After a couple of years being moored down in Tasmania, it was time for Heart of Gold to sail north, closer to home. This post skips ahead from the last Flinders Island blog post. Many adventures were had sailing the waters of Tasmania for a couple of years, those stories will come later.

Before setting off, there were a few boat jobs to be done including re-tensioning the rig and installing a new gas solenoid.

I’d never had the rig properly tensioned on Heart of Gold since the relaunch. We tightened the stays when we stepped the mast to what we felt seemed right and hadn’t adjusted them much since. After a couple seasons sailing in Tassie including a Bass Strait crossing, the mast was ‘pumping’ a little whilst going to windward in strong winds (say 23 - 28 knots) with the new staysail on the furler. In those conditions I would run two reefs in the main and play with the staysail area depending on strength. On one occasion in spring we were sailing down to Southport into a strong south westerly and the pumping was noticable. We tacked into a 20+ knot headwind entering Southport on dark, where a large boat from the fish farms was following behind us and used their floodlights to light up the passage as we came into port.

After noticing the flex in the mast and feeling the reverberations throughout the boat, I wanted to have full confidence before crossing Bass Strait again so I had a rigger come down to re-tension the rig properly before setting off. There were some new, small cracks above the compression arch from where the mast had been pumping. I also had a new aluminium spinnaker pole made up.

I sailed up from Kettering to Hobart to meet Beck who was coming to cruise the East Coast for a couple of weeks. I’d stayed a couple of times at the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania which was a great base right in town. Hobart is one of those historical port cities that has a real connection to the sea and a lot of history to Australia’s seafaring past. It’s a great place to explore on foot from the marina.

Little garfish being chased by something bigger; and a Little penguin