Year One
Date: 6/2/2008 17.00
Weather: overcast, change expected this evening
Location: Deal Island 39'29S 147'19E
Author: Kylie

But no we are not coming home, we are anchored at Deal Island. Deal Island is part of the Kent Group of Islands and is smack bang in the middle of Bass Strait. Yesterday we sailed from Royden Island just off the west coast of Flinders Island NW across to Deal. We were quite lucky with the wind and managed to carry 'big bird' (our bright yellow spinnaker) for much of the leg. Some of the other cruising boats with us were not so lucky, with only 4 knots of wind they motored all but 40minutes of the 6hour trip. We motor sailed into Murray Pass between Deal and Erith Islands and anchored in what has to be the most scenic anchorage we have so far encountered.

Approaching Deal Island


We are in east cove near the lighthouse jetty and last night enjoyed a bbq on the shore with the other 6 boats. We even got to watch the penguins come ashore last night soon after dinner. They are so tiny and very timid.

Penguin burrows..do you call them burrows????

A short walk up from our anchorage is the old lighthouse settlement. The lighthouse on Deal island is no longer operational but caretakers, organised by The Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife live on the island for 3 month stints. This morning I along with the other cruisers walked up to the old settlement where they have a small museum in the old colonial style building. Peter being Peter has injured his toe and isn't able to walk so he stayed on the boat (he is taking antibiotics and is in a bit of pain but you don't want to know what he did it will make you sick). From there it was a 8km return walk to the lighthouse which completely killed my knees. We had the key from the caretaker so were able to walk right up to the top of lighthouse and out onto the platform surrounding it where we got a fantastic view. There were low clouds passing over the hills obscuring our view at times (this apparently is why the lighthouse was closed because someone felt it was too often in the clouds).
The view from the lighthouse

The settlement


Deal Island is very isolated, there are no tourist boats coming out this way so I was very surprised to see a guest book in the museum. We signed our names and wrote the names of our yachts, above our group was a whole lot of boats named 'Kayak', yep your right they were kayaks paddled all the way from Wilsons Promontory on the mainland. (We are called 'mainlanders' by all the Tassies!) The other silly thing people have done which is recorded in the museum is run from the jetty near our anchorage up through the settlement and all the way to the lighthouse. The record is somewhere around 18 minutes and 2 seconds. I think it took us longer then that to walk up to the settlement.

Whilst I was gone Peter made some loaves of bread, washed up and did a bit of boat fixing stuff. This afternoon I have made chocolate muffins (packet mix) and hand washed some clothing which is now drying in the cockpit. Tonight Peter is making pizza for dinner....yum. Homemade bases and all. And for all those people wondering we are eating very well. Whilst in Hobart we did some grocery shopping, went to the Salamanca Market Fruit Store and also a butcher. At the butchers we ordered meat for 3 weeks (the length of the cruise) and then they vacuum seal packaged and froze it all into meal size portions which we picked up a few days later and put in the freezer on the boat. So easy. We have now pretty much run out of fresh fruit and vegetables apart from carrots, potatoes and onions but we have some canned beans and things like that to try out.

We are expecting a change tonight so we are going to move across Murrays Pass to west cove on Erith Island. Actually Peter just turned the motor on so looks like we are going now.

Sarah, thank you for the Australia Day package. We shared the mint slices on the motor cruiser "Masterpiece" and the Tim Tams on 37ft Bavaria "Nirvana".

Hope everyone is well, miss you all lots. Please email us, I love getting emails telling me what everyone is up to! vhn6672'at'sailmail.com
We wont have internet access until we get back to Hobart but I will post some pics then.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see:

http://www.sailmail.com