Your Short Stories

A Tasmanian Symphony

One Last Big Adventure

Story & photos by Chris Way

My mate, brother and I purchased Symphony for 20k in 2019. I looked at her because I had heard about the quality of these boats (Arends 33) and had watched the asking price drop from 64k to 34 over many months. I was not (honestly) planning to buy another boat.

She was in a terrible mess with patches of deck rot, a problem in the drive train and other issues but there were many positive things such as self-tailing winches, a nice sail locker, good sailing setup, dinghy, outboard etc. In the following years we swung a new (second hand Yanmar 3GM30F) into her, replaced the drive train, got the rigging done, fixed the deck, restored the windlass, changed the windows, and along with fridge, solar, lighting, holding tank, macerator etc we bought her up to speed. You can see from the photos that we also invented a “prop stop” - a bicycle disc brake to stop the fixed 3-blade prop from spinning around while we were sailing - “Ah the serenity”.

 

We did almost all this work ourselves and are still way under 80k for total costs including registrations, antifouls, mooring costs etc,over the 5 years. Having done all this, and taken her on a number of trips along the NSW coast, I began to wonder if we might be able to cross the strait and take her around Tassie. We are in our mid 60s but when we were younger my mate and I rode bicycles around Tassie including a trip from Burnie, through Savage River mine, down the Pieman (in a tinny) and along the Beach to Graville Harbour, Zeehan, Strahan etc. We had wonderful memories of living on abolony, walking the Fincham Track into the Franklin and truly experiencing the wilderness.

 

I rang Ian and asked if he was up for “one last big adventure”.

 

In the following months we did a couple of important things. First was to install a high quality autohelm with direct drive onto the rudder shaft, a new depth sounder (easily set and easy to hear) and an asymmetrical spinnaker so that we could easily sail her in light breezes.

 

We left Lake Macquarie in mid-February 2024 and had a great run to Eden (ahead of 2023 Sydney Hobart times for our class 😊) before setting off across the strait. I will never forget watching Gabo Island light blinking goodbye and wondering if we were being foolish. However, we had Navionics (having previous experience of dead reckoning and coastal navigation on paper charts this has been a game changer). We also had a handheld Garmin to send emails via satellite and receive marine weather reports when the VHF was out of range.

 

The autohelm and spinnaker were massively important. We would not have coped very well with long nights at the helm that we had done as younger fellas. It was also enormously comforting to talk with the people at Tasmarine (usually on the mobile). I will never forget my first conversation. The operator asked us about our plans and was up for a chat. He finished by saying something like “good on you” and “I wish I join you”.

 

We camped around Flinders for a couple of days before heading down the east coast and eventually arriving at Recherche Bay about 5 weeks later. Sitting there waiting for a weather window to get around to Port Davey was surprisingly stressful. When we came around Tasman Island weeks before we had been welcomed by a challenging Southern Ocean. We were expecting more of the same.

 

The trip around was uneventful and we found ourselves motorsailing for about half the time. The arrival at Bathurst Harbour was spectacular and the trip down the channel mesmerising. This was the highlight of our trip. We sent regular emails off to Tasmarine but after a week we met another boat who told us that they were not worried but were looking for us. I also got a grumpy message from my wife to similar effect. She had been getting the emails, but they had not been getting through to Tasmarine. Fortunately, the people we met had satellite communications and contacted them on our behalf. Once we sailed through Hell’s gate and into Macquarie Harbour, a few weeks later, we were back online.

 

 

We did have some issues along the way. Torn sail, broken V belt, a leaking stern gland but overall, Symphony handled herself beautifully. We had all the gear we needed to repair the issues and keep her on the water. We only used the motor for about 15% of the time.

 

Following the beauty of the Gordon River we set off for King Island, and then back across the strait to Gippsland Lakes. We had a massive bioluminescence experience, dolphins and all, on this leg of the journey – better than anything I have seen online.

 

 

On arriving home (9 weeks all up) I wrote to Mark at Tasmarine to thank the team. He asked me to write something for the website. How could I refuse?

 

There were a couple of learnings along the way... We should have tested our Garmin device and come up with a plan for bypassing the issues we had. If I were to do this again, I would certainly get AIS installed and might even stretch the budget to a more comprehensive satellite solution. While the barometer helps enormously, times have moved on.

 

All photos by Chris Way.

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