Location: 43° 40S, 146° 22E
Friday 12:00, 04.20.2007

At noon on today, the Schooner Maggie B was at 43° 40S, 146° 22E, off the southern tip of Tasmania. We were doing 7.5 knots under all plain sail, headed for Hobart. We should arrive back at Elizabeth Street Pier about 2100 tonight.

Last night in Wombat Cove, Port Davie, Tasmania was marvelous. It was clear at night, with no moon. Since it was dead still all the thousands of stars could be seen as well reflected in the water as looked at straight. We set out for Hobart at 0600, a little before a lovely sunrise. For the first part of the route we had a good NW’er, but it died out at about 1300 and it looks as if we will have to motor the rest of the way in.

After dinner we read poetry to one another for perhaps two hours (or two bottles of lovely Tasmanian Pinot Noir). In yesterday’s post I reported that we had 10 books of poetry on board. It was a mistake — once we sorted things out a bit, we found 15!

Today coming around the southern waters we had two seals playing around us for 10 minutes, jumping much of the way out of water. Perhaps they were hunting fish that our passage had stirred up, or perhaps they were just doing it for the fun of it.

Regular readers will recall that I have been having some issues with the Lewmar blocks we have on board (six have broken!). About a month ago I got a nice letter from the Lewmar Product Manager for Blocks, concerned about my troubles, or perhaps concerned about my blistering negative reports. I think that Nigel Irens burned his program outside their booth at the Paris Boat Show as a protest. In any case, I wrote the Product Manager a detailed report on our problems and he supposedly is having their research group do some tests on my specific areas of concern, to improve their next generation of blocks. So perhaps some good will come of our problems.

All is well.