PassageMaker - May/June 2011

Voyage Of Egret

BIRDS OF A FEATHER

During our time in Tasmania, we talked to local cray (spiny lobster) and abalone fishermen, looking for weather advice. We loved the cray fishing boats. Typically, these boats are made of nearly indestructible Huon pine, which grows in a small region of southwest Tasmania. Huon pines are now protected, but fallen trees are still found in river beds and are milled like new. Cray boats usually are 40–50 feet long, with a single engine and a low profile, and they have a house aft and wet wells midship to hold the catch. As we traveled the Tasmanian coast, we saw former cray boats that had been converted to private cruisers, a result of fishermen retiring and larger fishing boats buying up smaller boats’ transferable fishing quotas. In New Zealand, we had met a young schoolteacher couple taking a multiyear sabbatical who had bought a cray boat and enlarged the house, added a bunk and small galley, and then rebuilt the single Gardner diesel and gearbox. For stability they retained the wet well and the short ketch rig (fore and aft sailboat masts); the sails also served as get-home propulsion. The couple’s cruising plans included the western Pacific islands, Alaska, and Chile.

Next for us would be the crossing from southwest Tasmania north to mainland Australia, and then west below the Great Australian Bight to Fremantle/Perth on Australia’s west coast. This is a 2,000nm journey, usually with westerly or southwesterly winds, sometimes severe. For a good portion of the trip, there is no shelter, so weather timing is critical. Late February and March is the time to ride the easterlies across the Bight, as the highs move farther south during the summer. (Highs rotate counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.) Bottom line: Egret’s time in Tasmania was limited by weather routing, certainly not by choice.

With a time crunch, we sadly left Hobart for D’Entrecasteaux Channel, weaving between North Bruny Island and South Bruny Island and then on to Dover. Locals insisted we stop in Dover and try the scallop pies at a local eatery, so we did. The pies were just as advertised, and the eatery was very small-town, with one very stressed lady doing the cooking, waiting on her six tables, and taking care of the take-away business. The dining was slow going, but that didn’t matter. We loved it—the pies and the experience.

From Dover, it was a short hop to the staging harbor of Recherche Bay, named after a French research vessel called La Recherche whose complement of astronomers, botanists, and scientists explored Australia in the late 18th century. After a couple days waiting on weather, Egret left the anchorage well before daylight, using radar and accurate electronic charting for the 65nm day trip to the