Devonport was enjoyable despite the fuel spill from the sunken tugs wafting past us with each turn of the tide. Our Devonport friends, Mark and Russell, were super hospitable as ever, bringing us home grown produce, home baked sourdough crumpets (YUM!), and home made jam and taking us on a Sunday drive to Wynyard for a fish and chips lunch and to check out the berthing possibilities there.
Wynyard is a cute little town near Table Cape (home of the Tulip festival) on the Inglis River. It has a 3m tidal range and a very shallow sandbar at the entrance to the river (0.2m minimum depth in the channel at chart datum). With our 2m draft the only safe time to enter is near high tide. So that meant getting up at 4:30am to leave Devonport in time to catch the 11am high tide at Wynyard.
Leaving Devonport
We motored most of the way, but caught the beginning of the sea breeze for a short sail before picking our way in through the leads.
We rafted up to an old wooden motorboat. Colin, the owner, had given permission to raft and said that we should have at least 2m depth at low tide. Ashleigh, from the council, who’s on long service leave, came in and gave us a key to the marina gate. Chris, from the local yacht club, arranged for us to get access to their showers. Yet another friendly yachting community!
High tide/Low tide
When the tide dropped to the low low tide (0.4m) in the late afternoon it was clear that we did NOT have 2m under us as we stopped rocking and the depth sounder read 0m for about 2hrs, but I don’t think we were very deep in the mud. We’ll probably be here until Thursday, waiting for strong SW to subside.
There’s plenty to keep us busy here (although I’m longing for a couple of boring days after last week) – there’s a lovely riverside park, a museum, a big supermarket, and of course boat chores and keeping the blog up to date.
Today we woke up to find L’Envol, the intrepid French/Estonian couple that we met in Beauty Point, tied up to the public pontoon. They’re also heading for King Island, so we’ll probably be seeing more of them!
I tried fishing off the boat without success on the flood tide, slack water and the ebbing tide after being told that this was an excellent spot with large flathead. Fisherman’s tales! It looks like we’re going to have to pay for our fish and chip dinner tonight.
