Last night we were sitting cosily ensconced in the cabin, connected to electricity via a long power cord snaking from 2XS, over Osprey, and onto the accommodating Triabunna marina switchboard when we heard banging and yoo-hooing. Visitors! Well how very thrilling!! It was our friends Richard and Meriloy, on their way back to Hobart from Bicheno. However did they know where to find us? Well via this blog, ofcourse! I was quite overwhelmed…yes I know we have only been gone a very short number of days, but I do feel as if we have sailed off the end of the known universe. Not so!!

They came in for a drink, and then we all trotted the twenty metres to the pub, with its log fire and cheery traditional menu and friendly pub owners. We talked about all manner of things, particularly, ofcourse, things to do with the sea in its many manifestations. Meriloy did her diving course many years ago, in June, in the Maldives…where it was warm. I mean not just warm but HOT, tropical, balmy… She came back to Tasmania very enthusiastic; keen to dive dive DIVE. So she joined a dive club and found herself in a small Zodiac, powering across Fortescue Bay in July. In our Tasmanian WINTRY July. It was actually snowing on the beach, while in the Zodiac…it was hailing… This made her gasp and stretch her eyes, as you can imagine, and then suddenly there she was, diving down to 28 metres in the kelp forest. (No, sadly, the kelp forest is no longer in Fortescue Bay, it is a thing of yesteryear…) One would imagine that she would have emerged from the water shuddering, shivering and saying NEVER again, but in fact it was so breathtakingly beautiful and magical that she came out with a warm glow.

We spent the morning in Triabunna. Pete got some very nifty useful steps welded onto the boat by lovely Jamie Spencer, so we can now ascend to the roof with grace and dignity instead of heaving, slipping, and sliding up and down. And I went for a bike ride – weehee! I love my bike! I recommend for everyone to go to Ken Selfs’ in Elizabeth Street Hobart and buy a bike. Fun fun fun! Especially fun riding in Triabunna, where there seems to be no traffic at all. I got a bit lost – how is this possible, in such a very small town, I hear you cry… - and I ended up where I really didn’t want to be, on the Tasman Highway. But no log trucks whizzed by; in fact nothing at all whizzed by, and I got back into Triabunna township to nod cheerily at the local policeman – very pleased I was that Pete had insisted that I wear my helmet…I had tried to sneak off without it…

I got back to Osprey and was just getting off my bike when…toot toot…there was Lynne, Pete’s sister, on her way to a meeting in Swansea!! Once again I was wildly excited, although she was only with us or five minutes…another manifestation from my real life…

We left Triabunna around lunchtime, heading for Wineglass Bay. No I am no good at descriptive writing; you can look it up in a travelogue-type book. But I can tell you…it was so breathtakingly beautiful I nearly cried, especially when we went past Schouten island. Pete was inside doing important things on his computer; I was in charge of checking the charts and steering the boat, and also, most importantly, in charge of the ipod. I played a few snippets of Rektango as we went past the dramatic ochre cliffs of Schouten Island, and I must find Tania Bosak’s email address and tell her what a wonderful combination this was.

It was just about dark when we came into Wineglass Bay. We are nestled right in the far corner, and once again it is all so beautiful it makes me cry…
I don’t think I have any internet connection here…but I will write a less soppy story about Wineglass Bay in case I am descending too far into bathos…
Maybe it isn’t exactly the way I was told this story…my source is not always (ahem) accurate…but I liked to think it is true. A certain bushwalker from Hobart, absent-minded to an extreme degree, bewhiskered and bespectacled, was walking along Wineglass Bay beach one wintry day when he espied a neatly dressed woman on the dunes, wearing a headscarf. He blinked a bit and thought, “Oh yes, a friend of my mother’s!” So he lumbered up to her and talked about the weather, as you do. Then as he walked away he noticed men in dark suits…and out in the bay…the royal yacht Britannia…Whenever I see Our Liz on the TV I like to think she had this encounter, on a far-flung breach in the Antipodes, with an eccentric bearded bushwalker who had no idea who she was…