Parson’s Bay – Nubeena / Tasman Peninsula to Duckpond then Sykes/ D’Entrecasteaux Channel

Depart 07:45 Arrive 16:00

A beautiful calm night. At last! Along with a great night sleep and an early rise at 6am feeling much more refreshed.

A quick trip ashore for the dog and a coastal walk along the broad walkway up to the post office and IGA. Hauled the anchor in a 10 knt northerly then turned into a broad reach past the ever present salmon farms into Wedge Bay. Nice.

We enjoyed an hour twenty of champagne sailing before we lost the wind completely then 40 mins later the southerly change came through approaching Betsy Island to starboard.

Motor sailed another 40 minutes and turned the motor off and sailed another 20 mins in Storm Bay when the southerly kicked in at 10-15 knots to the entrance of the D’ Entrecastreaux Channel.

The temperature was dropping and the clouds accumulating. The sea mist skirted around the lower half of North and South Bruny Island and the whole mood changed to many hues of grey.

Out go the summer clothes of the past three days and in with jackets, long pants and socks. Ahhhhh…….Tassie.

15:00

We anchored in Duckpond around 11.20am. The forecast is for hail, thunderstorms and strong southerlies. There is great protection in there. We motored up the channel to Barnes Bay to Duckpond with the forecast and the southerly right on the nose.

First attempt at anchor was a little to close to Sea Gypsy and he called out ( not happy) so we moved forward doing a better job with a second try.

“Salut” a 30 something sloop, followed us in as she saw we took some photo’s of her with the spinnaker up coming off Storm Bay into the Channel then proceeded to chase us down to exchange phone numbers to forward them on. They pulled along side as we were anchoring……not ideal…..adding to the anchoring tensions of Sea Gypsy and us.

Apart from the rumble of distant thunder, all was calm and orderly in Duckpond.

Kansas has been ashore and Darren has washed the diesel stains off the starboard side of the hull from the exhaust outlet.

15:20

Darren noticed on the B&G chart plotter that we were dragging.

Being a bit crowded we decided to move to Sykes. We know it’s a good holding, plenty of space and fewer boats. Thirty five minutes later, the sun is out, we were back in our summer gear and nestled close to shore in 8 metres with the southerly around 10 knots.

Happy and comfortable.