Wine Glass Bay

Wine Glass Bay is possibly one of the most photogenic bays on the Freycinet Penninsula on the east coast of Tasmania.

You get by there by boat or by walking in from Coles Bay.Those who know me, will know the second choice was never an option!

Here we were.
There were when we arrived 6 other vessels , mainly tucked right up in the SW corner. Having spent the majority of our time to date as the only boat in any anchorage I still haven't developed the mania for anchoring where everyone else does. It must be my anti social gene.
Lucky as it turned out! Just after 2100 the wind changed and we dragged anchor. This I think had happened once before in Thailand when we needed to anchor in 20m depth and my entire scope is only 88m of chain  so we only just managed 4:1 which is the absolute minimum ratio I feel comfortable with. On that occasion we reckon we had in fact shifted about 10m overnight.

We heaved up shifted and re anchored a little further away from the rest of the boats and managed to stay put with a ratio of 7:1 and no more 30 knot bullets of wind which had come through with the wind shift.
As we were to discover , bullets of 30knot plus winds are common in Tasmania. Very quickly we changed our routine from one anchor alarm being set to every night at anchor having  4 independent anchor alarms set- you can never have too many alarms set - no chance of sleeping through them!

A quite large stingray was also spending time here.

Domestic duties were the order of the day.First and foremost mopping out the re-entry hatch leak.
This leak started after we "foolishly" tested the hatches before venturing to Tasmania and has only been discovered since we departed. Of course it wasn't  foolish from a safety point of view, unfortunately though it has caused problems ever since.As the water slaps under the hull  in either a head or following sea,but worse in  a head sea, it now seeps in through the hatch seal. Luckily there is a good inch, maybe two before the internal hatch board which comprises part of the base upon which the mattress sits.It has now become routine after each passage leg to dry out the ingress. It will have to be fixed but its not going to happen until I get back to Queensland.

Whilst engaged in domestic duties we had a visitor from  RooBinEsque one of our Bass Strait companions inviting us over for dinner.

A wonderful evening ,a splendid roast and vegetables complete with a table setting one only finds rarely ashore  these days- let alone afloat. The company was great , with two other couples from two other boats also being there. Amazingly the 'Roo's'  turned out to be the next door neighbours of  one of my friends in Cairns. A photograph of an aeroplane  being the talking point which made the connection. One of those things that occur in relatively small industries- ' you probably  know person X'- in this case, not only knew but actually lived in the other half of the same duplex all those years ago! Small world indeed.

We 'decided' we would wait until we returned on the rally to make the climb up to the lookout, just in case either Peter or Jo actually wanted to do it- Phew - quick thinking there!

After a couple of days in Wine Glass Bay it was time to continue south.