Meanderings: North across Bass Strait. Part 3 Roydon Island to Lakes Entrance

After a quiet night, with just a few hours sleep loss due visits from mosquitoes the size of bees and a crystal clear view of the lunar eclipse, (Easter) Sunday dawned fine. Very fine for the kids as it turns out that the Easter Bunny can swim and managed to deliver an unhealthy swag of chocolate to the cockpit - although he couldn't get inside as all hatches were closed to keep out the "night wasps", as the kids dubbed them.

Replacing lost blood - with sugar. The Easter Bunny found us!

A Roydon Is. "night wasp" - a more fitting term for this size of beast!

Star Wars inspired, Queen Amadala and OB1 greet the dawn.

The text forecast for the Sunday change had, of course, deteriorated and 25 knot westerlies were now predicted - this would be directly on our beam and was more than our comfort zone allowed - however consulting with both BoM and PredictWind wind forecast models and the BoM MetEye human-edited forecasts reassured us that the 25 knots should be somewhere where we did not expect to be and that 20 knots should be the most we should expect. This we can deal with comfortably enough. So, all systems go for a 12 noonish departure as this would work well to a) have us arrive off Lakes Entrance in daylight in the middle of a flood tide (which I wanted for crossing the bar at LE) and b) would be just after high tide at Flinders Is. and the ebb would help carry us NE across above Flinders Is and East of "Craggy Is." and its off-lying shoals.

The kids and I went ashore for a couple of hours - largely just to say we had landed on Flinders Is. and to burn off some of the Easter sugar. We found ourselves on a very isolated beach with little of interest except for cuttlefish "boats" and a few interesting shells.

Rocky headland, looking out to Meander and Roydon Is in the distance.

A cuttlefish boat, bound for Bass Strait.

Katherine (and Arthur) on the beach near Roydon Is.

So, time to pack the dinghy away, have some lunch, and set off. Easy enough to do, raise and secure the anchor, decide whether to cut between Roydon Is. and North Pascoe Is (or go all the way around both Pascoe Islands) - we did, and the shallowest we saw was 24m. Then head out clear of Cape Frankland and then head 006 degrees true until we get to Lakes Entrance.

Our timing was perfect, we initially motored directly in to about 5-10 knots of northerly, but within an hour the westerly change came in and we were sailing under reefed genoa and reefed mainsail in 15 knots of westerly. Having the tide meant that we were doing 8 knots over the ground, despite the reefs.

Leaving Roydon Is.

Beautiful conditions for motoring into Bass Strait

The change has arrived and now we are sailing.

The clouds associated with the front disappearing down to leeward toward the north coast of Flinders Is.

A couple of birds

Photographing the sunset


Unsure about the coming night.

So we, literally, sailed off into the sunset. The wind gradually built until we had the promised 20 knots shortly before dark. We put a second reef in the main to keep things comfortable over night, and so we wouldn't arrive at Lakes Entrance before dawn.

During the night we saw several ships as we crossed the traffic lane, but they all passed comfortably behind us, and even the gas platforms kept their distance. Aside from the tide which initially pulled us to the east and then later pushed us to the west we hardly even touched the autopilot controls during the crossing. EV stayed on watch the whole way across and Lauren and Giles took it in turns to get a little sleep. As dawn arrived the wind dropped and we started to roll around so we shook out all the reefs and arrived off Lakes Entrance at about 7am - really a very pleasant sail.

Conditions at the Lakes Entrance bar were ideal, little wind and swell of about 1m and a flood tide, so we dropped our sails, radioed the coastguard, lined up the leading marks and cruised on in. Straightforward.

Approaching the bar - keep the blue marks in line...

Keeping the blue marks in line.

In through the entrance

Welcome to Lakes Entrance - plenty of shoals to avoid.

We headed straight for Cunninghame arm and the visitors berths. Then, I'm sorry to admit, it was straight to McDonalds for an "all you want to eat, we survived Bass Strait (twice)!" McD's breakfast along with the thousand others in Lakes Entrance at Easter. Ah, then time for a sleep - the kids get to watch a movie... We're back in Victoria. To Lakes Entrance the long way!