resistant buildings holding a variety of kitchens and dormitories. The marked difference was the availability of a hot shower located in the bush. Fill a bucket with hot water from a nearby gas boiler, pour the bucket into the shower bag, hoist it to the sky, and stand beneath! Lovely.
A nice hot shower in the bush
Where Surveyors has a deck for admiring sunsets over Cape Raoul, Munro has a viewing platform, complete with telescope, out over the whale migration route. Humpback whales hung out below for much of the afternoon and then, as dusk fell, a pod of dolphins came inshore to feed in the surf. Wedge-tailed eagles soared overhead.
Tonight’s dinner was reconstituted camp fare, but palatable enough: “Roast lamb and vegetables and mash” followed by rolls of sour cherry paste, with a glass of hot rum tea.
Dinner is served!
We should have carried more wine, really. The official recommendation was to carry three litres each of water per day, but I had barely touched mine, there would have been room for an extra litre of red instead. One of the other walkers had packed the silvered bag from the inside of a wine box, and had a little party sitting up on the helicopter pad with legs dangling toward the ocean, watching the whales.
Before we bought her, our pocket cruiser Cheval de Mer had been in the same berth for some 20 years, through two previous live-aboard owners. For most of that time, she has sat with her bow facing into the dock on six permanently spliced mooring lines, which had been specifically created to hold her in position with easy access to a ladder up onto the dock along the starboard side.
We have no protective toe rails on Cheval de Mer, and the mooring lines had been rubbing in the same places for so long, that they had chafed right through the gel coat on the gunwale to the glass fibres beneath. I’ve sealed the worn holes with West System resin, and preventing further damage is on the to-do list.
Poly rope slowly sawing through the fibreglass
I had been checking the dockside fittings now and again, and had already doubled-up on two of the lines because they were looking a bit old. Then one winter’s night there was a wind event recorded as 120km/h, so I dropped by the marina next morning to check that all was well. There’s a short mooring line that is used to keep her close to the ladder, but the land-side connection isn’t really visible as it is hidden under the dock. That morning I found the mooring line floating free, with the rope eye and metal thimble worn completely through.
Mooring line thimble worn right through
Clearly, I was overdue to replace all the lines, but the reason that I hadn’t done it properly yet was that I didn’t want to just replace them ‘as is’. My preference is to be able to pop out for a single-handed sail now and again, and so far I haven’t done that on Cheval de Mer because of the difficulty of reversing out of the tight corner in which she is berthed, an action that really needs two people, one to steer and the other to fend-off. I wanted to make up new lines which would allow us to berth her stern-to, giving me the opportunity to simply motor out of the berth whenever I wanted to. In case you’re wondering, berthing in reverse will be much simpler than departing in reverse, due to the configuration of the pontoons and available hand-holds.
We waited for our chance when the wind was low and the tide was slack, so that we could turn her around in her berth while hastily fabricating temporary lines. I had an idea in my head that we would push her out and turn her around by hand, but Bronwyn pooh-poohed that plan and said that she’d simply motor out to sea, turn around, and come back in. Since somebody needed to be on the foredeck to fend off, and somebody else needed to be on shore to work the lines, we borrowed the services of our friend Peter, and thank goodness that we did.
We arrived as planned on a wind-free afternoon at the slack of high tide and started the motor, an old but serviceable Yanmar single-cylinder which thudded reassuringly as Bronwyn backed Cheval de Mer out of her berth. All went well until she was out in the channel and making that tricky first turn, and then the overheating alarm came on. Last time that happened, we ended up with a bilge full of oil, so Bronwyn hastily killed the engine and we completed the manoeuvre by hand, using lines, ironically as I’d originally planned. Luckily there were three adults and a child to help with the fending-off.
We got her around without too much fuss, and then pulled her gently into the berth. As the stern swim platform came gently level with the end of the berth, Bronwyn somehow fell off it and banged both thighs on the concrete dock. It hurt a lot, and resulted in significant and colourful bruising.
While Bronwyn sat quietly and thought nice thoughts, the rest of us juggled the available lines into suitable lengths, and it wasn’t long before we had her nicely positioned. In fact, with the stern swim platform facing the end dock, there’s little need to use the midships ladder at all, you can just step on and off the swim platform whatever the tide. It’s a bit of a mystery why the live-aboard owners chose to keep her bow-to in the first place.
Back at home, I got out a large roll of poly rope, and taught myself to splice an eye. It always seems so complicated when you read about it, but in practice it turned out to be pretty simple to make a slightly amateurish but strong eye in the end of the rope.
As always, practice makes perfect, and over a few weeks I made a full set, complete with new stainless-steel shackles and thimbles for the landward side.
Fancy new stainless fittingsFancy new splice
I tied the boat-end in a temporary bowline, so that I had some flexibility in choosing a good final length in all tides and weathers without committing yet to a splice at both ends. Meanwhile, I need to figure out what’s wrong with the raw water cooling pump…
Every time I drive over the bridge to approach our new house in Kingston, Tasmania, my eye is drawn to a wedge-shaped pillar of rock sticking up over the horizon. The map shows it as “Cathedral Rock”, part of Mount Wellington National Park, but to me it was a red flag crying “Climb me! Climb me!”
Cathedral Rock, in Mount Wellington National Park, Tasmania
This is the story of the day that I chose to climb up Cathedral Rock. To be clear, it’s not actually a vertical climb, as there is a track. The peak is 880 metres above sea level, and the track starts 600 metres lower than that.
My walk began at the North West Bay River, which is wide and shallow and mainly boulders. There are two starting points, and I tried both of them. There is access up the obvious private road from the car park, but it was more fun to climb down into the trickling river and jump from rock to rock up the river bed. After about half a kilometre, the sides of the ravine dropped to river level, allowing me to rejoin the official path, which was anyway always visible on the left bank.
North West Bay RiverHeading upstream
The Cathedral Rock track at this point is narrow, and easy to see in the sunshine. I thought that it might be a bit hard to follow in darkness or in rain, but wherever there was a change of direction, there was a metal pole with a small fluorescent orange triangle to mark the way.
Despite the fact that it was still following the river, the path very soon began to climb steeply upward between the tree ferns.
The start of the trailDicksonia antarctica tree fernsStarting to go upHelpful orange markers
I was already starting to feel a little out of breath when one of the orange triangles directed me to turn ninety degrees and walk directly away from the river. The path steepened noticeably, up what appeared to be a flash gully.
After only about half an hour on the trail, the path widened, but the slope was continuous and relentless and I was starting to pant heavily. As I trudged onward, sweat poured down my bowed head and dripped off the end of my nose.
I heard voices behind, and two merrily chatting young couples breezed past as if I was standing still. Cursing under my breath, I wondered if this was the first time in all my life of climbing tall things, that anybody has passed me on the trail. Am I getting old?
Youngsters!Still going up
I plodded on, through stands of razor-sharp cutting grass. Growing up overseas, I still find this plant fascinating, grass that can hurt you. We have five kinds in Tasmania, and I can never resist checking it with my finger. Blood welled instantly. Yup, still sharp.
Scattered on the ground were the shredded leaves of Silver Wattle which had fallen from overhead. It was late in the year, but when the wattle is in flower, it sends sap to the soft outer leaf shoots to attract Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos. As the birds tear into the stems to feast on the sweet sugary liquid, their wings get dusted with wattle pollen, which they then transfer to the flowers of other trees.
Ghania cutting grassSevered Silver Wattle leaves
The path kept on climbing. I remarked to myself that, of all the tall things that I have climbed all over the world in all kinds of weather conditions, this little track in the relative cool of the Tasmania Autumn, was up there with the hardest of them.
I really needed a break, but I have a rule about resting on hills. Never rest at the bottom or middle of a hill, only ever rest at the top or on a flat. The idea is to stop at an achievement, and to start on flat ground.
I was dying for a rest, but there was no let-up. The path just angled steeply up, zig-zagging as it went. I was at the point of cursing my own stupid rules, when I rounded a bend and the path became briefly level for about ten blessed metres. Well, almost level. Good enough. I slumped down against a comfortable tree, drank half a litre of water, and closed my eyes for a moment.
Heading up and on, the trail narrowed and, finally, became less steep. Now it was more like walking up a hill, rather than pumping every step with eyes fixed on the end of your boots.
Then, about an hour after starting out, I arrived at the base of the final scramble to the summit. The guides for this walk make no mention of the killer ascent thus far, but wax lyrical about the dangers of the final 400 metres, giving it black diamonds and even a warning sign. I was interested to see just how bad this next part could be! As far as I could see, the track just disappeared up a rocky watershed. What would I find next?
Despite the warnings, the final stretch was just a simple scramble, zig-zagging up a rocky incline with plenty of hand- and foot-holds, nothing at all compared to the hard slog of the endless track below.
The summit was a collection of rocky outcrops, firmly gripped by small stands of Black She-Oak and Needle Bush.
Black She-Oak Allocasuarina littoralisNeedle Bush Hakea lissosperma
The views were spectacular, all the way south down the Huon Valley, and East toward Bruny Island. I could also look back and see the road outside my house, where I first looked up at this rock and wondered if it was climbable.
I made it!Looking east across the d’Entrecasteaux. My house is about dead centre.Looking south to the Huon Valley. My forest is on the horizon.
It was nice to enjoy the open vistas to the South East, but it was the terrain to the North West that was interesting for future expeditions. Cathedral Rock sits on the cusp of a bowl that surrounds the upper reaches of the North West Bay River. From this altitude, I could see that the river bed up here is similar to the terrain at the bottom, mostly dry with flat rocks. I wondered if it would be possible to follow the river bed all the way up here into the bowl, and then climb out of the far end. The map showed that the river intersects with the Pipeline Track which would take me from Mt Wellington National Park and down into the city.
North West Bay River far belowFollow the ridge… must be a way throughLooking up to the ridge at the head of the river valley
I also looked around to see if there was a track along the ridge top, because in theory I should be able to follow the edge of the bowl around to Wellington Falls, and before long I stumbled on a thin trail that led over the blade of exposed rock and on to the next outcrop.
The path to Wellington Falls climbs to the right. Mt Montague to the left.
I chose not to follow any further on this day. I would need to start a lot earlier to get all the way round, and in any case my car was down at the bottom of the Cathedral Rock track and I had no way of retrieving it if I walked down to Hobart. There is, however, plenty of food for thought for my next trip.
I found a peaceful flat rock to sit on, contemplated the view, and ate some lunch. Then, having sated both mind and body, I began the scramble back down to the track.
As before, the rocky scramble was the easiest part. The long hike back down the steep trail looked simple, but again the relentless slope inflicted a slow muscle burn that didn’t let up until I reached the river.
It was a sunny Sunday morning with light brisk winds, a perfect day for a family sail after weeks of incessant rain. We climbed aboard, cast off, and motored out of our berth.
Immediately an alarm sounded from the panel in the cockpit. I heard it from the bow where I was keeping lookout, but I had only just replaced the depth sounder and had not calibrated it, so I assumed that it was responding to the shallow bottom under the keel. At any rate, squeezing out between rows of expensive boats on a blustery day is not the time to be focussing on electronic problems.
The alarm cut in and out as we navigated around the pontoons, and as we passed out into deep water through the arms of the breakwater I waited for the it to stop. It didn’t, and I saw Bronwyn duck forward from the helm to look more closely at the panel, and she shouted, “it says Low Press”.
Oh dear.
I stuck my head down the hatch and found that our nice clean white bilges were awash with engine oil.
Despite having lost all its oil, the one-cylinder donk was still plugging away, so we used it to get to a nearby mooring buoy. A gust caught us and we missed, and had to go round again, praying that the engine would keep on going. It did, we tied up, and killed the motor.
Now what?
We were stuck out in the Derwent River, on a mooring of unknown provenance. It looked big and well-kept, but we’d never seen anybody use it before.
We had the dinghy on board, although it temporarily lacked either a drainage bung or rowlocks. Still, it was easily enough to get the family back to the marina with diligent use of kayak paddles. We tied up the dinghy in our berth, and went home.
On Monday, we arranged for the yacht club to give us a tow to the yard, so that we could get her out of the water and have a look. It wasn’t really necessary to get her up on land, but she was overdue for an antifoul anyway, and because we bought her quickly for cash, we’d never seen her bottom, so it seemed like a reasonable opportunity to kill several birds with one stone.
That doesn’t look rightOn tow back to the marinaOut she comesNeeds a bit of work
As soon as we were up on the cradle, I pumped the oil out of the bilge and cleaned up the mess. The bilge pump – which had never worked very efficiently – was saturated in oil so I took it home for a clean. The unused piping for the water tanks (I’d removed three large tanks when we set her up for sailing rather than live-aboard) was similarly contaminated, so they went too.
The engine was pristine and clean. There was no sign of any leaks, no trails of oil, nothing. The engine sat on its blocks, and the oil sat beneath, with no indication of how it got out.
The oil filter felt rough to touch underneath, and I wondered if it had developed a pinhole. It was very, very tightly fitted, and there was evidence (in the form of crinkles on the underside) that somebody had cranked it on with a strap wrench. I had to puncture it to get it off, so destroyed any real evidence of pinhole leakage. There were also two metal oil pipes that dipped down into the bilges, where they had likely sat in rainwater for some time while the boat was unattended before we bought it, and these pipes showed a crusting of rust. I dismantled it all and ordered replacement parts.
In the meantime, I got busy with the hull. Once I’d power-washed and chipped off all the shellfish, the fibreglass was down to a previous layer of paint, and the steel keel was practically back to metal. There was a chunk missing from the rudder, where an exposed internal screw head was now visible. I applied two-pack resin where appropriate, and two-pack underwater undercoat wherever I thought I needed it.
There was a hole hereComplete undercoat for the keel
I would have preferred to rub the whole keel down and apply a smooth finish to the anti-foul, but time was short, the cradle was needed for racers rubbing down for the start of the season, and I did also have to work at my day job. A couple of top coats applied with a roller would have to suffice, on this occasion. She looked OK though.
While she was out of the water, I replaced the sacrificial anodes. The keel anodes were ready for replacement, but the one on the prop shaft was in relatively pristine condition, most likely because it hadn’t been fitted properly and only sat loosely on the shaft. To be fair, the previous owner had warned me that he had replaced it in the water and he wasn’t certain that he had tightened it enough, so I was glad to see any anode at all. I had a working theory that if the shaft anode wasn’t functioning fully, enough current might have leaked to burn a pinhole in the thinnest mild steel in the engine, which would be the oil filter.
These anodes have been working wellTightly fitted around the shaft, this time
The new set of (very expensive) oil pipes arrived from Yanmar. When the dealer got them out of the box, my first response was, “Gosh, they’re so shiny!”
He gave me a knowing look and said “Aaaah, you’ll have the old ones, then.” Some years back, Yanmar changed the design from steel to copper because of corrosion issues. Not quite a smoking gun, but a useful pointer that I might be on the right track.
Old and new pipes for a Yanmar 1GM10
I fitted the pipes, and then briefly fired up the engine. It started, didn’t knock, and the oil stayed in. I only let it run for about 15 seconds because there was no seawater coolant in the intakes. The proof would be when we put her back in the water and warmed the engine up, but at least there weren’t fountains of oil everywhere.
Pausing only to give the bilges a final clean, and then pessimistically lining them with puppy pads, we pushed her back into the sea.
Far cheaper than marine cleanersBack into the water she goes
We tied her up to the jetty, and fired up the engine. We stared fixedly at the bilges. Neither oil nor water appeared.
We waited, and listened to the rhythmic pop-pop-pop of the single cylinder. There was no oil in the bilges.
We put her into gear and strained the engine against the mooring ropes. There was no oil in the bilges.
We sat around until she was good and warm, and until the waiting rubberneckers had lost interest and got back to work, and then we quietly backed off the pontoon and opened her up. She had far more power than we were used to, and her bow pointed eagerly out into the river. She ran like silk.
Our new boat leaked when it rained. It wasn’t subtle; water poured in around the badly sealed acrylic windows, and through the screw holes, and through the wooden framing.
Not only is it raining inside, but you can see the mould along the wall beneath.
Given the sheer volume of rain water that we were pumping out of the bilges on every visit, it was clear that this was Item 1 on the agenda.
For the last decade, Cheval de Mer had been sitting in her berth, with the starboard side facing into the prevailing weather. The port side wasn’t too bad, but to starboard the paint had flaked off, and parts of the forty-year-old marine-ply superstructure had degraded to such an extent that they were water-permeable.
Rain damage on the starboard fore-quarterDefinitely in need of some love and attention
My first task was to undo the dozens and dozens of dome-nuts that held the windows on. This was tricky without an assistant, and I didn’t have a mole-grip to hand. I rigged up a spanner hanging from a line on the outside, which provided just enough resistance to undo the screw from the inside. Then return outside to reset the spanner, then back inside. Repeat… it took a while.
The old acrylic windows to starboard then popped out easily in a flurry of weathered wood-flakes.
The starboard window frame revealed
The port-side windows were fixed with sterner stuff. They had been glued in with a strong sealant, and the only way to get them out was to shatter them with a blunt implement. Eventually I extracted all the shards from the frame, only to find that the sealant itself was still firmly bonded to the paint all down the port side, completely immune to scraping. I got it off by applying a heat-gun, which didn’t affect the sealant but which bubbled up the paint underneath so that I could get the whole mess off with a scraper.
The port side is not so damaged, but has its own problems
Even though the wood was sodden in places, once covered in a tarpaulin it dried out without warping, although there were significant cracks and dints. Woodwork is not my favourite activity, so I cast around for an easier way to repair the damage. It was then that I discovered the delights of the amazing West System 105 epoxy resin.
This stuff is incredible. You mix it up and slather it onto wood (or fibreglass), and it soaks its way inside the layers, chasing away any water, and then sets to a hard but slightly flexible finish. I spent several days happily painting it onto the exposed wood, and watching it vanish completely inside, before finally it had seeped in everywhere it wanted to go and the final coat stayed on the surface, looking like a thick varnish.
Starboard: West System 105Port: Heat-gun and Knead-It
You know how this goes. Sand, fill, sand, fill, sand, fill…
Once I’d done the major work with West System 105, I filled small imperfections with Knead-It, a two-part filler that comes in a handy tube which means that you can just tear off exactly the amount that you need. Eventually there were so many different colours and textures that I couldn’t work out by eye what was flat and what wasn’t, so it was time to add some paint.
I used Norglass Shipshape two-pack primer, which sticks to pretty much everything that my boat is made of. On my first go, I made the mistake of brushing it straight after mixing, when it was still runny and very hard to work with, but I learned to patiently wait the crucial first ten minutes for it to go off. It went on pretty well after that.
Once it was all the same colour, my eye was no longer distracted by all the different textures, and I could properly see the lumps and bumps that needed sanding and filling.
That starboard fore-quarter again, looking very colourful, but nearly done
A second coat of primer, a final sand and minor filling, and then a top-coat of two-pack Norglass Norcote. For a short while, at least one part of the boat looked like a million dollars.
Shiny!
I waited a couple of hours for it to dry, but the weather was against me. The temperature was hovering around ten degrees, which is the minimum for curing, and the surface stayed resolutely tacky. Rain was forecast and I had to pick up my daughter from school, so I covered the boat in a tarp.
That night, the wind blew the tarp in so that it stuck to the paint, and I had to peel the whole thing off. Then I had to sand off most of my hard-won polished finish, and deal with some slumping that had occurred in the cold of the night. But at least the surface was now relatively flat and white, and I could move on to the next phase.
Using butcher paper taped to the dock, I made up templates of the new windows that I wanted to fit. They were significantly larger than the originals, because I wanted to completely cover the areas that had been weakened by screw-holes.
Templates for the new windowsCheval de Mer waits patiently
Following local advice, I took the templates to Eagle Plastics in Hobart, who gave me a warm welcome and made me some lovely new acrylic windows, 5mm thick with a bevelled edge and a smoky tint.
Scrolling through sailing forums, it soon became clear that the only choice for adhesive was 3M Very High Bond (VHB) tape, which was readily available on the internet from Embossing and Tape Supplies (ETS). This double-sided tape is incredibly easy to use and forms a powerful bond with both the acrylic window and the painted boat.
For the first window, I did make a mistake, in that I didn’t quite butt up the black tape to completely hide the underlying white paint. I had thought that the tint and the shadow would hide the joins, but I was wrong.
3M VHB tape applied (with visible joints, sorry)You can see the joints around the edges of the window
In retrospect, I should have used a little black paint either on the window frame or around the inside edges of the window, but such is the power of VHB that you only get the one chance: Once the window was in, I wasn’t going to get it out again without a large hammer.
I did better with the rest of the windows, though. You live and learn.
Port-side forward window, without visible joints
And finally, to make the whole thing waterproof, I needed to run beading around the outside edges.
Now, according to the forums, there is one and one only solution, and that is to use Cow Dorning’s CowSil 795. In my innocence I had assumed that I would just go and buy some when I needed it, but this American product is not widely available in Tasmania, and I wasn’t going to wait to have it shipped from the US.
I contacted the local Fibreglass Shop who advised that their marine customers have always had good results with an Australian product, FixTech FS200, and moreover they had it waiting for me in stock.
I got out the 3M Scotch blue (in my opinion the only worthwhile masking tape), and carefully taped both the acrylic window and the surrounding painted woodwork.
All masked up with Scotch Blue
Like any silicone product, it was quite messy and needed care, but I found that it went on easily enough as long as I didn’t apply it too thickly. The back of a bamboo teaspoon gave a nice finish.
I removed the tape straight away, which gave me the chance to fix up any over-thick portions with my trusty wooden spoon (wetted with soapy water) before it started to cure. No matter what you do, silicone gets everywhere, but I found that dropped spots were easily removed with Goof Off, which also served to clean my spoon and fingers between applications.
Our new house is within easy striking distance of a handful of “gravity” downhill mountain bike trails. Our daughter Berrima is nearly seven, and we reckoned that she was strong and confident enough on a bicycle for us to all try this new sport as a family.
Finding ourselves with a spare week due to a pandemic-cancelled holiday, we loaded the car with camping gear and set off for the two-hour trip from Hobart to Maydena, billed as “the largest gravity park in the Southern hemisphere”.
We stopped at the Mount Field campground which is convenient to Maydena, inexpensive and very pleasant. It is situated on the banks of the Tyenna River in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. After a comfortable night, we struck camp and headed for Maydena.
Maydena Mountain Bike Park
The town of Maydena, population 200, really only contains the Bike Park and a small cafe. We drove right into the park, rented some lightweight Trek bikes with fat tyres and front suspension, and rolled up to the trail head. This was really a dirt bus stop where you could choose either a minibus with a trailer which took serious riders 820m vertically to the top of the mountain, or a Canam quad with five tow-bar hangers which took beginner and intermediate riders up the steep trail to the top of the ‘green’ runs. We chose the quad. Berrima’s bike was too small for the hangers, but fitted neatly into the luggage tray on the back of the Canam.
As we bounced up the fire trail, the driver helpfully pointed out some landmarks, such as the point where the championship run jumps completely over the access trail. After only five or ten minutes, he left us standing in the middle of a shady rain-forest, pointing us in the direction of a thin track disappearing into the shadows.
The path sloped suspiciously upward, but our guide had warned us that it was only for the first dozen metres or so, and after that it was all gravity, so we shrugged and set off.
He was not wrong. The trail began to descend steeply, and before long we were flying round steeply sloping berms as we zig-zagged wildly down through the forest. The bikes were reliable, the surface smooth granite, the sun was shining, the forest was beautiful.
After some time we dropped out of the tree-line into an area of fox-gloves in full flower, butterflies flitting above as we rocketed down the side of mountain. It was exhilarating for all three of us, but especially Berrima who delighted in hitting the berms at full speed.
Once at the bottom, it was time to catch the Canam back to the top and do it all again.
When it was time for lunch, we briefly considered the onsite canteen – just crisps and sandwiches really – and then stepped outside of the gates to the only other business in Maydena, the Fika Time cafe / petrol station, which advertised great coffee and gluten-free food. Sadly, it was not to be. The ‘small black’ coffee when it came was enormous and bitter, and we waited and waited for our simple three serves of eggs. Eventually, two plates arrived, but one of them was wrong and had to be replaced. When the replacement arrived – but not the third lunch – we were starving, so we shared the two eggs between us. Eventually we asked about the third portion, which set off this whole diatribe about how they were very busy (they weren’t) and COVID and goodness knows what else. Then mysteriously they weren’t able to refund the third meal, so we took a cake in lieu, which wasn’t anywhere near the correct value, and went back to the bike-park cafe for some crisps before continuing our ride.
The Friendly Beaches and the Bay of Fires
From Maydena to the next nearest mountain bike park in St Helens is about a four-hour drive, so we broke the journey along the coastline, taking in some of the famous beaches and enjoying an impromptu steak by the side of the road.
We had booked a couple of nights at an unpowered site at the rather spectacular Tasman Holiday Park on the Bay of Fires in St Helens. It is spectacular not so much for the park itself (although it is a very well appointed caravan park), but for the tremendous Parkside Bar and Kitchen, where we enjoyed some wonderful meals, a great wine list, and impeccable service.
St Helens Mountain Bike Park
While it is theoretically possible to rent mountain bikes from Gravity Isle at the St Helens park itself, their website was being uncooperative, so we had arranged a day’s hire with Vertigo in town, who offered a shuttle up to the trail head as part of the package.
There is a further shuttle that takes you higher to the more advanced runs, but the way that the St Helens green runs are arranged is that they leave from and return to the same trail head. Because the green trails go up and down but start and finish at the same altitude, they involve a lot more pedalling than the downhill runs at Maydena. Thus although the runs are shorter, they are a lot more tiring.
As well as pedalling through pretty forests, the designers had also made the trails interesting, with rocks interspersed with mud, berms, tree-trunks, exposed roots, and the occasional little stump jump.
Half way through the day, we bought lunch at the converted shipping container that served as a cafe at the trailhead. Following our culinary experience at Maydena, we were a little hesitant, and indeed weren’t unduly shocked when we were presented with microwaved burgers and oven chips, with the meat still frozen in the middle.
Everything else about this new sport seems to be high-end; the land areas are huge, access is difficult, staffing levels are high, and the bikes and equipment are eye-wateringly expensive to buy. But in the realms of food preparation, at two out of three of the top gravity venues in Tasmania, we found ourselves underwhelmed by the food. Don’t mountain-bikers eat?
Luckily we had packed some chocolate bars, so we wolfed them down and drank some water and got back on the trails. By the time we’d tried all the green trails several times, we were tired and ready to stop. The exit run is called ‘Downtown’ and is a beautiful ride down the mountain, through the forests to sea level, with fast descents and switch-back berms. It was a lot of fun in itself, and finished with a gentle ride along the St Helens foreshore.
Back at the Parkside Bar in St Helens, over very welcome gourmet food and drinks, we mused that we could get used to this as a family adventure, and are looking forward to the next one.
We have just purchased a pocket cruiser, registered as a 1978 Snook 26. Since there is no record of Michael Snook ever designing a 26-foot version of his famous racing boat, we were curious about her history. Luckily for us, a previous owner had left on board a potted history of the yacht.
She was originally launched as a standard Snook 22 racing yacht, purchased by a Steve Lovell, whose nickname was ‘Shovel’. He raced her as ‘Shovel’ out of Bellerive in southern Tasmania.
A year later, he hauled her out and cut her in half with a chainsaw. Aided and abetted by Michael Snook himself, he spent three weeks inserting a four-foot pre-prepared centre section, increasing the total length to 26 feet (a change from 6.7 to 8 metres). To balance the boat, they moved the keel aft, and increased the draft from 1.3 to 1.7 metres. Arguably just for fun, they also increased the height of the mast to a 9 metre luff, and extended the boom out to 3 metres.
In this new format, Shovel raced very successfully, and – by virtue of the extended cockpit (which was known locally as ‘the beer garden’) – became a popular venue for post-race drinks and, by all accounts, some pretty disreputable parties.
At some point in the nineteen-eighties, Steve sold Shovel and moved to the mainland. The next known report is from a subsequent owner, Dennis, who found her in a dilapidated state in Devonport in Northern Tasmania. Dennis helped the then owners to rebalance the boat – now known as ‘Kermit’ – as a cruiser, and later bought her from them and sailed her back to Hobart. He reported that, even detuned, she was still very fast, with a propensity for surfing on the swell that had to be continually damped by means of trailing drogues.
Now berthed at the marina, Dennis and Fiona fitted her out as a live-aboard cruising boat. To increase the living space, they lifted the coach roof to give 6 feet of headroom while extending the cabin back into the ‘beer garden’ to return it to a more reasonably sized cockpit. They added a larger rudder, a pushpit, an inboard Yanmar engine, and had the interior fitted out with bunks, drawers, sinks, table, chairs and a head.
Looking aftLooking forward
They wanted to rename her, too, and were keen to retain some reference to the Snook’s long and interesting history. After some thought, ‘Shovel’ became ‘Cheval’, and then by obvious inference, ‘Cheval de Mer’.
Dennis and Fiona lived aboard for some 13 years, and I infer from the charts that I found in a stern locker, that they travelled to the mainland and then up the NSW coast at least as far as Port Stephens.
In around 2004 she was back in Hobart, and was acquired by Tom as a permanent live-aboard. He didn’t sail her much, but made some changes more in keeping with her new function as a stationary home. About five years later, Tom’s work took him to the US, where he remained for two years. Cheval de Mer slowly aged in the marina, starboard side facing into the weather, where the paint abraded away from the coach house and she began to leak.
Mould under the mattress in the fore-peakRain water in the fore-peak bilges
On his return, Tom found himself in changed circumstances and living on land, and he just wanted to pass the yacht on to somebody who would appreciate her. And that is where we came in.
Despite spending nearly a decade largely stationary, her hull seemed sound, the moving parts were all still moving, and the only issues seemed to be with the ply of the cabin top. In the middle of a pandemic and with the marina’s hard-standing already full of racing yachts getting tuned for the season, taking her out of the water for an inspection was a non-starter, so we took a deep breath and bought her warts and all without either a test sail or a professional survey.
As soon as we took possession, we emptied her out, and took her out on the water. She performed beautifully in the gusty light winds of the day, with a slight tendency to lee helm as she appeared to be massively over-powered. Considering her history, that’s not at all surprising, and we’re happy that we just need to settle in and get comfortable with her.
Some years ago, we sold our live-aboard cruising yacht Elizabeth when we decided that we weren’t brave enough to continue with our world cruising plans in the company of a small baby. In the intervening years, we have often looked in a dreamy way at the yacht listings, but it was never either practical or the right time. Finally, however, the stars aligned in our favour: We found ourselves living by the coast on the island of Tasmania, next to arguably the best cruising ground in Australia, and our daughter turned six and began to show an interest in the world of sailing.
We were monitoring the sales listings for live-aboard cruising yachts around the Southern hemisphere, and looking for something a lot cheaper and older than either of our previous standard production boats Pindimara or Elizabeth. We reckoned that we were now experienced enough to tackle something a little more bespoke and unusual, and there were plenty of interesting candidates out there, many of which had been circumnavigating with families aboard for years.
We had been talking to agents in the US and New Zealand, and although there were plenty of boats for sale, we were prevented from travelling to either destination by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Then a couple of interesting yachts popped up right in our own neighbourhood, and we went to have a look. On the walk back from the marina berth of a particularly interesting steel-hulled Adams 35, we passed a lovely little blue pocket cruiser with a hand-written ‘for sale’ sign tied to the shrouds.
The owner, Tom, was aboard, and showed us around. She was a sound 26-footer that had been used for several decades as a live-aboard at the marina, but all her rigging was in place and she had a newish engine and, we were told, a full sail inventory. Tom had been stuck in the US for the last two years due to work and the pandemic, and so the little boat had sat wallowing unattended for all that time and now sported flaking paint on the coach house and significant rain-water in the bilges. Nevertheless, she appeared to be fundamentally sound, had a recent insurance survey, and was very very cheap as the owner had moved ashore and didn’t need her as a home any more.
As a coastal pocket cruiser, she wasn’t at all the kind of boat that we’d been looking for, but she felt good aboard and the price was very appealing. We slept on the idea, and then realised that this might be exactly the kind of yacht that we needed. Because our 6-year old daughter had just started school, we were unlikely to need an ocean-capable cruising yacht in the near future, and knew from experience that such vessels can be horribly expensive to keep in trim if only sailed at the weekend rather than cruising aboard. We have regular jobs and a couple of building projects on the go, and wouldn’t be sailing on a daily basis. Furthermore, at only 26 feet and steered with a tiller, she might be just the boat to teach an enthusiastic little girl how to sail.
We had thought that whatever boat we finally purchased, we would keep her on our own mooring near to our bush property to the south of the island. However, Tom had already established that the marina would be happy for us to take over the lease on the existing berth, which was only minutes from our newly built house.
We handed over the cash, and are now proud owners of an elderly but cute Snook 26, named Cheval de Mer.
From our house in Kingston, Tasmania we could see snow up on Mt Wellington, so we thought we’d go up and have a closer look. There is a road that leads from Hobart city centre up to the Pinnacle, but it’s sometimes closed to traffic in inclement weather, so we booked a ticket on the Mt Wellington Explorer bus which always has access through the snow gates.
Snow on Mount Wellington, with wattle trees blooming below
The bus has the advantage of being a hop-on hop-off so you can take advantage of the many trails that lead up and down and around the mountain, and still always get home by flagging down the bus at one of the stops. We hadn’t realised that we would be getting an entertaining guide in the form of the driver, but we did, a wide-ranging history of settlements on and around the mountain.
Up at the top, at 1271 metres, we had snow to play in, and marvellous views of the surrounding islands and bays.
The last of the winter snowKingston, our house off to the rightHobart city, viewed from the Kunanyi Pinnacle
It was frankly freezing in the wintry wind. The temperature at the top of Mt Wellington is usually several degrees colder than Hobart at sea level, and the reason that Hobart is such a comfortable place to live, is that the mountain takes the brunt of all the Antarctic weather.
The bus waits at the top for about half an hour on each trip. We’d spoken to the driver about which walks might be good today, and it was his opinion that the tracks from the Pinnacle were all treacherously icy today, so he recommended dropping us at The Chalet so that we could do the 4km Organ Pipes Track down to The Springs. He also offered to radio the next bus so that they knew to expect us.
The Chalet was an interesting place, a stone hut clearly meant to provide shelter from inclement weather. It had a barbecue outside for sunny days, and a large fireplace and a stack of firewood for those who might be cold and wet.
Inside The Chalet on Mt Wellington
The Springs is downhill from The Chalet, but the path confusingly sets off upward and back towards The Pinnacle. However, it soon sorts itself out and gently follows the contours down towards the base of the Organ Pipes, the most obvious feature of the mountain when viewed from afar.
First, though, it crosses an enormous boulder field, remnants of the great “Glenorchy landslide” of 1872, Tasmania’s most devastating recorded landslip which destroyed a fair few properties on its way to the sea, thankfully with no loss of life. If the same thing happened today, the consequences on North Hobart would be disastrous.
These days, the boulder fields are well bedded in and are popular with climbers.
The boulder field looking down Glenorchy, North HobartCrossing the landslide on the Organ Pipes Track
The original Organ Pipes track was built, along with much of the mountain’s infrastructure, in the early 1930s as a way to provide work for the huge numbers of unemployed following the Great Depression (the unemployment rate in Tasmania was 27% in 1931). The work was back-breaking but stood the test of time, with the tracks only being reworked in 2017, itself a mammoth task taking two years.
The new path is constructed largely from painstakingly laid natural stones. and is in itself quite beautiful.
After a while, the Organ Pipes themselves came into view on the right hand side, a formation of massive dolerite pipes. Several marked trails led in that direction, bearing the warning, “suitable only for climbers”.
The Organ Pipes of kunanyi/Mt Wellington
The track then descends into mountain woodlands, with birds flitting about and, on our visit, flowers breaking out to herald the Spring. The purity of the air is demonstrated by the festoons of lichens hanging from the tree branches and clinging to the rocks.
Rhizocarpon geographicum Map lichenCladonia pleurota Red-fruited pixie cup
As we descended out of dry sclerophyll and into wet heath forest, we encountered some interesting shrubs endemic to Tasmania, including Richea dracophylla which was just starting to bud.
Shortly after this, the track was crossed by a noticeable scar caused by the passage of an enormous rock, 50 tonnes of dolerite that parted company with the Organ Pipes in 2014 and came to rest on the downhill side of the track. Looking uphill, the boulder’s path is still vivid, all the way to the top.
50 tonnes of doleriteLooking up the scar track
Down at The Springs, with its cafeteria and car park, we found the bus waiting for us at the bus stop, which took us down to the city for a spot of lunch.
Wellington Park, which at 30km across is one of the largest reserved areas in Tasmania (outside the incredible World Heritage Area), is criss-crossed with interesting trails like this one, and we will be back to do some more.
From our temporary accommodation in Birchs Bay Tasmania, we look out every day across the D’Entrecasteaux Channel to the shores of neighbouring Bruny Island. The ferry operates from Kettering, a few minutes up the road, so it would have been rude not to go and explore.
The island is 50km long and made up of North and South Bruny Islands which are separated by a narrow isthmus, known as The Neck. The North is largely given over to sheep farming, while the South is mostly National Park that is inaccessible to traffic. The easiest way to explore is by boat, and the best way to do this is through Pennicott Wilderness Journeys.
We caught the Pennicott bus from Kettering, which took us across on the ferry and then through North Bruny Island, across The Neck (stopping to look at the views and penguin rookery), and then boarded one of their iconic yellow RIBs at their base (and seafood restaurant) in Adventure Bay.
Almost as soon as we had left the dock, we were surrounded by bottlenose dolphins.
A Pennicott Wilderness Journeys yellow RIB (and a dolphin)Hello, bottlenoseIt’s impossible not to smile at cavorting cetaceans
The dolphins loved the powerful wake of the triple 250hp outboards, and our skipper Mick ran doughnuts so that they could play in the waves. As with whales, dolphins have this remarkable ability to make humans laugh and smile when we see them exuberantly playing in the wild. It was a great start to what was going to be a wonderful cruise.
Leaving the dolphins behind, we began to explore the towering columns of Jurassic dolerite that form South Bruny Island’s Fluted Cape. The flat-bottomed boat could get up close and personal with the rock formations and caves, and had more than enough power to get in an out against the swell.
The Bruny StackExploring a caveLooking up at the towering dolerite cliffsA Tolkienesque skyline
The cliffs are stupendous, among the tallest dolerite columns in the world. They are perforated by numerous sea caves, one of which is largely underwater and forms a spectacular blow-hole as wet air is pumped out by the swell pushing in. The skipper amused the crowd by poking the boat’s bow into the top of the cave as it spat salty spray all over us.
Nearby was an island colony of black-faced shags, who seemed completely unperturbed by our presence. They’re fairly common on islets off Southern Australia, building their nests from seaweed and driftwood.
Rounding the Cape, we found ourselves out in the Southern Ocean. The skipper opened the throttle, the three 250 horsepower Yamahas on the stern kicked in, and we blew past the aptly named Bridge Island, heading south.
We were motoring toward a group of four dolerite islands known collectively as The Friars, home to a male colony of rare Australian Fur Seals. They live here in a somewhat cantankerous group, travelling to the Bass Strait to meet up with females in October, each one potentially servicing up to 50 females before returning home, presumably exhausted and ready to rest for another year.
A few of the thousands of male Australian Fur Seals in The FriarsThere’s a fair bit of testosterone aboutYoung males looking rather cute
Around the corner is a colony of animals formerly known as New Zealand Fur Seals, more recently termed Long Nosed Fur Seals. They are closely related to the Australian, but form separate colonies.
A great site for a colony of male Long Nosed Fur Seals (on the stack to the right)
On a beach all by itself, we were lucky to see an Elephant Seal. A few years ago, an 800kg female of this species rampaged through the camp site at Adventure Bay, damaging a caravan and demolishing fences and picnic tables. She was eventually lured away by a fish on a piece of string. The one that we saw was pretty placid, though.
Elephant Seal at the Friars
Turning back toward South Bruny Island, my breath was taken away by the beauty of the landscape. The sea and the sky matched in shades of vivid blue, and across the towering dolerite peaks of Fluted Cape, the highlands of mainland Tasmania loomed in the distance.
We’re living at the bottom of the world, and we love it!
