Arriving in Hobart in the dark was an experience. After Sydney where just about every available space is taken up with a private mooring it was a pleasant surprise coming into Sandy Bay to discover oodles of room to anchor and only a handful of privately moored boats. After tidying up we had a quick meal of pasta and broke out the little bottles of Moet that our friend Karen had given us on departure from Sydney. We had made our first major milestone of reaching Hobart.

The next morning we woke up to find Szel anchored next to us. They had been in Hobart for a couple of weeks and where waiting to be hauled to have their bottom painted.

Alison’s brother and sister-in-law, Ross and Sharon live in Hobart not far from Sandy Bay so once the chaos of the boat had been tidied up a bit more we hooked up with Sharon for a spot of lunch and fresh food shopping. Why do burgers always taste better when you have been out sailing even only for a couple of days?

The next day with Ross back in town from work we set about organising having the boat hauled to do a bottom paint. Ross keeps his boat at the Oyster Cove Marina in Kettering so this seemed to be a good place to haul out. The other advantage of the Oyster Cove Marina is the Oyster Cove Inn which is a fantastically friendly pub right at the entrance of the marina. Many a beer was consumed here in front of the roaring log fire and Sausage’s birthday party was also gate crashed one Saturday night. Well there was a live band playing and with both John and Ross being guitar players who could resist!

We had the boat hauled and set about giving it a pressure wash and painting the bottom. This was a new experience for us as most yards in Sydney do not allow you to do your own work and the last time we had done any bottom painting was True Blue back in Florida. By the end of the day we were both covered in anti-foul paint. It took weeks to get it all out from under our nails. Thankfully we were staying at Ross and Sharon’s that night so did not have to sleep perched up on the stands.

Once back in the water the next day we arranged to stay in a berth at the marina. The berthing fees at Oyster Cove were cheap enough to allow us to leave the boat for a couple of weeks and hire a car to do a bit of a road trip. John has a school friend, Gary who lives in Smithton near Stanley so we decided to drive up there and visit. The first night of the trip we stopped in Queenstown and stayed at the Empire Hotel which had the most amazing staircase as its centre piece. Queenstown is a mining town and everything caters very much to the miners. This was apparent when we had dinner in the dining room that night and ordered the special steak and chips. That is exactly what you got, steak and chips. Not a lettuce leaf in sight. The next day we headed on to Smithton stopping at Guide Falls in West Ridgely for a picnic lunch. That night we caught up with Gary and his family. They worked out that it had been 27 years since he and John had last seen each other. The next day we were back on the road and headed back down to Hobart via Devonport and taking the A5 road through the middle of the state. It being named the A5 we thought t would be a major road but were soon to discover that there was about 30kms of very rough gravel road, not great in a Nissan Micra. It did go through some rather spectacular lake country though.

Back in Kettering we spent another week organising to have our engine serviced and spending time with Ross and Sharon. It was time to think about moving again though. It had been raining most of the week, in fact Hobart had received record rainfall, and we were getting a bit tired of being wet and cold. We left Kettering first thing in the morning and motored across to the Denison Canal. Again we managed to time our transit through at dead low tide again which had us chewing our nails in a couple of spots. That night we anchored in Chinamans Bay and had a much better stay than the last time we were here. We were up early again the next morning and headed for Wineglass Bay. There was no wind so we ended up motoring the whole way again.

Wineglass Bay is well worth the stop and we were escorted into the bay by a pod of dolphins. Luckily we were the first boat to arrive so ended up in the prime anchoring position where we were most protected from the swell that came into the bay. We spent four nights in Wineglass Bay and were blessed by some lovely weather so were able to do some of the hikes that are in the national park around the bay. We also met Terry, Peter and Vanessa off Caribbean Blue who were from Sydney. John and Peter went abalone diving one morning and we ended up having quite a feast of abalone that night. Well worth the mess of preparing them but we’ve yet to come across the best method of cooking them.

After this lovely stop it was time to get going again so we made an overnight hop along with Caribbean Blue to Flinders Island. We stopped here for a night to wait out a cold front that was going through before setting off for Eden. We left Flinders Island with forecast winds of 20-30kns and had quite a rough 2 day passage to Eden. We were very glad to get in and drop anchor after that trip. After a night in Eden we were off again to Sydney where we had to stop and collect our laptop which was being repaired after having a glass of wine poured over it. We do not recommend you do this as it really is no good for computers. From Sydney we did a short hop to Pittwater and spent a couple of days in our favourite anchorage, Americas Bay, just relaxing and doing some minor boat jobs.

From Pittwater we decided to make the next hop all the way to Queensland. We were aiming for Southport but if the weather was good we would continue on to Bundaberg. We had very fickle winds when we left Pittwater and had to motor for a few hours before the wind filled in. The first couple of nights of the passage were quite pleasant but for the last 24 hours they were forecasting SW winds of 20-30kns. In hindsight we should have stopped at Coffs Harbour as we were very close but decided that 20-30kns from behind would be doable. Unfortunately the winds were more like 30-40kns and we had an extremely rough 24 hours. At one stage a breaking wave knocked us sidewise and Alison was launched, bruising her hip against the stove and her shoulder against the window above it, which is normally at head height not part of the floor! Thankfully when we arrived at the Gold Coast Seaway at Southport the gods were smiling on us, and the tides were correct to make it into the entrance without any dramas. We had our anchor down by 6.30pm. We also had some dolphins come and swim with us for a while on the approach that were doing some spectacular leaps so that cheered us up a bit as well. We have never been so happy to make port and celebrated with a steak dinner and a lovely bottle of red (thank you who ever it was that gave us that).

Feeling a little bit battered we decided to spoil ourselves for a couple of nights and booked into the Southport Yacht Club. It was marvellous being able to have hot showers and get a pile of washing done. We also needed to repair some minor damage that we had sustained in that last 24 hours. Feeling a little better we went out for an early birthday dinner for John at the yacht club.

A good night’s sleep and the next morning dawned perfectly clear and warm. The best thing about being in Queensland? Sun!