Tasmania cruise to Bruny Island takes a traditional tack on Yukon
Ride the waves on a classic ketch in Tasmania.
A barrage of bewildering but urgent-sounding nautical commands is flying across the deck. Slack away forward. Trail a long line aft. Fenders up. Slack away painter. Make fast throat halyard. Square the ledger. Sooner or later I sense there’s going to be a cry to scrub the decks. I take it as a shot across the bow to retreat to a secret hideaway spot I’ve discovered. It’s nestled in netting suspended from the bowsprit of Yukon, the Danish gaff-rigged ketch that’s conveying me (much like a grocery item in a string bag) from the port of Franklin on the Huon River to Bruny Island, in the southern reaches of Tasmania. According to the nautical chart I’m studying, directly behind lies a place called Eggs and Bacon Bay. If we keep going straight the first land we’ll hit is Antarctica. Together those words are sublime, ridiculous and surreal all at once.
Yukon is 24m long and weighs 60 tonnes but carves through the water with supreme grace and stealth. The little wooden dinghy we tow behind makes more noise sloshing through the chop. But there’s another, completely unexpected but enchanting sound floating up from below deck and filling the air: the sound of a clarinet, courtesy of a crew member practising for a recital. I’ve always loved the peacefulness of sailing, riding the wind and the waves, harnessing only what nature gives you, but the melodious accompaniment to this classical pursuit is almost too perfect. I’ve waited a long time to go to sea on a beautiful, pea-green boat — just like the owl and the pussycat from my favourite childhood poem — and I won’t forget this moment in a hurry.
Our clarinet maestro is Kristopher, the 19-year-old son of captain David Nash and his Danish wife Ea Lassen. Their 16-year-old son Aron is also crew on this cruise and we’re told he wields a mean trumpet. Ea is our cook, and there’s no chance of scurvy setting as she serves up an astounding array of gourmet meals, all somehow emerging from a galley the size of a broom cupboard. “I like my kitchen,” she tells me. “I can reach everything from one spot.” I’ll say.
Like all well-designed boats Yukon is a wonder of space-saving practicality combined with comfort and taste. There’s also something supremely elegant and tactile in the traditional equipment: ropes running through blocks and tackles, canvas-like sails. She’s like a jazzed-up, ocean-going billycart.
“Boats are Darwinistic,” says David. “The good designs are passed down.”
This particular boat has been through quite a period of evolution. She began life as a fishing trawler in the North Sea around 1930 before being converted to a pleasure boat and eventually falling first into neglect and then to the bottom of the sea. A shipwright by trade, David used a crane to salvage Yukon from the sea floor near Copenhagen in 1997 (she was so decrepit and perforated she could only be refloated by stuffing life rafts into her hull and inflating them).
So began one of the most ambitious and, it must be said, successful restoration projects anyone could ever take on and finish. Virtually everything was replaced and the entire layout reconfigured. The whole process took seven years, culminating in 2010 when the family set off for a round-the-world trip of a lifetime. Ea says they never intended to stay in Tasmania, but a spate of piracy in the Red Sea curtailed their circumnavigation plans so they set up a new home and life on the Huon, where they run calm water cruises on the river, plus multi-day journeys to Port Davey and Bruny Island.
There are 11 of us on board. We live in close quarters but not so close that you can’t find a place to be alone when the urge hits (hence my improvised bowsprit hammock).
It’s a living environment that encourages interaction and suits personable people with a sense of adventure. Everyone has a story to tell and something to contribute. One of the passengers was a chef in a former life and relishes the chance to prepare an Atlantic salmon caught during a lazy afternoon of fishing. We smoke it on the barbecue, whip up an avocado dip and serve it on crackers for canapes. By night the wood stove roars and laughter floods the cabin. We tell stories, play cards, pass round a tipple of Tasmanian whisky but stop short of busting out the bawdy ballads, which is probably for the best.
The beauty of this boat (or perhaps the bugger of it, depending on your position as either passenger or crew) is that everything is done by hand. There are no mechanical winches to raise the anchor, trim the sails or hoist the gaffs. Changing tack means all hands on deck to haul the sheets (ropes) that govern the sails, make them fast in a neat figure of eight lashing, then coil the excess away and hang them neatly out of the way. The whole process is a work of art.
I marvel at not only the muscle but the nuance it takes to handle a grand old vessel such as Yukon. David stands at the wheel (one of the only original parts remaining from its days at the bottom of the sea) and assesses the luff in the sails, the effect of the swell and a hundred other variables, and makes minute alterations to keep Yukon trimmed and performing at her best. His love for this boat, which has consumed so much of his life, is evident. “Now she’s humming,” he says, giving a flick of the wheel.
From Franklin we cruise down the river once known as the Highway of the Huon, when it had more than 80 jetties, mostly servicing the huge apple export industry. Franklin was the transport hub of the south, a legacy that’s still proudly represented by the Wooden Boat Centre, where the old skills that David used to bring Yukon back to life are taught to a new generation.
We spend three nights aboard Yukon, sleeping in snug but comfortable bunks, and the gentle movement of the boat and the warmth induces deep, blissful sleeps. The itinerary is never set in stone on these cruises; it’s a matter of going where the wind blows, and so no two trips are the same.
On the first night we anchor off the pretty town of Cygnet and wake to a sky speckled with coral clouds reflected in a perfect, glassy sea. After breakfast I take the opportunity to jump aboard the dinghy and hitch a ride to shore. I stroll into town to buy the weekend paper, enjoying this excursion more than I care to admit, perhaps a little smug in the knowledge I’ll soon be whisked back to my yacht. It’s a life I could get used to.
Fickle winds hamper our progress south through the mouth of the Huon and into the D’Entrecasteaux Channel that separates South Bruny Island from the mainland. By mid-afternoon though the breeze has picked up and we scoot along, eventually dropping anchor in the sheltered cove of Mickeys Bay. We see a side of Bruny Island far removed from the cheese shops and whisky distilleries and the usual tourist routes. It’s a wild side, one only accessible by sea. Rowing the dinghy ashore, I take a walk along the rocks and look back across the bay to Yukon, sails furled, bow to the breeze against a backdrop of dark green eucalypts and textured clouds of bruise-coloured blue.
The scene could be an oil painting. It’s a different scene in the morning, as a stiff breeze rakes up the chop and the sky darkens. David opts to leave the sails stowed and we motor cautiously away from the island. Suddenly the sky is lit up by lightning. A thunderclap reverberates overhead and rain starts lashing the deck. David steers us towards the safe harbour of Partridge Island, we drop anchor in a sheltered cove and watch the storm pass with a glass of wine in hand, as sea eagles soar above the manna gums.
It’s moments like these that I find myself imagining what life may have been like for David and Ea, setting off with two young sons on an epic journey round the globe, from Denmark to Dublin to Portugal to Barbados to Tahiti to New Caledonia and finally Australia, to be welcomed into the little community of Franklin. There’s a spot on the port foredeck where the boys would lay out their Lego mat in the sun and build toy boats as they crossed across the warm, languid Pacific Ocean en route to a new life.
This sense of adventure and possibility is what I take from my time on Yukon. I come away inspired to followed a dream; I think everyone on board does. Some dreams are more short term though. David summons the crew to deck, holds out a broom and a hose and gives the order. The time has come. Scrub the decks.
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MORE TO THE STORY
Yukon is moored alongside the Wooden Boat Centre Tasmania, which houses the only wooden boatbuilding school in Australia. Courses are offered to anyone wanting to try their hand at learning traditional wooden craft skills (you can obtain your Shipwright Level 1 qualification here, if you feel there’s something lacking from your resume). You can even sign up
to build your own wooden boat. The museum is open to the public seven days a week, and guided half-hour tours explain Franklin’s maritime history and take visitors through the workshop, where boats are under construction.
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IN THE KNOW
Yukon Tours offers daily 90-minute tours, and a two-hour gourmet picnic cruise in association with Fat Pig Farm, on the Huon River at Franklin. Multi-day cruises to Bruny Island and Port Davey run periodically between October and April. Special charter trips are also available.
Ricky French was a guest of Tourism Tasmania and Yukon Tours.