Leg 48 - Lakes Entrance and beyond Gabo Island to Eden

We learned, too late of course, that the Flagstaff Jetty at Lakes Entrance is one of the better places to to shelter from bad weather at Lakes Entrance but seeing as we wanted to re-provision, do the laundry and collect some mail, one of the town jetties in Cunningham Arm became our 'home' for 3 days. At least we had power so that we could heat, dehumidify and be profligate with the amps watching movies on a 15 degree list to port, while waiting for the gales to pass. We even had a picture show on board Easy Tiger but Steve and Leanne really got the bad end of the deal since our photos are still not properly sorted and culled. It's a measure of how dreary the weather was that some 4,000 photos were sat through and most of them were ours. Something to test a friendship. No matter how bad it was on our jetty it was still going to be better than the other side of the barrier dunes that separate this body of water from a raging Bass Strait.

One cruiser we knew decided to leave Flinders Island for Lakes Entrance before the swell subsided from this nasty East Coast low. We suggested he wait it out at Flinders Island. He came anyway with hope in his heart only to sit on anchor just beyond the surf zone for around 5 hours before quitting and heading for Eden 24 hours away. He was such a lonely figure on the Lakes Entrance Bar webcam, waiting and thrashing about.

We did hope that the swell would be down the next day. Predictions indicated it should and conditions would be light for our over-nighter to complete our South Coast cruise and go 'around the corner' and begin sailing northwards in earnest. Yet another box would be ticked - getting out of Bass Strait with all it's tides and treachery.

Our passage start was dictated not by our desired arrival time so much as when it might be possible to pass through the bar. The webcam was played over and over watching the jetty-bound fishing fleet all make their first escape to sea in days, followed by a couple of recreational vessels including a cruising catamaran. The Bloke and Steve from Easy Tiger both agreed that it would be possible to leave. They'd seen it done today with their own eyes hadn't they? We waited a little longer to follow the acquired wisdom to pass through '3-4hours after low or high tide' when there might be slack water. As it happened, after all the rain in preceding days, the Gippsland Lakes system was gushing out with no appreciable abatement.

We are given photos of Zofia from time to time and we do love photos of our boat, the one below was sent by Brooke and Lynn and taken from their holiday home in Duck Arm in the Gippsland Lakes. Hard not to love it, and it's how we like to think we 'look'.

Aah the serenity!

Then you get other candid camera shots, like these of our escape from Lakes Entrance sent by Giles and Lauren off Meander. These are the equivalent of a "do these pants make like bum look big?" kind of shot.

What they saw.

What we saw.

 What Easy Tiger saw.

Did those shots look a bit swellsy? If they did you'll know why I had to medicate with the inevitable drowsy outcome. This shot sent by Steve from Easy Tiger contains an already almost prostrate crew member and we'd barely left!

 Easy Tiger weren't going to get much sailing either and the crew got very sea sick too.

 Dawn at Green Cape. 

Gabo Island by then was just a memory.

The poor Bloke wasn't fed well on this overnight passage. As it happened, there wasn't much winching or real sailing. Our Yanmar propelled us the entire way out of Bass Strait, around the corner and past the legendary Gabo Island and into Twofold Bay.

With 10nm to go and while the Bloke was getting some well deserved kip, I felt a strange knock on the prop. Yup, weed again! The Bloke was up the companionway like a cat. "What was that?". 20-30 minutes of backward and forward high revving action dislodged only the slightest amount of weed. There was categorically not going to be ANY diving sessions at the dawn 'fish feeding' time, so we found a speed with the least vibration we could tolerate, to limp the last miles to our destination.

Boyd's Folly atop Honeysuckle Point at the entrance to Twofold Bay.

Coming around the wood chip jetty into East Boyd Bay.

Part of the ammunition jetty at East Boyd Bay.

Those Navy sorts take their fenders very seriously.

 

Weed patrol AGAIN!

Sailing wasn't an option on the day due to a total absence of wind. Waiting for it's arrival might see use drift half way to New Zealand. Sometimes it's just about getting to the destination.