Fortescue Bay to Eden

Once again we rose early, I think it was about 5.30am… this time though greeted with a nice cup of tea and a bacon and egg sarnie from Bill! Excellent start to the day. We head out of the Bay and are on our way across the Bass Straits over to mainland Australia and Eden. Eden is an old whaling and fishing village and the last safe haven before the crossing the straits going South.
Bob starts training me in navigation, going through fixes and charts its all coming back from some of the stuff Ben taught me on the delivery to Malta. So my day is spent doing fixes down the coast to practice, bit dodgy to start but gets better as the day goes by.

Its still chilly, but the weather is perfect for sailing and I have my 3 teachers on board happy to give me pointers advice and help me learn. I helm as much as I can, and really love the boat it handles really well and is nice to sail. Come midnight the wind picks up and there is a bit of chaos as we put in a reef to depower the boat. Its only 25-30 knots but we are cruising, no point busting the boat on the way back. Finally get the reef in and I hear Bert shout up “fancy a beer Bob!”, so they crack open a post reefing beer for the night… funny..!

Crossing the Bass straits is great, we have fantastic weather, no motoring, all downwind reaching.. as Bob says a gentleman never goes upwind! Spoilt again with tea, and bacon and egg from Bill. We settle easily into the day and routine of cruising. Come sundown we have our happy hour, a few drinks, cheese and biscuits. It’s all very civilised!

In the evening we seem to be attracting wildlife, the boat is hit by a tiger shark trying to get into Bert’s bunk we think! You can see it come out of the water after the thud on the side of the boat. Next a sun fish, just a giant fish with tiny fins that is a lump of muscle (pretty common that they hit boats apparently!), anyway, it hits the keel and bounces off the rudder affecting the steering for a minute but it doesn’t feel like there is any permanent damage.

We make it to Eden around midday on the 6th Jan, raft up along side another Hobart boat called Yeah Baby which is run by two identical twins. Bert, Bob and Bill all compliment me on my helming which is very cool, considering they all have about 100+ years sailing between them its quite a compliment. We head for showers, always a relief after a few days at sea. We enjoy some great seafood for lunch and an afternoon in the local pub. We meet a friend of Bob’s who runs a company doing boat deliveries, always good to make contacts for the future… you never know!
Then back to the boat in the evening for a pizza delivery, yep they deliver to the boat… and a few drinks as we have plenty to get through!

The next day we do a little tourism and visit the museum, hearing the story of Old Tom a killer whale that helped the men in the village to catch Sperm Whales. It’s quite an interesting story, and it is said that Old Tom died of a broken heart when he was betrayed by the men who then killed one of the killer whales! The Killer whales then left Eden for good and the whaling industry died very quickly without the Killer whales help... !

And Bob was a real sweetheart and bought me a book on navigation to help me on the trip. Can’t wait to get started reading it. Then after a few drinks and some food we head back to move the boat across the Bay. This is to avoid the heavy weather forecast, so we anchor in the Bay with a few other boats and wait it out. The plan is to leave late afternoon tomorrow 8th Jan so that we have another good downwind run to Ulladulla where we have an appointment with friends of Bert’s.

Before we head off though we are invited to tea and cake by one of the boats, this is for a birthday Anna and Angus are the boat owners and have basically spent a year cruising the pacific, Tahiti, Galapagos, Fiji to name a few with their 3 kids… now that sounds fantastic to me! So we have tea and cake and then head on our way for an overnight run to Ulladulla.