We pulled up anchor at 0800 hours and motored across to Kettering, navigating our way through the maze of moored yachts to the visitor’s jetty at Oyster Cove Marina. Mark checked in with the boat yard and at 0945 we motored the short distance around to the travel lift. There was a 10-15 knot easterly blowing and when we arrived, we were advised that we would need to enter the travel lift bay stern firsts because of the size of Escapade and her rigging. Thankfully with the assistance of the boat yard tender we were able to spin around and back into the travel lift bay without a hitch. We later learned that even though it was a 50-tonne travel lift, Escapade was pushing its limit due to her overall length and rigging. We were quite anxious as the two boat yard guys worked through how they could position the slings on Escapade to make the lift happen. Thankfully after 15-20 minutes of subtle adjustments to the slings, Escapade was lifted out of the water and Mark was able to pressure clean the hull. Once clean Escapade was moved into position on the hard stand, and we got to work!
We were totally blown away by how friendly and generous the locals are. We’ve met some great people. Mike offered his car for us to borrow, Damian was going to Bunnings in Hobart so he exchanged our gas bottle for us and Peter the rigger provided some fine-tuning tips with our running rigging and anchoring setup and gave us a list of contacts should we need rigging assistance up the east coast of the mainland (he also supplied Lucy with a rug to lie on). We were also offered advice on must see places and anchorages along the west coast of Tassie. Any question we had there was always someone more than willing to answer. We had great weather (30+ °C) whilst on the hard stand so we were able to complete all our painting tasks by Thursday allowing time for the hull to dry completely prior to going back in the water on Friday afternoon.
To give us time to give the boat a good clean inside and out we got a berth at the Oyster Cove marina for the following 3 days. I also took the opportunity to order a month’s worth of grocery shopping via Woolworths online in preparation for the next leg of our journey to Port Davey.