Port Albert-Corner Inlet is an extensive region of enclosed waterways in South Gippsland and, in January 2001, was the scene of an eight day cruise that I made with Sabine Apel in the 14' ex-naval dinghy RN 310. Port Albert is best known as the fishing village of the same name, but in its wider sense it encompasses 30 miles of sheltered channels that wind amongst vegetated sand islands; the channels and an entrance from Bass Strait open out to the west into the small inland sea of Corner Inlet. These waters seem not to be nearly so popular with recreational sailors as are the Gippsland Lakes, possibly because of their unsettled weather, their midges, and, not least, their tides, which transform the whole area into an expanse of creeks and sandbanks at low water.

We had launched the dinghy at the Port Albert slipway and were preparing to get away before the early afternoon high water. A breeze was just beginning to stir at the time, but a boating friend, whom we had met up with at a nearby camping ground the previous afternoon, drew our attention to a forecast posted on a notice-board beside the jetty warning of strong winds and a change later in the day. Knowing that we were always going to be close to land and would, on a passage lasting a week, have to take the weather as it came, we decided to decided to continue regardless. As the weather turned out, I imagine that several such warnings would have been issued during our week away.

By the time that everything was stowed, a moderate north easterly breeze was blowing, and we had a pleasant run southward down the Main North Channel at 4 knots. There was just a slight swell as we passed the front lead on Drum Island Bank opposite the Port Albert entrance and turned into the arm north of Snake Island, wearing ship as necessary to avoid shoals and to keep the wind comfortably on the quarter. As is usual on this sort of trip, we did not know where we should be spending the night, but we made for a likely stretch of shoreline along the eastern end of Latrobe or Snake Island. We steered for a wooded point on the western side of a shallow bay, which is itself separated from the sea by the normally dry sands of the Jubilee Bank, and were able to bring the boat in to a pretty beach at about 3.30 p.m. (summer time), about an hour and a half after high water.

That was it for the day, apart from eating lunch and making camp, for the tide was falling and the boat grounded after a short while. The beaches here mostly shelve steeply near the high water mark, and one can get close in to them at any time within a couple of hours of high water, as we had done; outside this period, one will be stranded hundreds of yards out, because below half tide the bottom flattens out. As the tide receded further, we realised that we had sailed into a little basin half surrounded by sand spits, which would break any seas approaching us from the east. Later, we were able to walk right across the little bay and out over the Bank to the sea shore, from which we could see the mountains of Wilson's Promontory. The sands which are exposed at low tide in the channels behind Snake Island are indeed mostly sandy, not muddy as in the more sheltered creeks near the main, so one can walk over them without too much effort or hazard.

Early next morning, the tide was ebbing after the high water overnight, but it was earlier than we cared to leave, so we had to push the vessel off and rearrange the lines to make her ground further off shore as the tide went out; this called for a bit of effort if we left it too late. We were thus able to depart a little after midday, three hours before high tide. We sailed in a gentle southerly breeze westward around the northern shores of Snake Island, past the shallow gulfs which incise it, and across the Middle Ground, which is navigable to shallow draft vessels proceeding to Port Welshpool and Corner Inlet at high water. But there is another and even shallower passage to Corner Inlet a little to the south, the Snake Island Swashway Channel, which runs east-west between Snake Island and Little Snake Island. Through this we sailed and into a small bight on the southern side of Little Snake Island, where we grounded the vessel. It was overcast at the time, and, from the water, the place looked merely adequate for a landing; but, once there, we realised that it was a comfortable camp site and one which commanded a charming view of the western end of Snake Island, the northern end of Wilson's Promontory, and Corner Inlet.

The strong breezes that we had been expecting the previous night had not come to pass, but we did get three good blows during the remainder of our week away. The first occurred on the day after our arrival at Little Snake Island, when we were kept at our camp by a fresh easterly. By high tide on the following day, it had abated, and we were able to move again. We steered toward the northern point of Wilson's Promontory at the foot of Mt. Singapore and were able to reach across the entrance of Corner Inlet at slack water with the help of a gentle south easterly breeze. On coming into the lee of the point, the breeze began to desert us, and we soon found ourselves being carried backward by the tide, which had begun to ebb and was running against us at about a knot in the deep channel that passes around the point. We had to pull with some determination against it and through some eddies until we could steer into a convenient little haven called Freshwater Cove, where a steep gravely beach facing Corner Inlet to the west runs about 100' between granite headlands. The HW mark is lined by a bank of dead sea grass packed with gravel and is backed successively by low scrub, grass and sand, and a steep slope clad in tee tree. In spite of the promising place name, the gullies descending the slope were dry. I attached a shore line to the bow and laid a stern anchor line seaward when the tide had fallen.

The next morning was calm and sunny, but it was soon to be made memorable for a number of minor dramas which happened in short succession. It was just on high water when I emerged from the tent at 6 a.m., and the sea-grass bank was awash. The vessel was being held several feet from the bank by the stern line, riding upright but half full of water because I had forgotten to replace the bung after draining her the night before. The bow was rather high in the water owing to some extra buoyancy that I had added for'ard and the weight of the spars aft. In a sheltered backwater a few years before, we had verified that the hull would float with three men standing in it and bailing it out, but we hadn't tested whether it would be stable when rigged. The vessel canted and went down at the stern when I boarded her for bailing but righted when I disembarked. Several objects floated off during this operation. I then disconnected the stern anchor line, which I left to look after itself, and hauled the vessel up to the bank so that we could bail her more effectively from the outside.

When she had been emptied, we rowed out from shore to retrieve the flotsam and, while we were about it, the stern anchor, which thankfully I had buoyed. The tide was slack but starting to ebb. We continued a little way northward beyond the Trouble at Freshwater Cove end of the beach and collected 1 shoe, 1 short stretcher board, 2 pieces of spare timber, a length of clothes line, and an empty water bottle. One water bottle had been lost to the tide, one bailing bucket sank as we rowed up to it, and the other short stretcher board remained unaccounted for. By five past seven, we had returned to the beach and had commenced loading the vessel. A timely breeze had just started to waft in from the WSW, clouding the western sky as it freshened; forty minutes later it was blowing a near gale, and the sea was rapidly becoming choppy and throwing a lot of spray over the sides. We were glad not to have been caught out in it. We quickly unloaded the vessel and hauled her toward the southern end of the beach, where she would have a little lee from the headland, and then secured her fore and aft to hold her alongside the sea grass bank until the tide had receded. After that, she would be safe for the next eight hours.

The breeze continued to blow strong most of the day. The morning was drizzly and unpleasant, and we were happy to withdraw to the tent to breakfast and shelter from the elements; but by early afternoon it was sunny again, so we decided to make a short bash up through the scrub until we should find an opening with a view. The tantalising glimpses of the Inlet through the scrub kept beckoning us further on. Well, we kept on walking up and up until there was nowhere further upwards to go; and at that point we were standing on the trig. beacon on top of Mt. Singapore, at 480' elevation, where there is the most spectacular all round view of Corner Inlet, Bass Strait, the maze of islands and waterways stretching across toward Port Albert, and the remote hills of the northern Promontory.

When we arrived back at the cove at five o'clock, we realised that we had timed our return later than was prudent. The tide had reached the vessel, and the waves were gently pounding it against the sea grass bank and rocking it from side to side. She settled comfortably into the sand soon enough, but then her very immobility stopped her from rising to the short steep waves breaking over the gunwales, and this kept her constantly full of water, in spite of my efforts to bail her, until the tide again receded some time later. This is not the recommended way of getting a clinker boat to ‘take up’ or of sheltering on a lee shore; next time I am in this situation I will make sure that we can beach the boat properly with skids and a block and tackle.

By the following morning the wind had abated, and we were able to be off again. The only consequence of the previous afternoon's battering was that the centre plate had become jammed with gravel, so that it could not be lowered; and thus it remained until I was able to clear it with a hack saw blade from under the trailer after returning home. We had a pleasant sail back across the entrance in variable light airs, but it took a fair while; by the time that we were approaching the Swashway Channel, the breeze had left us and the tide was going out, so we had to row, and at times push, until we had found the centre of the creek and had proceeded up along it some distance. We grounded the boat a few hundred yards out from the beach of Little Snake Island and walked across to the high water mark, where the sand was dry, to have lunch.

By this time of the month, the tide times had moved around so that we were able to sail in the early morning and late afternoon, but not in the middle of the day. Our unwillingness to try was not entirely due to slothfulness; in this sort of environment, there is hardly anywhere that one can sail during low tide. However, I have to admit that the long breaks and the forced inactivity were not too greatly irksome. I recall that after we had returned replete from lunch to the still stranded boat I curled up under a rug in the stern sheets and drifted away into reverie to the sound of the breeze across the sands, while Sabine quietly sat on the thwarts reading a book. By and by, I became conscious of a gentle rocking motion and the slapping of wavelets against the strakes, and I knew that it was time to rouse myself again. By the time we were afloat, there was just enough depth in the Swashway to tack through it against a gentle easterly breeze in a lot of short boards. After emerging from it, the breeze freshened a little, and we made some longer boards across the Middle Ground until we were able to steer into the gulf half way along Snake Island and secure the boat beside a grassy area behind the point. The lack of centre plate had not prevented our making way to windward that afternoon, when we were under full sail, but it did cause difficulties later in the passage when we were rigged down.

The next morning, we sailed eastward into the Snake Channel in a light southerly breeze. Here the tide was ebbing southward around the western end of Sunday Island and beginning to turn eastward into the arm of the channel on its southern side. I was alarmed by a patch of very choppy 1½’ high waves approaching from the north and making a great rustling noise, but the patch just moved slowly past us and continued towards the south, leaving the surface as smooth as it had been before. The disturbance may have been an effect of northward moving wind waves being crowded in the southward moving ebb current. After we were properly in the south arm of the Snake Island channel, we were moving over the ground at almost three knots in a two knot tidal stream. Not wanting to end up in Bass Strait, we decided to beach at our former camp site near the Jubilee Sands and have lunch over the period of low water.

By the time that the tide had returned in mid-afternoon, a moderate and freshening westerly breeze was blowing, and we departed before it under headsail and reefed mainsail. That seemed appropriate canvas while we were in the shelter of the point and the sand spit, but it was an uncomfortable ride as we got out into the channel, where the wind was blowing against the now incoming tide. We wore boldly to come in towards the shore, and Sabine, who was at the tiller, told me to get the mainsail down. I was for coming up into the wind to do it, but when the vessel threatened to broach in the short steep sea, I struck the sail on the run. Somewhat shaken, we steered towards a sheltered spot on the beach where we might camp the night.

The westerly abated during the evening, which gave as a chance to cook some supper; but at 9.30 pm it backed strong southerly, then easterly, and from that quarter it continued to blow all night. Being untutored city-dwellers, we were only just learning about South Gippsland Easterlies! I was later told that you have to wait until Autumn to avoid them and get some good weather here; but this was only January. The breeze was still quite fresh the next morning, and we were not sure whether to sit it out; however, our water supply was getting a bit low, and in the last quarter of an hour before the tide left us stranded we decided to go. You never saw us move so quickly - we just threw all the gear and mooring lines into the boat and pushed off under the headsail, the breeze being too stiff for using the reefed mainsail. We crossed the channel and anchored off Sunday Island a short time later to have breakfast.

We were not quite sure how we were going to return to Port Albert, but we did not like the idea of beating past the sea entrance against a fresh breeze and on an outgoing tide; we thought that it might just be possible to get there by reaching around the western side of Sunday Island and beating up the Midge Channel on its northern side. Sailing westward before the breeze along the South Snake Channel, we did not think it so bad, so we rounded the end of the island and steered into the north-going arm of the channel. But you know how it always is - the wind feels a lot keener when you come up into it; more importantly, we found that we could not make way to windward with just a headsail and no centre plate. We could have rigged the spare headsail as a mainsail to get more drive to windward, but I doubt that this would have been enough without the centre plate. At any rate, we did not have much time to think about it because we were drifting leeward toward the saltings on the western side of the creek. We wore ship, but were not able to beat off for long on the port tack either. Fortunately the bank deepened after a few hundred yards, and we were able bear away across the shallows north of One Tree Island and run before the breeze toward the Middle Ground and Port Welshpool.

And run we did, quite literally at times. Each time that we ploughed into the sand ripples, one of us, or sometimes both, would jump out of the boat to lighten it and run along side it, heaving at the transom to lift the stern a little when it threatened to dig in, and then jumping back on the gunwales when the boat started to surge ahead of us. But don't think that there was anything unusual or desperate about this: Sabine and I had done this sort of thing many times before and had become quite accomplished at narrowly escaping the embraces of a falling tide. Once clear of the shallows, we romped toward Port Welshpool; indeed, approaching the slipway jetty from upwind was quite awkward, lightly canvassed though we were. We had travelled just 59 NM in eight days - no great distance - but in that whole time we had not come within hail of another human soul.

In spite of all the excitement (and the isolation), nothing really untoward happened on our trip until after we had safely arrived at Port Welshpool. This had not been our intended destination, and we made the boat fast to the back of the jetty so that she should be out of the way of boats coming on and off the slipway while I took a taxi to Port Albert to retrieve the car and trailer. That set me back $50, but it was a minor expense in view of what transpired. When I returned, Sabine came running toward me in some agitation to tell me that a motor boat had run into our stern, breaking the gaff and the boom crutch in which it was resting, and unseating the rudder pintle. The driver of the offending craft had been kind enough to give a tow to another boat, which had been disabled, but the silly fellow was approaching jetty downwind and had not realised that he couldn't just switch off the ignition and expect his ‘vehicle’ to stop, especially when there was a 25 knot wind on his tail; his ‘trailer’ didn't stop either, but swung around in front of its tow and into the bluestone breakwater behind the jetty. In his efforts to retrieve the situation, he steered his vessel hard around and straight into our stern. At this moment, the other boatman took charge and somehow got the two vessels alongside. The hapless owner of the towing craft was quite good about it afterwards and paid us for the damage. But his boat wasn't insured, so I hope that the financial consequences will have been a good first lesson in seamanship for him.