Decided to get to Hobart in time for the Wooden Boat Festival….Schoolies week for Old Bastards.
Crack crew for Northerly’s first run across Bass Straight: Jane, Spot, Ritcho, Jomp & the Capt’n.
Held departure for a week…blew hard form the south and wouldn’t let up. Eventually we left thinking we’d take the beating on the NSW Coast to give us a decent Straight crossing…pretty much how it worked out.
Had a brief (8 hour stop in Eden) and headed south. This was at Green Cape as we entered the Straight:
Thankfully the forecast was spot on, conditions settled through the day and into the evening.
By Midnight it was the Wimbledon final.
Wimbledon Final – Mid Straight
By next morning we’d broken it’s back:
Hitting the Tassie Coast
Beautiful cruise down to Wine Glass Bay for an overnight and Straights crossing debrief.
As we got south there was much discussion about the Denison Canal and wether we should go through. It’s cuts a bit of distance and you don’t have to go round the very exposed Tasman light. Eventually we did…quite a navigational exercise..the narrow, man made, canal takes you through the main road and in places isn’t a whole lot wider than Northerly….or so it felt. There were plenty of spectators taking photos of what the bridge operator described on the radio as “The big white ship”…
On exiting the canal, the bar was well and truly opened as we celebrated a great delivery.
Within 15 minutes we’d bumped into Brian Tyquin and found that Riversong, Boxer and the Wrights were all in the area…took a small detour for our first anchoring at Gentleman’s Corner…very enjoyable end to the cruise.