Spirit of Tasmania Sail to Devonport

 4th February 2023

It was a bleak morning when we rose, with very cloudy skies and a promise of strong winds to follow. Our ship departs at 10.30 am and we are advised that check in starts at 8 am. We had breakfast in our room and it is only a 15 minute drive to the cruise terminal, so we arrive just before 9am, join the queue and are checked into the row of cars for boarding soon after. The new terminal has a cafe, so we were able to leave our car parked in line and go and get a cup of coffee..

Boarding was a lengthy process and we ended up on one of the lower levels, not sure what that would mean at the other end when we had to disembark.

Once in our spot, we took a few essentials and headed up to level 7 where we spent most of the trip. There are a couple of food outlets and plenty of seating on this level.

The ship left on time, with a warning from the Captain that conditions were not ideal and that anyone who suffered from motion sickness should seek sea sickness tablets from the Info desk.

It is a tortuous path out of Port Phillip Bay, with many sand banks to navigate and it took almost 2 hours of relatively calm waters before we hit the heads.

All of a sudden we had 40 knot winds on the beam and 4-6 m seas. Many passengers sacrificed their breakfast and the poor nurse onboard was run off her feet, giving more serious case injections to ease their nausea. 

Obviously seas were breaking over the bow, often whiting out vision momentarily on level 7 where we were. Miraculously, the Captain steered us through this unpleasantness arriving only 15 minutes late in Devonport.



Disembarkation only took about 20 minutes and we arrived at our motel, Gateway Devonport, at 9.30 pm, with a lot of other people who had the same idea. We had a good nights sleep, had eaten dinner on the ship, and were ready for a relatively relaxed drive to Bridport tomorrow.

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