Location: 43° 25S, 146° 09E
Wednesday 12:00, 04.18.2007

We are tied up to the bank of Melaleuca Inlet, Port Davie, Tasmania at 43° 25S, 146° 09E. We are about two miles up stream from anything resembling open water. Our web posting should lead you to Google Maps and you will see the Maggie B as far inland as she has ever been (and may ever be). Coming up this inlet was a bit anxious making as the passage was often narrower than we are long, though we did carry more than ten feet under our keel most all the way. We ran aground once, but fortunately the bottom is very soft mud and we just plowed through.

There are a few posts along the bank at the end (called, rather grandly, King’s landing) and — to our surprise — we found another sailboat already here. We sort of had to put our nose into the bank on one side to spin her around, and I never worked out a proper plan (wind blowing one way and current pushing the other). We made a complete thrash of it, to my great embarrassment. My lame excuse to the skipper of the other boat was “we’re more used to Blue Water….” His wife looked at us with horror.

We got started early this morning as a 30 knot blow came on us from the one direction where we were exposed and the anchor started to drag in the soft mud as we were being blown ashore. We hustled to get the anchor up and motored in moderate rain to a more protected spot, where we had a lovely hike ashore after the rain mostly cleared.

We saw two marvelous birds today. First was a big flock of Black Swans. While all black when they are on the water, they show lots of white on their wings when they fly. We had a big flock fly near us this morning. I had always thought that they were just a convention from the ballet Swan Lake…. The other delight was a Wedge Tailed Eagle, which looked quite surprised and irritated as we squeezed our way up the Melaleuca Inlet.

We had “movie night” last night, watching South Pacific. Tonight is “Cold Mountain.” We chose movies from our collection of about 50 by pulling numbers 1 to 6 out of a hat. The person who gets the 6 chooses the six movies he/she would most like to watch, “5″ reduces the number to 5 by throwing out one, etc. until “1″ chooses between the two finalists. Unfortunately we forgot to ship any popcorn.

The trip up this narrow inlet was made much easier by our Probe forward-looking sonar, made by Interphase (see web connection). It does a good job of seeing what is coming, though it can only look 4-5 times forward whatever depth you are in (50 feet ahead if you are in 10 feet of water), but still that is a lot better than waiting until you hit something.

All is well.