I'm recovering from a dose of the 'Umbles. I've had it before, a long time ago, and fortunately recovered, but more of that later.

Avid readers or indeed, just casual visitors will possibly know we left Port Davey, once again braving the Southern Ocean (have I mentioned that before?), to make the trip back to east coast Tasmania.

Unlike our 12 hours of motoring to get there, we had a fine breeze, right up the chuff, and scooted around the various headlands making 8-9 knots in 25 - 30ish winds. The pilot book says to give these headlands a "good offing" and that's just dandy if you can be bothered with the palaver of gybing in four metre seas and when it's a bit blowy. Or maybe we were just lazy. Bottom line is we had a nail biting fifty miles, essentially dead downwind, but really, by the lee most of the time, expecting to test our preventers at any minute. On reflection, we were just being lazy but we did get a really good close-up look at the rocks as we scraped around each headland.

Port Davey was impressive. After passing the wild cliffs of southern Tassie you weave your way around the rocks to find sheltered bays nestling under high peaks with the Bathurst Channel cutting an eight mile swathe through the mountains, opening out into a giant pool about two miles in diameter. It is very like Scotland, just add rain. But no pubs. Aaargh. But they did have a million dollar, eco-friendly, "long drop". How you can spend a million on a lavvie is beyond me. Or indeed why.

From the big pool, if you're bold or shallow draft, but really, best in someone else's boat, you can pick your way another few miles up the Meleleuca Channel. We did it by dinghy and glad we did as we picked the wrong side of the sticks that serve as navigation markers and stuffed ourselves up on the mud. The channel takes you to the landing strip into which fly the hardy walkers or maybe the lazy walkers, the hardy guys and gals having walked the six days from Recherche Bay.

If you added rain, it could have been Rannoch Moor. We even had snow on the tops and despite the best efforts of the Webasto, it was here I think I got the Southern Tasmanian Umbles.

"STU" can be an early indication of the onset of hypothermia. A fairly serious condition this far from "civilisation". According to the pilot book, the condition is identified by mumbles, grumbles, fumbles and stumbles.

The problem is, Anne says she won't be able to tell whether I've hypothermia or it's just normal.