Hill Bay to Avoid Bay   30/3/15

Perfect one day, perfect the next. Beware of complacency. With the evening unfolding on Calista in Hill Bay, our sanguine comforts and sense of security was about to be sullied, turning an anticipated night to remember into one of unwanted challenge. First, just on sunset, with us absorbing the last light of day, Cookie slapped her leg, then again, then uttered the clarion call…’mozzies!” Not a mangrove or a swamp in miles and there we were, under attack, ducking below and assembling our defences. Back in Streaky Bay, fly spray sat atop of our shopping list, following the Battle of Davenport Creek, where our vaporised artillery had been exhausted in the conflict. Now, try as we might, and with a squadron of the horrid insects having followed us below, the can of spray we were sure had been purchased was nowhere to be found. With our counter attack limited, it was battle on again, with hostilities continuing on through the night.

Then, as the tide filled and the small swells overwhelmed the natural breakwater, we rolled, and rolled. Not terribly, but enough to see mugs replace wine glasses for the evening repast. With this instability, which disappeared later when the tide fell, Cookie abandoned the forepeak berth, for sleeping in her ‘nest” amidships, where she gained stability but in the end limited sleep, due to the refusal of the last of the last of the mosquitoes to be found, cornered and despatched.

"The Nest"

 

By 3am, with airborne and anchorage peace at last prevailing, with a light wind shift came a grinding and crunching noise, like a novice driver befuddled by clutch pedals and gear levers. It was surely from the anchor chain, and equally as surely, the chain had grappled with a chunk of limestone below on the bottom. Try as we might to ignore it, this discordant scraping, repeated with metronomic certainty every few minutes thereafter, ensured that, at dawn, we emerged, bleary eyed, to tackle the problem, and hopefully rectify it. A stuck anchor chain, and maybe worse, a stuck anchor is one of those things in a cruising life you do all you can to avoid. When setting an anchor on an unknown bottom we attach a "trip line" and buoy to the head of our anchor so that if worst comes to worst we can try to extricate it by pulling it out "backwards", via the trip line and buoy. Here at Hill Bay one crucial thing was in our favour. Even in the early morning light, we could see the anchor chain, and see that we were just abeam of our anchor, with the chain stretching forward, from it and from us, in the shape of a a bobby pin, with the bight of the chain around a gnarl somewhere ahead. By releasing a little more chain, and driving in an arc to “unwind” the obstruction, we were free. We were lucky, too!

Now free of impediments and with our precious anchor on board, we used our track on the chart plotter to make our way out of Hill Bay to the open sea. The weather was predicted to be wonderful for all things except sailing. Sunny, light airs and smooth seas would make the day picture perfect. Café Calista was promptly open for business and the enticing aromas of cheese and tomato jaffles and brewed coffee soon wafted from the galley into the cockpit. Champagne flutes would have sat in perfect stability in the cockpit, as we cleared Point Drummond, and, with Rocky Island and the broad expanse leading to Coffin Bay somewhere to port, we made for Point Sir Isaac, with an intention of anchoring later in the day in the familiar confines of Avoid Bay.

Dolphin Escorts

 

With the ocean so convivial and the day so fine it was easy to feel the need to make the absolute most of this gift from the Bureau. As noon neared, and, abeam of the point of the Coffin Bay Peninsula, the haunting peaks of Greenly Island became prominent off our starboard bow. What was that “come hither” line from South Pacific….. was it something like come to me my special isle? To this point we had reconciled ourselves to missing Greenly Island, Pearson’s “twin”, on this voyage, due to a host of things that now seemed to recede in importance. There was Greenly. Come to me, my special isle. Crew meetings and decisions arising from them have rarely been as brief or as emphatic as this one! Alter course to starboard…make for Greenly Island was the call. The detour to Greenly, which was 17 miles out to sea when we altered course, would cost us many sea miles and it would mean us arriving at Avoid Bay after dark, but this anchorage was familiar to us and something that would not have been contemplated early in our journey, was now within our capacity. Even the dolphins agreed, for as we rounded on our new heading for Bali Hai, they gathered in numbers at the bow, and with the sea clear to the plumbed depths it was as though these wonderful creatures were swimming in suspension. Greenly Island dead ahead, less than four hours to go!

On a pond smooth, placid sea, with puffs of cumulus like cotton wool against an azure sky, Greenly Island rose as though a conjurer was at work. No failed sponge was Greenly! Proud, prominent and spectacular was its visage. The island is like two conical bluffs, of immense proportions; almost joined at the hip, with a companion islet just away to the South East. As we eased into the “v” between the two portions of the island, it was too imposing to film, too sublime to forget. New Zealand Fur Seals broke the silence with their garrolous cries, as we sat in peace on a limpid sea, gently rising and falling on the ever moving sea whilst the granite buttresses of Greenly towered overhead. Like at Pearson, it was sobering to contemplate the forces at work over the ages that it had taken to make Greenly Island as we see it today. Hand forged by Nature. It was not hard to imagine Sir David Attenborough, emerging from the foliage up on the peak saying something like “..and here on a remote and desolate island off the Southern Coast of Australia, there is an island that has been here since the dawn of time…..”

 

With the afternoon hurrying on, the captivating outline of Greenly Island, refused to recede astern of us, and we left the equally enticing Perforated and Four Hummocks Islands to starboard, as Point Avoid, with Price Island seaward of it, thankfully manifested themselves off our bow. With night falling and a half-moon already aloft, we supped in the cockpit as these extraordinary islands lost substance in the gloom. Then as we rounded the reef that protects the Point Avoid anchorage, well into the night, we resolved to pick up a mooring if one was available and head below to encourage the kettle, and to draw a celebratory measure from the ship’s supply of essence of Scotland. As it turned out Avoid Bay was devoid of company, a mooring was there for the taking, and we had it to ourselves. Did I hear something to awaken me in the forepeak in the dead of night, apart from the penguins ashore? Was it a voice; did it say…special island…come to me. ?