Well yes, but you’re English

Due to the incredible power of the internet I recently managed to hitch a ride on a Duncanson 40 Cutter from Hobart to Melbourne. The skipper Ron needed a few guys to help him bring his beloved yacht Taurus back home to it’s pen at Brighton Yacht Club, Melbourne, via the renowned Bass Strait. Tasmania is at a latitude known as the ‘roaring forties’ meaning wild weather conditions and stormy seas. This combined with the very shallow depths in the passage between mainland Australia and North Tasmania, can give rise to some very big seas. Most of the channel is only fifty to sixty metres deep. So it was with some trepidation that I stepped on board the vintage luxury yacht Taurus.

Once aboard Ron told us that the yacht’s fridge and freezer had broken, so we might have a problem with keeping food fresh and importantly, beers cold. I tried to explain that darker beer would not need to be cooled, but another crew member retorted “Well yes, but you’re English”. So we loaded the defunct freezer with ice, added a quantity of beer plus the vacuum packed meat that Ron’s local butcher had carefully prepared for us. Apparently he resealed one bag four times because he wasn’t happy with the vacuum. We would also need to conserve water as we only had four hundred litres total, or one hundred each for the entire nine day journey.

Toby decided to go fishing one afternoon, in the hope we might have fresh fish for dinner. As we trawled through a patch of water surrounded by hovering birds his efforts were rewarded. He pulled in the line and hauled on deck what he assessed to be a Blue Fin Tuna. He then removed the hook from it’s mouth and held the fish by it’s gills and tail. The fish put up a fair fight, and in the process managed to expel a huge amount of blood from it’s damaged gills. Unfortunately Toby had pulled the line in to windward, so the airborne crimson liquid made a lovely pattern all over the deck, our white waterproof clothing, the boom, navigation electronics, the coach roof and even inside the cabin on a chart belonging to one of Ron’s friends.

Later that night we ate the rather oily fish and decided that perhaps it was a mackerel after all. I dubbed it ‘Poor man’s tuna’. Fish never tasted so good though.

Aside from our first night moored up at Port Arthur the rest of the coastline and Bass Strait was incredibly remote. We anchored overnight in the bays of islands whose sole inhabitants were seals, mutton birds, pelicans and oyster catchers. One night we just kept going, so by the time we reached Wilson’s Promontory on the south coast of Victoria, we had made enough time up to stop for a few days in the huge National Park there. It would have been a couple of days hike to get to Refuge Cove from the nearest road, however this didn’t seem to deter endless armies of teenagers on school trips.

We spent a couple of days in paradise at Refuge Cove, hiking, swimming, snorkelling and eating huge meals and generally recovering from what had been a tiring but incredibly memorable journey. Saturday came around finally meaning another overnighter for the final leg to Port Philip, the natural harbour location of Melbourne city.

After we had moored the boat, we sat drinking beer at the Brighton Royal Yacht Club watching the other yachts and dinghies coming into the marina. Ron then pointed out something he’d observed when he disembarked from his yacht. Apparently during our clean up operation after the fishing exploit, we’d missed it. A large area of his boat’s white fibre glass hull was now a rather strange shade of red.