The Bass Strait

0700 position 40-05S 149-38E. Crossing the Bass Strait. 202 miles to Tasman Island

The Bass Strait is notorious for bad weather. Southerly busters, low pressure systems that roll in off of the southern Indian Ocean, come through the strait regularly and punish anybody who is unlucky enough to be there when they do. The Sydney-Hobart Race fleet gets smashed by a buster every couple of years as we did in 1977 when I sailed in the race. That year one third of the 150 boat fleet retired due to damage or sea sickness. We broke our forestay on Bravura, but jury rigged it and when we finished in Hobart the crowd on the dock was ooohing and aaahing and pointing at our bow. The aluminum skin of the boat was dented between the frames over the front third of the boat from falling off of the waves while pounding to windward in the Bass Strait. We couldn't see the bow from aboard the boat and had no idea she had been damaged.

We are not interested in that kind of drama on Van Diemen. That's why we have been playing such close attention to the weather forecasts. It is looking like we will be able to sneak south between busters, but there is still usually some fun in the Bass Strait. Yesterday the wind came out of the south and we pounded to windward for a few hours until it died off again. This morning we are beam reaching along under full jib and reefed mainsail right on course. If the gribs are to be believed we will continue to get lifted all day and should be easy going from here on in.

It is pretty darn cold out here, particularly in the early morning hours. We are all bundled up in wool hats, gloves, fleece, and foul weather gear when it is raining. It rained alot yesterday. The water temperature is down to sixty one degrees F, twenty five degrees colder than it was in the Marquesas a couple of months ago. We're not in the tropics anymore! I put on my foul weather pants for the first time in years and had on the boots Lori insisted I bring as well. I'm glad I brought them now. Thank you Sweetie!

To fight off the chill yesterday morning I made some oatmeal with raisins and Honey Corstorphine's candied walnuts for breakfast to warm us up. It did the trick, and also got Michael's attention. The walnuts hadn't been on his radar. During the afternoon he used some of them to bake cookies.

Michael, Geoff, and I saw the green flash at sunset last night. We were powering along in zero wind and an almost flat sea. A couple of hours later Van Diemen's voyage odometer hit 10,000 nautical miles.

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