Last night I was all curled up writing our Blog at 11pm when the wind changed, swung us around and the anchor alarm started blaring. Evan and I ended up sitting up in the cockpit watching the wind in the dark hoping our anchor would hold. thankfully it did hold as I really didn’t want to run up to the bow and pull the anchor up and move to a new place in the pitch darkness and cold wind. I wanted to sleep.
This morning arrived beautifully calm. Evan was up early and when I finally pulled myself out of bed he was upstairs fishing.
I think I am going to call this day perfect photo day. Not that I took perfect photos but rather every few minutes of this day I said ooohhhhh…. that is so beautiful and taken a photo. Some of them came out okay. Bless digital cameras, remember the days of film?
We tried something new this morning. Usually we start under motor then sail but this morning we pulled up the anchor, no motor, raised the sails and sailed off in silence. We stayed this way for 2 hours. Not moving quickly as there was only a couple knots of wind we managed to move about 1.3 knots ourselves (no land speed record!). We enjoyed the surroundings instead. Amazingly quiet and beautiful.
Evan polished the stainless on deck and I cleaned the clears. I tried my hand at videoing where we are to show you but it is not very good. At least it gives you an idea of where we are. I stopped as soon as my finger covered the viewfinder. Lol!
At about noon we finally started the motor as the wind could not make up its mind and was swinging from South East to South West and we wanted to reach Cygnet before midnight. We motor sailed toward the Huon River passing Arch Rock (image below).
then Huon Island (image below) The mountains in the background are huge. I think this is the Hartz Mountain range. I will know better once we make it to Bathurst Harbour on the West coast.
Once past Huon Island we make a right hand turn heading North West up the Huon River, past many marine farms. It is eye opening to see how many marine farms are in operation. I wonder if Tassal is just being greedy by wanting to open even more farms. Is it the shareholders of the company that demand constant expansion even if it does not make sense to the ecology of the area?
Where we are heading is Port Cygnet, this is up the Huon River and branches off to the North. One nautical mile up the Huon we are hit with a strong North North West wind, about 25 to 30 knots . The wind waves start picking up and we are in for a fun ride.
Once in Port Cygnet the wind starts to drop and by the time we make it to Cygnet the weather has changed yet again and it is beautiful. After we anchor Evan and I jump in the dinghy and motor up to the Port Cygnet Sailing club. We left our dinghy there and walked into town, about 1.5 kms away, to stock up on food we will need for the Port Davey leg of our trip. I have taken so many picture here, Evan is into ducking and weaving to try and stay out of them! 😀
Let me show you what it looks like here:
[looking at Cygnet Sailing club on right of photo]
[Path to town]
[Nashira at anchor]
[Thats our dinghy in front of Evan on his right, ready to head back to Nashira]
Tomorrow we will head further up the Huon river and see what we find there.
I hope your day has been a good one and tomorrow even better.
Tonnes of Love
Kelly & Evan
Fabulous. You two are so intrepid! Mx
I wouldn’t say fearless, perhaps adventurous