Worked out a plan to get to Flinders Group.Leave on the tide at high water on St Helens bar at about 11.40 am with crew on Solquest.
Arrive Swan Island about 7 pm,have dinner and leave for the night sail about 8 .30 to arrive Rebecca Bay with the flood tide 10 pm.
Fortunately it worked a treat.Banks Strait with a 15 to 20 knot Westerly as usual a bit marginal but all part of the challenge.
The day started early as daylight savings now really stretching the days out.
Ben,for us and the farmers for Solquest got away to pick up last minute supplies from town while ships crews stowed the contents of the van for the crossing,Masterpiece now with Dutch Oven another big esky ,a small beer barrel and many other required props.
We depart about 10 for Pelican Point where MAST is dredging to try and improve the water depth but it is a real problem for the Port.
All happening there. Two shark boats two yachts a couple of day fishing boats,us,Justin Foster and crew in Mast Dinghy mapping the channel and the Coast Guard getting into the act to make sure we get out ok.
We anchor for about 40 minutes waiting for the tide .One shark boat gets impatient and has a go he does not draw much and gets through,the other one Sandgroper hears the depth call and says just need another 100 mm I will do a bit of bulldozing for you and off he goes,he draws nine feet and with quite a bit of black smoke gets through.
Waiting for the tide,not too onerous.we had morning tea with hot cross buns.Well the tide came in and crossed the bar about midday as planned.The two young blokes in Sandgroper hung around for us to cross ,really nice fellows must be hard work running such a big vessel with only two crew.
Motored up towards Eddystone Point.Planned to get our crew back there.A nice NE breeze sprang up and Solquest rolled their sails out. Ben and I trolled with no results,too much sun,hard to take but we did think of You. Anchored under the light and had lunch waiting,lots of small fish being attacked by the birds ,cast a lure but seems there were no larger ones there. Solquest steamed past so when they called up on the radio "where are you Perk" we assumed they were so intent on passing the outlying rocks they did not think to look for us. It worked out well though as the promised Westerly came in quite hard on the corner.We met just North of the normal anchorage where the fishermen lay and transferred our crew giving both boats a break.It is hard work this Gig. Topped up their lunch with banjos buns and had a snooze. Fired up and caught up just as Garth anchored at Swan Island.The last bit a bit lumpy as 18 knot westerly now blowing. Had dinner and coaxed the crew on Solquest to do the last miles to Clarke in the dark for the required "night sail".They were tired after a long day but rose to the occasion and as we departed Swan the almost full moon came up ,it was a beautiful sight when they rolled the mainsail out to help her along .Rod and Garth decided to drop away to leeward to counter the anticipated flood tide during the crossing,after a while we noticed them getting well down and Ben had a play on my IPad Navionics App and found a current prediction arrow.Amazingly it predicted the current running the other way at this state of the tide in this position,unbelievable well done Gary Linacre. As we approached Rebecca Bay the tide really carried us Westward and we had to correct our course quite a bit. Anchored almost exactly to plan at 10.30.Ben retrieved our crew and we reviewed some footage.They had had a long day and Mathew's wrap was all gibberish amongst hilarity from his mates,I wonder if that will appear on the TV. Well the sun is up better get out of bed and see where we are.i hope they are impressed,I really like this anchorage.
Have to get to Lady Barron today.
Perk
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