We lived the dream and survived :-)

Venture was sold back in March 2020.  Unfortunately, due to the mess that 2020 is for everyone, the new owners were not able to pick her up from Adelaide to take her back to Apollo Bay in Victoria.  So we had our last sail end of July to deliver her to the new owners.

We sailed her to Portland where they took over and sailed back to her new home in Apollo Bay a couple of days ago. 

Here's what they said of their trip.

"Venture sailed like a champion! We left Portland with 1 reef in the main and yankee / staysail up. Smooth ride (beam reach virtually all the way) but wind picked up quite a bit overnight and we were making way much faster than I had anticipated. My trip plan was based on 5knts, we were ripping along - 6 then 7 the 8+ knots even with staysail furled. Then as we approached and rounded Cape Otway the wind really picked up (20-23 knots) so we just ran on the reefed main. I was amazed at how well she sailed and handled the sea just on the main. Took it in her stride [snip]. All good learning about how she sails though. At one stage we were topping 9-10 knots (spilling most of the wind off the main). Auto helm handled it really well too"

I'm sure they will be happy with her.  She looked after us for 7 years or so and it was a sad day when we took down our house flag and left her behind.

Leaving Macquarie Harbour.

Back out through Hells Gate.

We're heading down to Port Davey now, 100nm down the east coast after an amazing experience in Macquarie Harbour and the Gordon River.

We'll be out of touch for another week or so.

Reflections on the Gordon River

On our way around Tassie, we stopped in Macquarie Harbour for a while.  This is a massive harbour on the west coast of Tassie 16 times the size of Sydney Harbour surrounded by wilderness.

The Gordon River flows into this harbour and you can travel 20 miles up the river through some pretty impressive scenery with double the impact.

The river water is dark brown, almost black due to tannins in the water from the temperate rain forest vegetation which when the river is still, give amazing reflections.  More on Macquarie harbour in other posts but I thought a collection of reflections worth a post by itself.

Location: Southwest TAS 7139, Australia
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Macquarie Harbour - Kelly Basin

This was our first stop from Strahan in Macquarie Harbour.  It's a large bay at the Eastern end of the harbour with some really interesting walks through the areas history.

We spent 2 days there exploring the abandoned towns of East and West Pillinger which were once thriving communities housing hundreds of people and included quarries, timber mills and smelting works.  But it only lasted about 20 years all told from around 1890 to 1910!  It was abandoned when Strahan was chosen as the main port in the harbour.

There's a bush camp near where we anchored in a very sheltered spot at the south east end of the bay called "Joes Corner".

Patterns in the sand

A

An Inch ant :-)

We flew the drone there and Terry actually caught it :-)

East Pillinger is overgrown but the walks through the temperate rain forest are just spectacular.

We took shelter in the dunny when the rains came :-)

There was a cache in a wall in one of the buildings.  The USB drive held copies of the photos inside.  We added some that we took in East Pillinger.

We found a cache in one of the buildings..

An old railway carriage

Location: Kelly Basin Track, Southwest TAS 7139, Australia
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