South West Marine Debris Cleanup Day 1 : 06-03-2016

Pat here, yes I am a real person!

Yesterday (Saturday) morning my day started with Sydney traffic and ended in a boat anchored in New Harbour, way down on the SW coast of Tasmania. What a day!

After flying to Hobart, Andrew (from the Bookend Trust/ Expedition Class) gave me a lift to Dover and I joined the crew of the "Velocity".

The Velocity is a tough 56ft (16m) long boat built for rough Tasmanian waters and that's a good thing becuase pretty soon we were slamming through some decent size waves on our way around the wild southern capes.

For me the first day on the sea is usually a battle against seasickness and this day was no exception:

The trick is to stay in the cabin and keep your eyes on the horizon OR lie down and keep your eyes closed.

DO NOT try to do anything else such as look at your camera!

(A few people did and they were soon hurling up their lunch over the side.  Again and again and again.)

Along the way we dropped an adventurous artist called James off to make a wilderness camp on De Witt island and caught a nice fat Tuna and many flathead and squid.

It was great to meet the crew - great people who I will tell you about in the days ahead.

We only stayed at New Harbour until 4am this morning before we pulled up the anchor and steamed on for a few more hours to get to where we are now - Spain bay in Port Davey.

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Two things I'm already better at:

1. Wearing the right clothes for the conditions (I started the voyage dressed for Sydney and now I'm dressed like a weird cross between a bushwalker, a surfer and a sailor.

2. Not throwing up!

Three highlights from yesterday:

Masaaki's cooking (Flathead and salad with rice covered in a weirdly good spicy basil powder)

Watching a big ball of krill swarming around the lights of the boat last night

Watching James get onto de Witt island, climbing up 45 degree rocks in his city clothes with a Kmart tent over his shoulder.

I have to go and clean up Spain bay beach now. I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

If you have any questions there is a forum in Connect (if you're signed in it'll change to Discuss). The first student brave enough to throw me a curly one wins a laminated map of South West Tasmania.

More soon.