Port Arthur to Hobart via a smokey D'Entrecasteaux Channel

Tucked up in the top end of the cove at Stinking Bay we certainly weren't feeling any 30 knot Northerlies although it was actually warm.

We shifted anchorage the next day into Stewarts Bay,again the northern end of the cove.

Went ashore and walked up to the village for some exorbitantly expensive milk,and we picked up some fresh fruit and vegies from a house near the beach on the way back to the boat. We decided as we were returning to Port Arthur as part of the rally and as we had in fact both been before albeit 30 years ago in my case and I suspect before it was actually a tourist attraction in Peter's case, that we would do a tour of the grounds when we returned with the others.

With my usual sustainable fishing skills , I managed a few flathead all of which were returned to the water as I suspect we had anchored on their nursery!

We were getting forecasts of 30 kts each day so stayed put, until the forecast subsided to something slightly more reasonable like 15kts.
Leaving the protection of the cove we found a 2.5m SWly swell- well that had certainly picked up since we were last out here!
Clearing West Arthur Head we found 20kts of wind as well, so with just the jib we crawled along at  2-3kts as we put in a leg out to sea to clear Cape Raoul. Eventually we tacked, furled the jib and just motored until we cleared the Cape, then once we cleared we set sail and headed up Storm Bay to the top of North Bruny Island and entered the waters of the rather lovely D'Entrecasteaux Channel and headed south towards Oyster Cove.

https://youtu.be/m6oQoo_xe_c

 Enroute we encountered the first of what appear to be hundreds of seals, up close and personal, who inhabit the area - they seem to find the pens of salmon hard to resist .
We intended to spend a few days here exploring before continuing on to Hobart.


Mother nature had different plans.

The next morning we went into Kettering just to check out the lie of the land.A public wharf ,a fuel wharf and many many moorings and the ferry terminal for the car ferries across to Bruny Island.We were still trying to work out which were public moorings and which were private and how exactly access to the public wharf could be  'claimed' when the public wharf seemed to be teeming with families engaged in fishing. MAST the authority under which things maritime are dealt with in Tasmania, do in fact provide public moorings in certain pre designated areas and access to the public wharves is decreed by either yellow lines (non commercial) or red lines (commercial). Apparently fishing families just move whilst any vessel is alongside the facility and there are clearly defined time periods one can stay. So having motored in, turned and departed we decided that although the pub at Kettering came with a recommendation from a friend ,we wouldn't be  stopping in Kettering.

Instead we headed for Peppermint Bay, where we had heard there was a good restaurant and an interesting village.
There were supposed to be public moorings in the vicinity, a phone call to the pub to identify them resulted in being told to ring MAST as the pub knew nothing about them. Pondering if it was in fact safe to anchor and leave the boat, bearing in mind our recent dragging incidents- we had dragged again  briefly in Shoal Bay, we were mooching off to let go an anchor a little further away from the moored boats , when out of the blue we were invited by the occupant of one of the moorings to pick up the next mooring - it  was his brother in law's and he wasn't due for a couple of weeks . This was the second time we had been offered the use of a private mooring , as in Port Arthur we had been offered one ,when we returned on the rally , which at the time was occupied by a far larger vessel than us and therefore more than capable of taking us.  This random generosity was something I have not experienced before. As we were really only planning on staying for lunch , we accepted this kind offer and  went ashore. As it turns out we didn't actually sample the menu on offer as there was just nothing there that grabbed us and it was not far off closing time for lunch service. Instead we wandered into the village of Woodbridge. We in fact stayed on the mooring overnight.

Sunset over a smokey Barnes Bay 

 The following  day the  thickening of the smoke which had been developing all day continued unabated. Tasmania had been suffering from bushfires since late December when a bushfire started in the remote SW corner due to a dry lightning strike. Now in late January the fires were in the nearby Huon Valley. As it became increasingly less pleasant to breathe we shifted over to Barnes Bay on the western side of  North Bruny Island- although still smokey it was a little better .

Over the next couple of days with no decrease in the smoke and no real sign of any let up from the fires we abandoned all plans to explore further south until later,again it was an area we would be transiting on the rally and so we headed  into Hobart and anchored off Sandy Bay.The smoke that was enveloping Hobart and the Houn Valley  was still so thick that  the from Sandy Bay the Tasman Bridge only 2nm away  was barely visible .