Albany to Tasmania - Day 13 ‘Back to Sea Once More’

Wednesday, May 13th 2026.

It’s been thirteen days since we arrived at American River, Kangaroo Island. We never intended to stay this long but the weather had other plans. With a strong low pressure system forecast, we were happy to stay put and enjoy the excellent hospitality from friends and family on KI.

We were lucky to have a couple of days of island touring with Kevin’s brother in law and his wife who live at Penneshaw. Aside from lots of great beaches, we visited the Eucalyptus Oil Distillery and the Raptor Park where we got to see a variety of Aussie raptors up close. Thanks Mini and Mouse!

Our touring continued with Jas and Rod from SV Jomaro whose friend Josh had rented a car for a couple of days. Kevin and I joined them  for a trip out to the Western end of the island. We visited the Honey Farm and Vivonne Bay before having lunch at the Parndana Pub. We ‘enjoyed’ 40km of gravel corrugations in our quest to see a platypus at the platypus pools. I’m sure they don’t exist and the whole thing is an elaborate ploy to write off hire cars due to the bumpy road! Having five adults and a German Pointer crammed into a Mazda CX3 didn’t help??

Visiting Flinders Chase National Park and viewing the seals sunbathing on the rocky coast was certainly a highlight.

We were picked up by Fremantle Sailing Club’s Stephen Key ‘Esky’ who lives on the island when he’s not on board his boat in WA. Esky is also a Landrover tragic and has an impressive collection of Landrovers, trucks, tractors, sports cars, bikes and even a Caterpillar C4 bulldozer. He took us out to Stokes Bay to walk through the caves before showing us his property and vehicle collection.

We visited North Cape before stopping in at Kingscote, the main settlement on the island to take care of some washing and provisioning on the way back to American River.

Thanks Esky for showing us around.

Being Thursday night, Tony picked up Kevin and I along with Jas, Rod and Kaiser the dog, and drove  us to his restaurant KI Tru Thai for our weekly meal.

We enjoyed a great meal and beers while we listened to a local cover band. Thanks again Tony for your hospitality.

Between all the sight seeing we had a few repairs to take care of on board after the passage from Esperance. Our first priority was to fix the gas detector and solenoid controller that prevents you from lighting the stove if it detects a gas leak.

The unit had failed 24hrs prior to our arrival and we decided to wait until we were in port to repair it. After some investigation and disassembly, I found a corroded wire had come off one of the panel mount multi-pin connectors on the inside the back cover.

I managed to clean it up with contact cleaner and re-solder it to the connector which solved the issue.

We spent time re-sealing leaky deck hatches, re-terminating the connection for the port bow light and replacing a failed wind instrument.

Fuel was available at American river just across from the dinghy dock which made filling up our six empty jerry cans relatively painless. Water was more difficult to source with the only tap nearby the dinghy dock being on a questionable looking rainwater tank outside the camp kitchen.  Rod and Jas came to the rescue offering to fill our 90l of Jerry cans from their onboard tanks.

On Wednesday, May 13th we finally had a reasonable weather window open and at 0300hrs, we slipped the mooring and slowly motored out of American River on a slackening ebb tide.

With just a few inches under the keel, we navigated through the sandy shoals in the river before following SV Jomaro out through the channel.

We motored for the next four hours into gentle headwinds out through Nepean Bay and Backstairs Passage, clearing the island at about 0730hrs.

The wind filled in from the North East at about force three allowing us to sail slowly South East.

I checked into the WA Austravel HF Sked and compared the performance of the Busselton base’s  two antennas. HF conditions were so good I was able to make a contact with the bases in Penong, Kununurra and Perth.

The weather was warm and sunny all day which was a nice change from almost three weeks of cloud and drizzle.

Both Kevin and I spent most of the day resting m apart from the usual sail trimming, navigating and keeping watch.

The wind built to a force 5-6 overnight but the seas remained calm making for smooth upwind sailing. The bioluminescence overnight was some of the brightest I’ve ever seen. It looked like we had installed underwater lights with Emigre’s wake glowing brightly.

The sky was clear and a thick blanket of stars lined the Milky Way. Despite the lack of moon the stars dimly lit the ocean which is much more comforting than a completely dark night.

We couldn’t have asked for much better conditions to begin our passage. I hope they remain for the next 700 nautical miles or so.