On Wednesday morning at 8:30 we departed Wineglass Bay in Tasmania heading for Eden in New South Wales.

The weather forecast was predicted on Wednesday to start with northerlies,  changing to a southerly later in the day which would help us travel North, then to a southwestly on Thursday morning which would have helped us with our transit to the south eastern corner of the mainland.

As with all things forecast, they roughly did as predicted. The Wednesday change to a southerly turned into a southeasterly and bought with it an annoying swell which made a very uncomfortable ride with the boat rolling 15° side to side, this lasted all through Thursday.

We tried several times to set sails and a course that would include some form of North or Easterly travelling it, but because the swells rolling the boat around the collapsing the genoa and then it would come back with a horrible snap which shook the whole forestay.

This resulted in us motoring for 25 hours on the first part of the trip. Then we attempted to sail for a couple of hours Thursday morning and went back to motoring again, a few hours later we again tried with the sails out and now we have decided to just motor the rest of the way unless the swell changes 😕

This morning’s sunrise and more confused swell than ever, but as we got around Gabo Island the swell settled a bit and we put out the Genoa and turned off the engine for about three hours, it was bliss no engine noise, but as our course changed to aim towards where we were going the speed dropped and so the iron horse got up again and pushed us the last couple of hours into Eden

In the end, any crossing a Bass Strait is a good crossing, this waterway can show some vicious moods at times, our trip was a little challenging for us with our experience with LaGecko, but she handled it beautifully, we handled it well as we got here safely.

Highlights:

We both saw whales jump out of the water at different places

We saw lots of dolphins, lots of Albatross

Kaz and I are doing this together, this was our first overnight on our own, our first crossing of Bass Strait on our own

Stats:

We got here in 52.5 hours after leaving Wineglass Bay

Travelled 332 Nautical miles

Ran the engine for 46.6 hours

Used 175 litres of fuel

Average speed 6.3 knots (151NM a day)

So, I’m not complaining, although I would have liked to have done some more sailing 😁