I am sailing

Sailing morning today. We had booked “passage”, if you can call a 90 minute river sail such, on the Lady Nelson for 11am. Having arrived early to ensure our spot (turns out we were 5 of the 7 passengers and they have lifejackets for 50, although that would be somewhat squeezy) we had a chance to go around and inspect more of the arrived Sydney – Hobart fleet. And, as it turned out the Melbourne – Hobart also there, but in somewhat smaller numbers.

While there were already about 40 boats home, it was pretty much peak arrival time, with probably a dozen or more sailing up to the line and dropping sails while we were out and about on the river and on the wharf. Already in port were the big names with big boats to match, Loyal, Brindabella, Wild Oats, but the vast bulk of the fleet are not well known. The “Clipper” round-the-world race makes the Sydney – Hobart one of its legs and it would appear that these boats are all of an identical construction, making quite a sight as they line up in the marina together.

The Lady Nelson was built in the 1980s for the bicentennial celebrations as an external replica of the namesake which operated in these waters in the early days of settlement. Below decks were some modern concessions to make her safer and more comfortable, including three watertight sections separated by bulkheads, berths for 18 and modern galley facilities.

We were lucky in that the prevailing wind allowed us to sail out of port and into the river. We were able to watch many finishing racing yachts as we snaked our way down the river for about an hour before motoring back. The wind, quite calm in the early morning, picked up to a pleasant 20 knots just before we left, and allowed us to make way at over 6 knots with only two of the available sails set.

The Lady Nelson is a sail training ship with trainees able to earn skills recognition at one of several levels. A qualified crew of volunteers oversees the ship’s operation. A minimum crew of six is required to go to sea and I suspect we had about that or maybe a couple more today. I imagine with all available sails set (we used no jibs or mains today, so it was a very minimal set) they would be busy.

The original Lady Nelson was lost in the 1830s. It was suspected, based on charred wreckage found later, that she was taken by pirates and burned near Indonesia. The current Lady Nelson lives a calmer life around Tasmania, having only occasionally crossed Bass Strait.

From there it was time to head into town to do the Mawson’s Hut replica Australian Antarctic Expedition museum, and the Maritime Museum.

Mawson headed a scientific expedition to Antarctica in the early 1900s. The science undertaken related to geology, mapping, weather, physiology, biology and the movement of the south magnetic pole. The expedition also included construction and manning of a radio relay station on Macquarie Island to give the expedition some degree of radio contact back to Australia. This was state of the art safety for the time. The settlement also constructed a pair of huts on the Antarctic mainland which would become home for some for the next two and a half years.

At the end of the mission, those remaining explorers walked out and left the hut and its contents to be preserved under the ice in one of the coldest and windiest places on earth. There it sat for over 70 years as a massive time capsule awaiting a more modern expedition who would dig through the ice accumulated in the doorways to find a trove of artefacts ready to give up their secrets. And thus the mission to preserve the Mawson hut began. This hut in Hobart was constructed of trees from the same Scandinavian pine forest as supplied the timber for the original hut and is built to the same plan only metres from where the original expedition set off over 100 years ago. The museum attempts to tell the story and recreates some of the environment indoors endured by the men of that expedition. All funds raised go towards future preservation efforts for the hut in Antarctica. We were lucky in that our volunteer guide was a plumber who had just spent an entire year on the Antarctic continent at Davis station.

From there it was off to the Maritime Museum. It covered in general terms the history of shipping in the Hobart area, from the earliest days of settlement right up to the collision of the Illawarra with the Derwent bridge, and how the ferry service so spawned gave rise to the modern catamaran building business of the area today.

The later afternoon was spent briefly exploring Battery Point and around to Sandy Bay before the kids decided it was time to see the new Hobbit movie. I went back into town to explore the CBD (now closed for the day mostly), Salamanca proper (similarly safely shut, except for the bars) and then around to the Macquarie Wharf. This area was the home of the original Henry Jones IXL factory which has been redeveloped as a funky arts precinct, Tasmania design institute concentrating on furniture, and a boutique hotel. Probably safest that this was all closed up for the day as well.