Meanderings: Tambo River

The weather has been a bit grim so we stayed hunkered down in Paynesville. Winter has definitely arrived, with over night lows of about 6 degrees and talk of snow and hail in the forecasts...

Never the less, the wind had dropped so we headed off today to see if we could get into the Tambo River. Our "creeks and harbours" book said that the entrance depths were only 1.6m, and we draw about 1.85m, but local opinion was that it should be possible, so we thought we'd give it a crack. I contemplated the strategy of reversing in to the river so that if / when we ran aground we would have more forward drive to push us back off again.

As we approached the river it became clear that our chartplotter and fancy electronic charts weren't going to be a lot of help in the river! This wasn't a great surprise as they have been of little help in the entire Gippsland Lakes. Am I the only one who thinks it is weird that there is no official navigational chart (of any kind) of the Gippsland Lakes?

Hmmm... I guess the chartplotter won't be much help up the river. This means we'll have to look out the window instead!

As it turned out it was quite straightforward and the shallowest we saw was 2.2m. This left 35cm of UKC, which is enough for a supertanker, so no special techniques were required.

The river was lovely and we sailed for about a mile or so before the wind died. We motored the rest of the way up to the highway at Swan Reach where the highway bridge and some high-voltage power lines blocked our way.

We tied up at the public jetty and wandered around Swan Reach in between showers and came to realise that there really isn't anything of note there...

So we left and motored back down river to Johnsonville where we tied up and got chatting to local fisherman "Norman" who has a yacht and who have us two very nice black bream he had caught. I had to try to remember my fish filleting skills, and we have just had them for dinner - delicious!

Another lovely day on the Gippsland Lakes.