Skipper is on deck early and feeling better. We are motoring down the channel in no time. We raise the main as we clear the channel markers, and soon have the headsail up. There are more curtains of rain heading towards us ominously, but the wind has suddenly died and we have to tack to avoid the wood-chip plant. A squall hits as we race across towards the other side of Spring Bay. We need to tack but the sheet is jammed around the winch. I take the helm as Robert attempts to free the jam with a rolling hitch. The shore is looming up and I motor away just in time to clear a reef at the end of the headland. Robert frees the jam and takes the helm just as another squall hits. Escapade shudders and lurches at heel. Felicity is being rolled about in the v-berth, some sleep in she’s having, and all of this before breakfast!
Back in the cockpit we are now comfortably reaching across Mercury Passage towards Isle du Nord at the northern tip of Maria Island. Next I’m on the foredeck trying to get the spinnaker pole jaws around the port sheet so we can jibe downwind towards Schouten Island. A couple of hours later and we are running merrily into Great Oyster Bay at around six and a half knots with a two meter following sea.
Running down Mercury Passage
Great sailing with the odd bit of surfing. I take the helm for the run across to Schouten Island. The sea is now off the stern quarter and has been steadily increasing. Skipper hands around the daily rum ration.
From this angle Schouten Island looks like the set of Jurassic Park. A rugged cliff lined coast, granite tors, and a flat topped steep sided peak in the middle that looks like it should have a puff of volcanic smoke coming out of the top. I clear Schouten reef to starboard, an isolated danger mark and a crowd of shags on top of it’s black exposed rocks and the seas subside as we round the island into Schouten Passage, the narrow strait separating Schouten Island from the Freycinet Peninsular.
Schouten Passage
My shift at the helm over, I go below to grab my camera. The coast is spectacular. Beneath towering granite tors there are four vessels at anchor off a sandy cove in the lee of Schouten Island.
Boats at anchor in the lee of Schouten Island
As we clear the passage the seas increase and we are hit by another squall. As we track east the coastline of Freycinet opens before us, the granite stained red with lichen over pink Orthoclase, which is a type of pink feldspar at Cape Degerando, the tangle of boulders in Slaughterhouse Bay and the massive walls of granite towering above us at Gates Bluff.
Gates Bluff and the Freycinet Coast
The wind is getting upwards of twenty five knots, so I am sent forward to lower the main, Robert has decided we will run along the peninsular coast with just a jib. This is a pleasant change from when we are racing, in which case he would have the spinnaker and a full main set. Another squall hits us without warning and we are overtaken by sheets of rain, obscuring the Hazards, massive granite tors that tower over the approaching Wineglass Bay.
Squall off the Hazards
We pass a section of cliff that has come away with a massive landslide into the sea, wondering at the power of nature and again at the insignificance of man.
Landslip on Freycinet Coast
At the tip of Cape Forestier is a granitic pile called Lemon Rock.
Lemon Rock
We round it and steer into the sheltered waters of Wineglass Bay.
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