Watt Sailing Adventure: Rivoli Bay

What a day we have had today!

We left the pretty little town of Robe early this morning when the tide was at its peak. Seems all our concerns about Robe boat harbour were quite unfounded. The harbour is not at all hard to enter or leave from, but with a deeper keeled-vessel it is important to be aware of tides and to proceed when the tide is either high or close to high. During next year, 2012, the council is going to dredge the entrance to eliminate even this requirement.  The town marina is inexpensive and showers and toilets are clean and fine. Michael, the marina manager was also very helpful, offering to take Peter to the service station at the other end of town to refill our gas bottle before we left.  So all in all our time in Robe was lovely.

We started out the day fine, the sun shone, the sea, which was a gorgeous shimmering green offered only a low swell and we spent the first little while sailing comfortably, watching for the cray-pots that we expected to find dotted along our way.

We knew it would be a day of motor sailing, we were expecting south easterly winds in our faces all day, but we had wanted to get going and didn’t mind using the motor to assist our sailing. Our plan was to take 3 days to get to Port Fairy, the first stop we would make in Victoria, calling in at Southend on Rivoli Bay tonight, then Port Mc Donall tomorrow and then finally into Port Fairy on Sunday.  We planned to sail in the day then drop anchor each evening. Each day would be an easy sail that way and not hard work.

Sailing and plans simply don’t seem to mesh together though!  We always have several back-up plans – alternatives to try if the conditions make our way difficult, or too slow for the planned stop-over. Just as well! This time the problem, aside from the ever-present cray-pots, was the wind. To avoid as many pots as possible we sailed out wide – looking to head into deeper water where we thought there would be fewer – this wasn’t the case! So along with watching for the pots we now had further to sail. Even that wasn’t too bad. It really got tricky later in the afternoon when the wind really picked up.

By around 2pm we could see the headland of the bay we intended to drop anchor in, the south end of Rivoli Bay – called Southend. But it took us to 5 pm to get there! The expected 5 – 10 knot of south easterly wind built to 20 knot and was relentless in pushing us away from the bay. For about 2 hours we were getting only 1 – 1.5 knot of forward progress!  It was slow work, with the engine on and the sails down to ensure our windage was as low as possible and just ahead a reef to avoid. A great deal of our movement during this time was sideways – yawing for the technical minded. The swell was getting up to 3 ½ and 4 meters and both the children were feeling unwell.  Tension was high and still the headland was just ahead of us, elusive and almost mocking us as we struggled to make any headway at all!

We all handle stress in different ways and one of the things this sailing journey we are on is giving us is a crash course in adjusting to each others ways and styles! Peter is a very out-ward facing person when it comes to stress management – he says what he is feeling, sometimes loudly, then it has all dissipated and his head is clear to think and process. Me, well I’m more of an internal processor – so it is sometimes amusing when we look back, to see how different our ways of doing things can be! There was a moment, as things were feeling very frustrating, when we were barely moving at all, when Peter decided to drop the sails. While he was out at the front of the boat  a down-haul cord broke free, flapping furiously in the stiff breeze, threatening to wrap itself tightly around the prop if not quickly pulled in. We had one of those ‘Get that rope’ moments – have you any idea how many ropes we have on Argos – it’s about 35 and suddenly in that moment, without knowing what was happening, when I was in the cockpit watching for cray-pots, I had to figure out which rope was causing a problem, and then stop it! It’s always interesting when we have those moments!

Eventually, after having a wonderful opportunity to build our stores of patience we reached the point where we could turn into the bay and head in a different direction. No more wind in our faces. Suddenly we made great progress and before long were in past the headland in a sheltered and pretty bay. It was 5pm. We had left Robe this morning at 5am so we were pretty tired. But we had struggled and won! No one had died. The boat hadn’t hit any reefs or rocks. We hadn’t collected any cray-pots. We arrived feeling tired but pleased with ourselves.

The next job was to drop anchor. It looked as if the whole bay had a sandy bottom so we didn’t expect it to be hard. I don’t like expectations!

Turns out there are several patches of weed and everywhere we tried to drop the anchor was – yes you guessed – weed! Nearby though was a swing mooring buoy - all the cray-boats were in so we figured it wasn’t in use at the moment. So we thought we would pick it up. We have two boat hooks on board – one that is wooden and long and that I can reach with, and one that is stronger but shorter that I can’t reach with. So I had the long one, had the mooring line in it and all was looking fine – and then, well then the boat didn’t stop and although Peter had come up to keep a hold of the line, the boat still didn’t stop and before we knew it the boat hook snapped in half as it bent against the hull!

Now only Peter could reach to pick up the line, which needless to say had been dropped as the boat kept slowly moving forwards! We had been so focussed on getting the mooring buoy up that no one had thought to take the engine out of gear! Ah well, these things happen! But now, because only Peter could reach with the boat hook, when we came back around to try to pick it up again, I had to steer. Well I can steer – but it’s pretty hard to steer with accuracy when you can’t see the mooring buoy and can’t hear what is being yelled at you! So we tried a few times….and then finally got close enough for Peter to hook it up, and yes, I got the engine into idle and – well the rest was easy!

No stress this time though – it was just a job to be done one way or another and as we learned early on in mooring Argos, if we get it right the first time that’s all good and if we don’t – it’s a learning exercise.

We decided to give ourselves a day off tomorrow and stay in this bay rather than head back off into similar conditions. If the wind is good we will keep going and head into Port McDonall on Sunday. And in the meantime, if the wind dies down we will spend some time exploring the bay.