Sailing The Bass Strait - With A Plan!

In 1999 I had been sailing for four years so we chartered a 40’ yacht and did a Greek Islands cruise. Afterwards I did some thinking. In those four years I had done weekly 2 hour fun races, a couple of serious races either for a few hours or 24 hours, and had chartered a bareboat in the Whitsunday Islands. That meant my total sea time was about a month. So with all that knowledge and skill I had taken my family on a 300 nautical mile sailing trip on a yacht I was unfamiliar with, using charts of an unfamiliar area written in Greek, going into unfamiliar harbours, and without a working GPS. I decided I had better do a sailing course.

I did an Offshore Yachtmaster course in Moreton Bay. Yes Moreton BAY! As the instructor said,” If you can’t sail in open water you shouldn’t be here. Here you will find every navigation hazard you will come across anywhere in the world. There are ships and barges, sail boats and motor boats, narrow channels and sandbars, and every navigational marker you can think of. If you pass this you should be able to sail anywhere.”

I failed. Well only one bit. So despite having a zillion ticks, stamps, and signatures in my log book for all but one section, I don’t actually have an Offshore Yachtmaster’s certificate.

Another bloke on the course must have thought I was OK though because he asked if I would help bring his 30’ yacht from Melbourne to Brisbane. That meant sailing through Bass Strait, one of the most infamous pieces of water on Earth.

My sailing mentor in Queensland used to live and sail on Port Phillip Bay and the Bass Strait. His advice was to watch the weather until a cold front went through the strait, and then sail under the high pressure system that followed it. This is what we did.

Getting out of Port Phillip Bay is hard enough. You can’t just go anywhere in the few kilometers between Point Nepean and Point Lonsdale. There are eddies and overflows and current with you if you time it right, and against you if you get it wrong. Slack water is actually not at the turn of the tide, but at half tide. This happens because there is too much water trying to get in and out of the bay. It can not all get in or out during a normal tide, so it lags by about a half tide. There are three marked channels. Big ships usually use the middle one. We picked another one, and at night, motorsailed out into the Bass Strait.

The owner had only sailed dinghies in Moreton Bay, and his two mates had hardly sailed, if at all. I pinched another bloke from Sandringham before we left and only let he or I helm as we goose-winged in the dark down to Wilson’s Promontory.

It was nearly sunset next day as we sailed past Skull Rock and around The Prom. We sailed up the east coast to the entrance of Refuge Bay, but the forecast gave us a window of only three days of pleasant weather to complete the sail to the safety of Eden on the NSW coast before the next cold front came through. We turned away, out into the ‘paddock’.

That night we tacked through the oil rigs with a 10knot north-easter. The rigs looked spectacular with the flames coming out of the tops against the black sky.

The north-easter had more north in it than east, and north was mainly where we wanted to go. The best heading to get us to our target was pointing us towards New Zealand.

The shipping channel skirts to the south of the oil rigs. The weather forecast was for a south-westerly to replace the north-easterly. I asked the blokes on watch to tie off the helm and give me a compass reading every half hour. With the tiller locked off and the sails set for windward sailing we would steer to the breeze. The call was, “120” – “120” – “120” - .
Before we got to where we would have to dodge 50,000+ tonne ships it changed to, “110” – “100” – “90” – “80” – “70” – “60” – “50” – “40”.

“Ease sails!”

40 degrees would take us to the most south easterly point of Australia. From there we would just sail up the coast.

At sunrise we were 50 nautical miles from Point Hicks. This was near where 5 sailors had lost their lives in the monster storm that hit the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race. Luckily we only got 25knots and being on our stern quarter meant we got a fast ride to where we wanted to go.

Past Cape Howe, Green Cape, and Gabo Island we were goose winging again. Later in the evening we sat becalmed outside Two Fold Bay, the port for Eden. We had dinner and motored in to the jetty. We spent next morning exploring the harbour precinct before putting our guest on a bus back to Melbourne and moving the boat to an anchorage near the wood chip factory because the new cold front would come in from the SE and the jetty would have us exposed to it; the woodchip anchorage would not.

That night it blew itself out, and next morning we started on a northerly cruise up the east coast.

By: The Last Picasso

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The Last Picasso is an over 50's Baby Boomer traveller and sailor. My website www.sosimpleholidayswaps.com and blog include stories and photos of my wife and my travels including experiences and advice for fellow mature travellers. Countries visited include: Antarctica, Australia, Brunei, Japan, Thailand, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Egypt, USA, Argentina, Indonesia, Fiji, Greece, India, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore.