A busy week at Port Huon

The small and very sheltered marina at Port Huon as seen from the Kermandie Pub up on the hill.
It is hard to make out 'Southern Belle' in the photo .. she's on the left just opposite the incoming channel. 

It's Saturday afternoon here in the little marina at Port Huon, George is fast asleep enjoying his afternoon nap and I'm trying to blog while listening to the most recent wave of howling wind and driving rain outside the boat.  

The weather has been like this since yesterday afternoon.  You can see each wave coming.  First - for about 10-12 minutes - there's sun .. bright shining sun in a flawless blue sky with white fluffy clouds.  Then, coming in from the west, the grey starts to build along with the wind and soon it consumes everything in its path and we're hit with 30+ knots of wind and driving rain.  We get slapped with 10-12 minutes of that and then it's gone again. 

Last night it felt so good for the boat to be tied securely here in our little berth, to be warm and snuggle up together in our cabin safe from the wind and rain.  But as the night progressed and we were woken several times by gusts pushing 'Southern Belle' up hard against the side of the berth and even tipping us over a bit .. I admit I wished for it to end.  It hasn't.  The wild westerlies have continued all day today and the forecast isn't for any change until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.  Our friends on 'Bogart' are out in this at anchor and they've been on our minds all night & today.  We've been in touch and they're fine .. I'd like it a lot if they were here with us right now.

In spite of the last 24 hours of changeable weather, this past week in Port Huon has been choc full of friendship, events and adventures.  In fact we've been so busy I haven't had time to blog or do much in the way of catching up.  There have been so many highlights  and we've enjoyed every minute being based down on the river.  I want to show you as much as possible so I'll do it in pictures .....

Monday we joined our good friends Bruce and Thelma - the couple sitting opposite me in this photo - for the weekly dinner at the Wooden Boat Shed/Living Boat Trust in the little town of Franklin.   Earlier that day Bruce drove us in to Hobart to pick up our car for the week.  The weather wasn't looking the best for sailing so we decided to base ourselves here to see more of the area.   

The dinner is held by the members of the trust and it gives an open welcome to visitors.  The beauty of the event is everyone pitches in to get the dinner on the table - visitors and members alike.  Everyone shares in the chores from erecting the tent, to finding (their shed is more a workshop than a clubhouse) and setting up the tables and chairs to helping in the kitchen ...everything done by whoever volunteers. 

George and I had a good time.  The food was good, the people were a great mixture of cruisers, wooden boat enthusiasts and characters. The atmosphere was excellent.  Many thanks to Bruce and Thelma for taking us!! 

These are some of the beautiful hand made rowing boats - with a long history in this area - they lovingly construct in their workshop.  The dinner that evening had to wait until they could get a coat of varnish on one which will be a feature of the Wooden Boat Show coming up this February in Hobart.

On Tuesday we drove to Hastings Cave - about 50 or so kilometres from Port Huon.  This is the parking lot where you join up with a forest path leading to the cave entrance.  The trees were HUGE!

You can see how big some of them were - mind you not that many were this big
because the area had been logged quite a bit.  It was cold ... and we were warned that inside the cave the temp was 9C or lower so I've got about 3 layers of clothes on!

A shot of the roof of one of the chambers in the cave.  Unfortunately my camera and flash is too pokey to show how spectacular the different caverns actually were. 

On Thursday we boarded the ferry for the half hour ride over to Bruny Island with a lot of other holiday makers. 

We didn't really give ourselves enough time to see Bruny ... we thought since we had done some of it on the boat that would be enough but, like so much of Tasmania, there is so much more to experience.  This photo was taken at the top of the lookout at the Bruny Island "Neck" .. which is the narrow spit of land between N & S Bruny.  The lookout is pretty amazing.  You climb nearly 300 steps to the top and look out over the ocean and The Channel.  The wind was blowing hard up there!  I didn't have my hair up for this photo .. the wind was whipping it up that way!!  That night we drove back to the marina and had dinner with Bruce and Thelma on their boat .. A good day and night. 

And yesterday we drove into the town of Geeveston to try the famous little Sushi restaurant there that  Bruce and Thelma told us about.  The chef is very popular and is asked to prepare sushi for visiting dignitaries in Canberra at times.  He's only open for lunch on Friday and Saturday.  We arrived just after noon and he was just about sold out .. closed before 1.  When we got there the line was out the door waiting for his sushi.  And I have to say it was the best I've ever had .. and George, who usually won't eat sushi even liked it.  Supposedly, we heard from a person in line, the BBC are even preparing to do a documentary on him! 

That's our week.  Tomorrow we're going to take the car back to the Hobart marina, ride the bus back down here and hopefully go sailing on Monday when the weather breaks.  I'm ready to get moving again but certainly don't want to move out of here until the westerlies settle down.  We've heard that a few more of the RPAYC boats have arrived so it will be good to catch up with them somewhere.

And on a final note .. the rainbow over the river yesterday at the end of one of the rain waves.  Beautiful.