Port Phillip Heads
to Flinders Island (Lady Barron).

This is a passage plan for a January trip to Flinders Island from Port Phillip Bay. This is the culmination of what will be nearly 4 months worth of exploring the area over the last 8 Years. Sailing Bass Strait is not everyones cup of tea. It has been said that it’s not cruising grounds at all because it is too spicy. Thats likely because they are on a tight schedule and have places to be, and found conditions too spicy. I’ve found that having time is your secret weapon in the strait as you will see in the next section. Being able to wait for perfect weather windows is how to do this safely. So to start with we look at January climate data, and start our plan there. You have to start somewhere, and you have to have a plan or you have no plan. I like evidence, as a way to inform decisions. And weather / wind data and research is a good start.

Side note: I met a bloke at the Cruising Club in Queenscliff and he was leading a similar trip to this with eight or more boats, I was impressed and keen to riff on weather trends and modelling, routes and anchorages. With a little coaxing I realised that this ‘ol-mate’ firmly believed that the weather in the strait was consistent year in year out. Like on the 7th it blows from the west, moderate… but by the 12th you’ll be faced with easterlies. It was total horse shit. This is not how weather works anywhere, least of all the strait. I’m offering this up for some mates, and anyone else who wants to lean in. I’m not an expert. this is provided in good faith. Misdirected sailing can be miserable at best and the worst makes headlines. Ol mate sailed back in through the heads a few days later, shocked and a little rattled! It was not the weather he’d been planning!

Erith Island from the Eastern approach to Murray Passage.

Section One: Planning then plan

Hogan island. A place that shouts ‘UNIHABITED’ and with good reason.

Hogan island is our data datum. It’s a good one because it’s a bad one. I like making conservative choices when children and families are involved in adventures, so using the location that is both central to our intended course and perhaps the most windswept and hostile of the lot feels ‘Good-Bad’. And importantly it has a BOM Automatic Weather Station on it (AWS).

Check out the realtime situation at HOGAN HERE

Wind roses display the seasonal / monthly or annual wind trends in both direction / velocity and duration. Each hour is averaged, given a velocity and direction then plotted. With the wind rose you can get to a point where you can forecast the safe sailing window likelihood and duration. The fun sailing zone is winds up to 15 knots, in daylight hours. Anything more than this is burley and becomes hard work and arduous for the durations we are planning. Sure it will be quicker, but the cold hard reality is that it exposes you and your crew to motion sickness, which leads to accidents, which can compound and IMHO just not worth it.

If you like your crew, and want to keep them around… This is Cruising! treat them nice!

Add the spicy sauce of the fact the BOM states forecast wind gust can be 40% stronger than forecast. Your 15kn passage turns into 24knot white water rollercoaster. Been there, done that… it happens.

So If you can follow the above, Ignore the rose itself for now and focus on the summary bar, we end up with 11 days of favourable conditions, then minus off the hours that are dark, and dont use the twilight as a buffer if needed, you end up at 144hrs total (or 20% of the month). That creates the opportunity to sail 720Nm. That is based on a 5 knot boat speed. You might go faster? It’s true, the wind trends are favourable to fast sailing angles for the course we want to sail. But lets leave that to providence and enjoy making a 7hr passage in 5hr and not add it to our planning. Again, stuff happens.

If we are lucky we get to sail our course. If we dont, overall it could make is travel 30% further. So if 720Nm is the distance we can own, we will spend that sailing only 500nm. And that has us sailing everyday when the conditions permit… again, be nice to your crew. Plus, you have to get back.

So in summary we land on a 225 - 250Nm outward cruising range, or 48hrs of favourable sail time if the forecast works and we actually want to travel that far, remembering we have to sail it back.

Click to zoom.

Now we can also use the roses to average trend of the wind direction over the course. This will help us with research on what shelter exists in available anchorages.

Direction Reference Guide. The Main wind directions are coloured, the gray areas are directions where the wind, in January, for whatever tropospheric reasons does not issue from.

This is the rose we’ll use to display the range of safe cardinal aspects in any given anchorage along the way. This one is special as it has four colours and is the ‘Global’ reference for all the roses that follow.

Gray Slices: In all the data, evidence shows wind does not issue from this direction in January.

Green Slices: The Green areas are where wind can issue from, but thankfully, never too strong, usually just nice. The Red and Orange van also have moderate winds but…

Red and Orange Slices: Show the directions from which storms issue, this is relevant in that we’ll need to be familiar with anchorages that provide shelter from these two quite specific directions, all along the way. W/WSW and E/ENE are the trouble zones.

Swell Trend

Let’s look at the sea state trends also. The proximity of the strait to the southern ocean means it is subject to swell that is issued by storm energy that can happen thousands of kilometres away. Thankfully this energy direction, its ‘set’ is consistently a WSW direction. The important part to note for this passage is that you can see from the sequence below, King Island works as a breakwater to the strait with the exception of the stretch of coast between Cape Otway and Cape Patterson. These are the ‘Surf Coasts’. This energy, in the form of significant ‘ground swell’, can get up to >6m as shown in the pink and crimson areas below. This energy is what makes even ‘sheltered’ anchorages sometimes uncomfortably rolly. A worthy consideration when planning the journey on this stretch. Waters south and east of Cape Liptrap are generally more comfortable as it is only the surface wind wave energy in the system.

Summary of Section 1 of the plan: We have a rough forecast of how far we can travel safely given the time allocated for the trip. We know we have over two days lazing, swimming, fishing and diving, for every day we spend underway. Thats a nice ratio. We also know where we need to find shelter, and that in a 30 day window we are likely to see one ‘blow’ from either the East or the West.

Before we go further jump in and take a look at the proposed course here:

Link to Map
 
 

 Section Two: Sailing Legs and Anchorages.

Port Phillip Heads.

Ranked as the Somethingest most dangerous water way in the world we need to be cautious and observant of quite a few factors just to break free of the ‘Bay’ into the big deep blue. On the right are slack tide times at the heads. A fleeting half hour window, where if everything else aligns we find flat water in the otherwise turbulent meeting of two large masses of water.

To be sure that we will actually find flat water its worth checking storm surge activity as far back as 62 hour prior, and if there has been any, expect an outgoing tide to be running. It is worth calculating which are the two outgoing ‘sets’ of the four. Note they advance by roughly a half hour everyday.

Conveniently enough for us on this plan, the outgoing tide is the 7:34 am slot on the 25th and the corresponding mid morning and late evening slots through until the start of Jan.

Tide Times: The Rip 2025
Tide Times: The Rip 2026
Learn more about the RIP ENTRANCE HERE

Date / Slack Time / Max Time & Rate

Out of the heads, following the ‘Four Fingers West’ Leads we will swing course to East, and head to Cape Shanck. Then change course to the western entrance of Westernport Bay. Here we choose wether we need east or west shelter available at either Cat Bay (6hrs sail time) or slightly earlier at Flinders (5.5hrs). Crew care kicks in here, people will be feeling grotty. Seek the flatest water for motion acclimatisation.

Phillip Island

The next leg we’ll head back out to a distance to seaward of the ‘knobbies’, the rock escarpments extending south west from Phillip island. Then change course to Cape Woolamai. On making Woolamai we change course to head into the eastern entrance of Westernport Bay. The leading lines start a long way out, we cut the corner as its all deep water. This passage gets tight as the channel is perhaps only 30m wide for a short distance. Check your charts.

Cleeland Bight

This is a broad sweep of beach with good holding and wrap around protection. The only bummer is that it can get tide ripples which make for 3 hours of rolling during the middle of the outgoing tides.

Do the Cape Woolamai Pinnacles Walk. It’s close, starts right from the Bight side, and gives you the best scenery on the island — cliffs, granite walls, ocean views, and an easy loop back along the beach. If you only do one walk, that’s the one.

The Big Stretch: Phillip island to Waratah or the ‘Prom’

This is a stretch. 10hrs Bird Rock, or 11hrs to the outlier islands of The Glennies. Once you make Cape Liptrap you can make that call as to the anchorage for the night. I usually get going early, a couple of hours before dawn, so that by the time sleepy heads get out of bed, the view includes the days cruising objective.

Walkerville / Bird Rock

A pretty spot with good holding and a little holiday village.

The Walkerville Lime Kilns
Built into the cliffs between the 1870s–1920s, these kilns once produced high-quality lime that was shipped by boat to Melbourne. You can still walk right up to the preserved kiln faces at low tide.

Bird Rock
A distinctive offshore rock stack at Walkerville South, popular for photography and fishing. At very low tide you can reach the rock platform around its base.

Historic Tramways & Jetty Remains
The lime operation once had wooden tramways running along the shore and a 300-foot jetty. Rotten piles are still visible in the water today.

Natural Caves & Workings in the Cliffs
The lime industry left cut-outs, tunnels and caves in the limestone cliffs — some are still accessible on the coastal walk between Walkerville North and South.

Walkerville Coastal Walk
A short, scenic track linking North and South Walkerville, passing the kilns, quarry sites, Bird Rock viewpoints, and old workers’ camp remnants right along the edge of Waratah Bay. Includes awesome fish and chips at the caravan park.

 

The Hole in the Wall:
The Glennies Anchorage.

The Alternative is quite the opposite, alarmingly remote and pristine: no fish and chips here.
The Glennie Group is a small cluster of rugged granite islands off the west coast of Wilsons Promontory in Victoria, including Great Glennie Island, Citadel Island, Dannevig Island, and McHugh Island. These islands are characterized by boulder-strewn shorelines, coastal cliffs, and pockets of tussock grassland and heath, with little to no freshwater. Surrounding waters feature granite reefs, boulders, and rich marine habitats, supporting a diverse array of fish and invertebrates. Judging by the macerated dolphin we found here once, perhaps a bit sharky too.

Ecologically, the Glennie Group is highly significant. The islands are part of the Wilsons Promontory Islands Important Bird Area, providing vital breeding grounds for seabirds such as shearwaters and penguins, while also offering habitat for seals and other marine wildlife. Human access is largely restricted to protect these fragile ecosystems, as the islands are remote, exposed to rough weather, and largely undeveloped. Despite this, their combination of rugged granite terrain, undisturbed vegetation, and rich marine life makes the Glennie Group an important conservation and scientific area, preserving a rare example of Victoria’s offshore wilderness. The birdlife will keep you up at night… what a unique joy.

If its really hectic there is space for a boat to tie ‘fore-n-aft’ between two boulders right up in the bacl of the cove. The ‘Hole’ in the cliff on shore has pirate treasure, and perhaps a curse.