Meanderings: North across Bass Strait. Part 2 Cape Barren Island to Roydon Island

The morning after we arrived at Cape Barren Island we had a tough decision to make: the TYC people were heading around to Trousers Point on Flinders Island (only about 10 miles away) for a bonfire and BBQ on the beach and there was talk of a whole pile of chicken that needed eating. They were then going to head in to Lady Barron harbour and were talking of pubs and meals and such like. All sounds good, but Lady Barron isn't the easiest harbour in the world (I've never been there, but I believe that a Southerly can find its way in there and a move may be required if weather is on its way). It is also quite a process to get in (and back out of again) as Franklin Sound is subject to strong tidal currents and one really doesn't want to be going against them (or have strong wind against tide). All in all, once you are in you are in and you have to deal with what comes your way as getting back out may take time.

The other problem was that the weather forecast was still looking like there might be a good window for getting across to Lakes Entrance - maybe. You may remember my earlier post about weather windows, complete with promising looking pressure chart forecasts ,well our nice large high had been attacked by a worrying-looking low which was drifting down off mainland Australia and was looking to get trapped between two highs just off the east coast. This was looking like a classic "East Coast Low" which can generate strong southerly winds and large seas up the NSW coast. However it looked like that wouldn't start to happen until Tuesday evening. It looked like we had a window to get to Lakes Entrance (but probably not to Eden) before that occurred. What to do...?

I have found dealing with these (hopefully not life and death, but certainly comfort and discomfort to the point where everyone n board decides that they hate sailing and never gets on a boat again...) decisions, in conjunction with the continuous scrabble of daily life of 5 people living aboard a 36 foot boat, incredibly stressful to deal with. I need time and quiet, and often a sounding board, to bounce the various options and pros and cons around before deciding on a course of action. This works at work, but it doesn't seem to work with the family aboard Meander. So, although it would have been nice to have more of a look around Flinders Island, we could see the opportunity to get ourselves out of Bass Strait and away from these decisions, so we took it.

This meant that the plan was to sail up the east coast of Flinders Island on Saturday and anchor in a nice sheltered anchorage behind Roydon Island near the NW corner of Flinders Island. From there we could get updated forecasts for Sunday and Monday for the approximately 18 - 20 hour overnight crossing to Lakes Entrance. There was forecast to be a W - SW change coming in on Sunday afternoon - when we would have to be underway across Bass Strait. I was rather concerned about crossing Bass Strait with a cold front / change coming through, but the forecast 2 days out was for this to be a benign change. Surely if we got updated forecasts on Sunday morning they couldn't screw things up too badly just a few hours out... could they? Incidentally, this is why we chose not to go to Deal Island because we wouldn't have internet access and access to updated forecasts would be limited to the standard weather readings on VHF. In Bass Strait the conditions can vary markedly across the forecast areas and the text forecast is always for the worst conditions. If we sailed to the text forecasts we would probably never get to sail anywhere. The backup plan, if the forecast for the change on Sunday deteriorated was either to stay put behind Roydon Island, or retreat and join the others at Lady Barron.

So, we went to Roydon Is. Navigation was quite straightforward, although current was definitely a factor. We had a very pleasant 15-20 knot Easterly which pushed us right up Flinders Island at 6-7 knots with only the Genoa out. The scenery was spectacular and we arrived at Roydon Is at about 1630. Just a good time to find ourselves a patch of clear sand in the weed to drop our anchor in. In this regard we found Robert Bradley's trick of using Google Maps satellite photos to locate sand patches quite successful, although I think there was a bit of an offset in the images and the small patches of sand require on-site use of the mark 1 eyeball to locate. Once found, the water was beautifully clear and I could clearly see the anchor land in the patch of sand. We pulled it in good and hard.

Leaving Thunder and Lightning Bay

Rounding Cape Barren Is. (inside "Big Black Reef")

Crossing Franklin Sound heading north to pass between Mt. Chappell Is and East Kangaoo Is

As it turned out it was completely unnecessary, the wind died away to near zero over night and there was just a weak current that pulled us from one side of our anchor watch circle to the other overnight. By the way, if you don't already have one of these for your mobile phone, I find this one excellent Anchor Watch yes our chartplotter does this too, but a) you don't have to leave all your instruments on all night, b) you can enter an offset bearing and direction to your anchor (who ever remembers to press the anchor watch button when they are actually lowering the anchor?) and c) you can leave (one of) your phones on board with the app running and set it up to send you an SMS if the boat moves outside the watch circle - I'll bet your chartplotter won't do that...!

Anyway, more than enough said. We deliberated, we sailed to Roydon Is, we admired the scenery on the way, and we had a quiet night. A good start!