Hobart-In the rear-view mirror
We were sort of sad leaving Hobart earlier yesterday afternoon. It, along with the rest of Tasmania, is a magical place. We have been here since shortly before 2020 began, perhaps ten to fifteen minutes before the New Year. When we crossed the finish line of the Rolex Sydney Hobart race less than a minute after midnight, we had no idea what a special part of the world we had entered. It has been a long time since my last post, partly due to inertia (I will do that later) partly due to not quite knowing what I wanted to say and partly due to being really busy. Thus, this is intended to catch up with what has been going on, and let everyone know we are on the move. Be patient and read on, it will all be there.
So, what the hell have we been doing for 2.5 months? First off, we were exhausted after the virtually non-stop effort to get the boat prepared and qualified to race. That actually started in Brisbane, continued unabated in Sydney and then we raced to Hobart. One of our crew was sneezing and coughing, allegedly due to allergies, yet both Charlene and I came down with a cold shortly after we arrived. For at least a couple of weeks we simply rested, read books, watched movies and generally caught our breath. There were a few boat bits needing attention after the race, so we had that taken care of at Prince of Wales Bay, just about 4 miles up-river from Hobart.
While the work was being done, and we had recovered from our colds, we rented a camper van (same make and model as we had in New Zealand a year ago) and drove around the more inaccessible spots in Tasmania. Not all the places we visited were inaccessible by boat, they were on the west coast of Tasmania which would expose us to the full force of the Southern Ocean should we have chosen to sail that way. The trip south from Hobart and around the west coast can take 2 to 3 months if you wait for decent weather at one of the very few ports that are along that coast. So, we were able to explore much of it in the camper van (in the US it could be called a small RV) and we were able to sneak the cats into the van so had no worries about who would care for them.
One other thing we did was go to the Old Kempton Whiskey Distillery. The purpose of that particular stop was to pick up a very special bottle of single malt whiskey. The owner of the distillery had loaded two casks of this very special single malt aboard his boat for ballast, sailed it from Hobart to Sydney, then participated in the race back to Hobart. He kindly offered the skippers of each boat the opportunity to purchase either a bottle of the Commodore or Captains single malt for about $600 Australian. We of course had been happy to order a bottle of the Captains version and had to go to the distillery to pick it up. The difference in the two is simply the casks they were aged in. It sits, unopened, and likely never to be opened, in a special place on the boat. Otherwise our visit there was quite delightful, with a young man playing guitar and singing along with a decent lunch. As we were leaving, we met the young guitar player, his new bride and his parents. I mention this only as one example of the openness and friendliness of all the people on this island. We talked for nearly an hour.
We recently made friends with a new boat neighbor, another incidence of complete strangers befriending us. A couple in similar circumstances, that is to say both accomplished sailors, who met later in life and are now sailing together. She has done a couple of circumnavigations on her own boat (a catamaran) and he on his monohull. Wonderful people who drove us around for the better part of the day showing us some local points of interest. She is Scottish and spent a good part of her adult life in Hong Kong, he is a native of Tasmania. I guess the point of this is to emphasize the notion that this life has opened up experiences and the opportunity to meet people I never imagined I would have had.
In Hobart Charlene was able to connect with a number of women, some from the Facebook Group, Women Who Sail and others from different pages she frequents. We find the local people we meet through these networks have valuable information for our current and future travels.
One other big event in our months of leisure was a visit from Charlene's friend Diane, and her partner, Jen, currently from Melbourne and more recently from Washington DC. The highlight (other than the great company and conversations) was a day spent at the MONA. That is an extraordinary museum of "Old and New Art". It is mostly underground though it sits on a point of land overlooking the river, so it is hard to tell how far underground you actually are. It has been created by a guy with a few bucks and a vineyard in which he grows grapes for his winery. In a few hours I saw more unusual art than I have seen in a lifetime. Most was not what you might see in a contemporary art museum, and the entire experience was designed to disorient anyone walking through. One part was particularly interesting; to move from one exhibit to another, there was a tunnel, which was also art. It was lit with fluorescent (I think) lights which turned out to be red in one direction and green coming back. The lighting was such that it was a bit like walking in a fog; the vague outlines of the tunnel were visible, as was a walkway. The interesting part was that a staff member was stationed at either end of the tunnel, warning everyone that they must stay on the paved walkway, otherwise you would risk stepping into a deep recess (sort of like a ditch). If you choose to know more you can search for MONA, Tasmania, AU.
Today we are anchored in Port Arthur, home of one of the early prison colonies in Australia. Many of the buildings, most of which were built around 1830 are still standing. From what I have read it was home to the worst of the worst, it housed, separately, men, women and boys. All originally were convicts in Great Britain, first shipped to Australia, and for those who were either difficult or had taken up criminal behavior again, they were shipped to Tasmania, which had several prisons or penal colonies. Port Arthur was for the most difficult and they relied on psychological means instead of the traditional lashing, to improve behavior. Mostly they used solitary confinement and similar techniques. Tonight, we will take the evening ghost tour, which from what I have heard is pretty scary.
I would be remiss if I did not mention what is going on here with respect to the virus, Covid 19 or whatever it is being called today. First of all, we are quite safe in that we live on board a sailboat which is in a way isolated from the community. We do see and socialize with others, most of whom are also liveaboard sailors, though some are not. Our plan was to go to Indonesia in July, and we are proceeding under the assumption that we will be able to do so with little to no risk and the ability to return to a first world country when the time comes. We are as much in the dark as everyone else as to how this scenario will ultimately play out, so our plan is simply to decide in early July that either it is safe to travel and we will have no issues with closed borders, or it is not. If the later, we will stay in Australia, on the boat and away from crowded places as long as we can. I may be overly optimistic yet my hope is this is a seasonal illness and as the weather in the northern hemisphere warms it will diminish. Only time will tell. Since we are starting a several days passage to Sydney I will post as often as possible......................More later