VDLC 2015 Day 22 23 24

Fargo was first to the jetty at St John Falls in the mid morning of the previous day so now we spent the night rafted up with Nicstar, Pretty Woman and Joule outside us with just enough room for any float plane to moor at the pontoon attached on the downstream side. It was a quiet morning with the weather taking a turn for the worse being blustery with occasional showers keeping the float planes away.
Mark B and I took the opportunity for a second walk down to the barracks finding our lone kayaker had moved on in the early morning after making the most of the dry camp spot. While the barracks are clean and dry they will not stay that way if they don’t get some much needed maintenance to doors and windows.
Mid morning we headed downstream trying in vain to spot former sites of Lime Kiln structures . The forest is doing a good job of overwhelming man’s endeavours. At Eagle Creek several of us put ashore to inspect the camp site and the start of the walk. Suffice it to say the 4 kayakers there before us looked thoroughly wet and miserable camping a bare 5-10 cms above the water table in dark dripping forest . Their pathetic attempt at a camp fire had been hastily covered over lest we be rangers bringing the full force of the law down on their bedraggled selves.
The walk into the hinterland would have been more of a wade as the creeks had a good flow and the log bridges were less than sturdy.
We beat a hasty and somewhat awkward retreat back to “Fargo” as it became obvious her anchor was not holding and the blustery swirling breeze and driving squalls made life difficult for the dinghy crew trying to rendezvous mid stream.
We timed our journey to arrive at “Heritage Landing” after the day's cruise boats had been and gone. With difficulty made ourselves fast to their jetty. The structure of which is custom designed to suit the big high sided catamarans not our low profile sloop. Nonetheless we had a pleasant walk around the boardwalk admiring the forest giants both standing and decaying and were overloaded with botanical information which is interesting but I must admit I struggle to remember.
The next part of the journey was truly memorable as we motored the final part of the Gordon to meet the harbour just in time to greet a fresh breeze from the North West.
This wind shift gave us a romp of a sail on a beam reach up to our next anchorage at Farm Cove. Truly one of the best big boat sails I have had. With the wind constant between 24 and 32 knots we were reaching a maximum boat speed of 8.2 knots, averaging 7 knots. The accompanying rain kept the rest of the crew below deck most of the time but I was exhilarated to be truly sailing at good speed in fresh conditions with “Fargo” well balanced and light at the helm.
We anchored in company with “Great Sandy” at Farm Cove - an all weather anchorage with a small dingy jetty at the head of the cove. Duncan fed us a fine repast of salmon chips and peas as we settled down for the evening.
Day 23 or March 5th
Morning found us emptying our rain filled dinghy while “ Great Sandy” left our quiet anchorage for the delights of Strahan. Tony and Duncan went for a brief beach walk to the beach on the Macquarie Harbour - a short walk thru the forest at the head of our bay. They collected more rope and debris discarded from the fish farms. A monumental issue in these parts as it seems our fish farms when it comes to discarded items are not the model corporate citizens their marketing would have us believe.
We headed south to Birch’s Inlet in the cold and rain with a midday temp of only 12 C - a far cry from the 30 C experienced at this same stage of VDLC 2012.
Anchoring for lunch at Hawk’s Nest Cove we enjoyed another of Duncan’s famous soups with bread lovingly prepared by Mark B. With the weather forecast precluding a trip further down the inlet the skipper elected to motor up the “Harbour” to double Cove. This proved to be a quiet anchorage but the entry way is a bit of a concern as the depth sounder was gyrating from 7 m to 11m then to 0m in the space of a slowly traversed boat length. We did not touch or scrape and “Fargo” made it into the depths of the bay to a reliable 2.5m of anchorage near another “locals” jetty at the site of an old forestry camp.
Through the evening wind and rain rattled the tall trees around the bay while over head bare zephys making it thru the rigging tucked deep as we were in the snug cove.
I became a bit frustrated here as my computer failed and I am trying to write this blog some months later from diary notes. Day 24 March 6
Rain stopped early in the morning leaving us in patchy sunshine to explore the tall E. regnans (Mountain Ash) to the west . The rickety jetty lead us to an historic logging area similar to the St Johns Falls snigging tracks where once foresters and their heavy horses would have dragged the carcasses of forest giants to the bay for loading or rafting to mills at Strahan.
Tony and Duncan explored uphill in the hope of finding a track leading further west while Barrie and I took the dingy to the beach at the head of the bay and the obvious historic campsite there.
Babbling brooks at either end of the pretty sandy beach were feeding sites for the resident Azure Kingfishers which gave us fleeting glimpses of their bobbing and starting colour. I like to think they thanked us for removing some of the human rubbish from the beach but they declined to stay still enough for a photograph.
Our departure from this idyllic spot found us traversing deep water all the way out to the harbour proper with no sign of the previously encountered shallows although we could not have been more that a boat length away from our previous night’s track .
Lunch enroute to Strahan saw us get to anchor in time to attend to laundry and make a booking for an adventure with King River Rafting as well as nursing my laptop back to life long enough to upload 3 blog posts. Mark B, Barrie and I enjoyed a few celebratory beverages to wash down a gourmet pizza in a local cafe.