Leg 41 - Hobart to Shoal Bay, Maria Island via Denison Cannal

We really didn't want to start our outbound journey from Hobart on a Friday: a sailor superstition. We in particular wanted to avoid Friday 13th! With so many tasks to complete, we simply couldn't get everything done by Wednesday afternoon for a Thursday 12th departure. Once again we visited Sonia at the office to plead another day but surely we wouldn't need 2. We talked ourselves out of the Friday 13th superstition on the basis that the cruisers calendar really looks like this:

Sat  Sat  Sat  Sat  Sat Sat Sun

Sat  Sat  Sat  Sat  Sat Sat Sun

Sat  Sat  Sat  Sat  Sat Sat Sun

Sat  Sat  Sat  Sat  Sat Sat Sun
Sat  Sat  Sat                           

That looked a lot better, we would leave on a 'Saturday' the 13th and we'd be ready and more importantly we wouldn't miss a juicy weather window.

A 'stupid o'clock' start ..... oh NO, not those again!

 We threw off the lines at first light to enable us to arrive at the Denison Canal at slack water.

The Tasman Bridge was still lit up and a huge cruise liner was in port
having diverted to escape from the Cyclone heading for Vanuatu.

The Iron Pot at the end of the Derwent River lit up by a break in the clouds.

A call to the Denison Canal on Channel 16 indicated that we would need to bide our time and present ourselves an hour and a half later. We thought we'd followed the cruising guide notes but early is better than late. Anchoring in Lime Bay was recommended so we did just that, ate lunch and had a snooze. When we called again from in front of the markers, we were informed that another boat had called just ahead of us so we'd need to wait. Darn. Twitchy time for the Bloke who could see nothing but shallow water to the left and right.

Approaching the Denison Canal from the Dunalley end.

Here comes the boat that held us up.

They seemed quite fine with cutting across us instead of passing to port!

 

 We barely needed the depth markers to tell us it was shallow

... but thanks anyway!

 

Red light                                     Green light

 

 

Time to go through but hang to port!

The traffic waiting for us: must be annoying for the trucks.

 

Breath in. Not much space.
A bit of acceleration needed to keep the heading in the current!

Bridge closed behind us.

 

 Almost an irrigation channel.

Almost there.

Just when we thought the worst was behind us we then needed to traverse a complicated series of markers showing, the channel through Blackman Bay. This very much reminded us of our transit through to Coffin Bay exactly 12 months before.

 

 

This 'Castle' is a very prominent landmark and sits on Boomer Island.
It is profoundly ugly and the tree planting will sadly, never manage to obscure it.

Being passed by a powerboat probably rushing to get to the Canal before closing time.

The transit from the Denison Canal to the Marion Narrows was a white knuckle ride and once we'd blasted out into Marion Bay, what did we get but, lashings of 'noserlies' to impede us to our destination.

Southern end of Maria Island.

It took us 11 1/2 hours including our lunch break, at Lime Bay to get from Hobart to Chinaman's Bay on the West side of Maria Island where we anchored among many boats of different styles for the night. Good oh, we've made the break..... a little late, but let's have 5ers to celebrate!