Photo shows the aptly named Twofold Bay at Eden, near the southern end of the East Coast of Australia

What Australasian yachtie has not heard of Eden? It's the last town on the east coast of Australia before the huge continent turns sharply westwards around Cape Howe along Bass Strait towards Melbourne and Adelaide.

More than just being a little, somewhat depressed service town, it has a tiny, deep water port and it's easy to approach, more or less, whatever the weather. That's unusual along a coast which is mainly endowed with often tricky barred river entrances.



Eden's tiny deep water port. Yachts moored on the right.


Yachties hang out here when heading to and from the Bass Strait and especially Tasmania. Sensible tactics involve a wait for a northerly to make the one to day crossing across the often turbulent Strait. Going North, the wait is for a southerly. The passage round to Melbourne is tricky because there is little shelter along the Victorian coast. Gabo Island, Wilson's Prom and Westernport are about all there is.

Every year on Boxing Day, yachts in the Sydney to Hobart stream towards the South. The entrance to Bass Strait just south of here is often their undoing. It's a rare race in which at least a few yachts don't limp into Eden or arrive under tow, dismasted, to lick their wounds.

From Eden, we head inland into Victoria. There isn't much in the way of services before the town of Orbost, 180 km away, so we hope our "diablo rojos" hold up! We can now say we have (well, almost) travelled the entire length of the east coast under our own steam! We have sailed from Cape York in the far north of Queensland to Yamba in NSW and cycled from Bundaberg to Eden!