Yesterday morning, Wednesday (21st) we left Hobart on our way to see the world by sailboat.

Dropped in at DSS (the starting place of our sailing journey, where we bought Katmai) to top off the fuel and water and then headed off down the river. Carol and Steve were flying a blanket off their balcony at Sandy Bay to say Au revoir which was really lovely.

We motored down the river trying a couple of times to fly our wings when the wind picked up but alas each time, the wind dropped off and we continued to motor. Crossing Storm bay we were joined by three dolphin’s who travelled with us for a good ten minutes.

We anchored in Parsons bay Nubenna overnight and had a lovely green chicken curry, watched a few programs and then had an early night.

This morning we got up and checked the forecasts and decided to head down to Port Arthur. The day looked a bit windy and supposed to be dropping off early afternoon so looked doable.

We motored out of Parsons bay and headed south past Wedge island winding out the sails (reefed) as we went, winds behind us 18-20 knots  gusting to 30 as we headed down the coast. We started with the Genoa out on starboard, main out to port, but the swell was rocking us too much upsetting the genoa, we adjusted our course to put the swell behind us and we moved both sails to starboard side with the wind on our aft port quarter pushing us along at times at 8 knots 😃

We also had a visit from our dolphin friends and a pair of albatross followed as around Cape Raoul until we lost them heading into Port Arthur.

As we rounded Cape Raoul the wind came around onto the beam and the gusts increased in speed so we wound in some sails lowering our speed a bit but nicer when the 30 knot gusts hit us.

As we approached the entrance to port Arthur the wind funneling down the channel got really unpleasant, we had winds up to 40 knots slamming into us and pushing the boat to starboard requiring lots of rudder corrections to hold our course, also as we were heading into the sun forward visibility was horrible so I was mostly using chart plotter to keep us in the middle of the channel.

Thankfully the wind was dropping off the further north we went into the protection of the Port Arthur area, by the time we got into the protection of Ladies bay there was hardly any wind to worry about except the occasional gust.

Kaz is currently having fun pressure cooking a chicken and after the chicken is done, some soon to be pulled pork will go in the cooker and we’ll have pork and chicken ready for us over the next few days.

Well that’s it for today, we are anchored, Kaz is cooking, and after dinner we’ll settle down to watch something hopefully entertaining or read.

Au revoir for now, to our home.