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Bass Strait has earned a well-deserved reputation among mariners as one of the most treacherous bodies of water in the world.
Known locally as The Paddock, this unwieldy waterway separates mainland Australia from Tasmania.
For boats taking advantage of the Roaring 40s, Bass Strait is a 300km short cut between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, cutting 600 miles off a more southerly voyage around Tasmania.
Yet the Strait is unusually shallow, averaging just 60m. Compare that to a depth of several thousand metres in the oceans on either side. Its coastline is littered with wrecks, with many ships having disappeared without trace.
Despite all the myths and legends, these disappearances can invariably be ascribed to a toxic combination of strong currents, treacherous storms and seas whipped up by gale force winds that come directly from the Antarctic and steep, backless waves that slam relentlessly into hulls. The beautiful, rugged shores are studded with islands, submerged rocks, reefs and shoals. Even at the best of times, a journey through Bass Strait is a significant undertaking, not least for cruising yachts.
As a single-hander, all of this played heavily on my mind as I set sail from Sydney on my 630-mile voyage south to Melbourne. It was early May and with the challenge of Bass Strait still ahead of me, I arranged to pick up a crew member in Bermagui on the far south coast of