Sailing Lake St Clair

In August 2025, Col and I bought a little 16-foot sailing dinghy — Manuka — with the aim of using her to gain access to wild places that were hard to get to. Particularly places across Tasmania's inland lakes and harbours. While we have sailed Manuka a bit since we got her, most of that has been close to home, and March 2026 was the first occasion we both had enough time where we could take her away for an extended period. So, on Thursday the 19th of March, we set off to Lake St Clair for a week of exploring.

Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the lake without incident. On our arrival, we discovered one of the trailer tyres was shredded, with multiple splits in the sidewall.

We've got no idea when this occurred, but think it must have been close to our destination, as we didn't notice it on any of our stops nor in the handling of the car. When we later got it replaced, the tyre place thought the rubber may have become brittle from going in and out of salt water 🤷🏼‍♂️.

But after the small setback of having to change the tyre, we got ourselves on the water from the boat ramp at Cynthia Bay.

Our original plan was to anchor under Mt Ida, but having gotten on the water late, and with a plan to climb Mt Olympus early the next day, we sailed to Echo Point, with the gently wind from being pushing us along at about 3 kt, and tied up at the jetty — on the opposite side to where the ferry ties up, to make sure we were out of the way. From here, we had a stunning view of Mt Ida across the lake.

Arriving after 6pm, we only had a brief explore before organising some dinner and then settling in for the night.

The next morning, we awoke to a huge bank of fog blanketing the lake.

We made breakfast and set off on foot to climb Mt Olympus. Unfortunately, we didn't quite make the summit this day. We returned to the lake and contemplated what went wrong, considering if we'd make another attempt this trip.

The next day we woke to glorious weather again.

After breakfast, we headed up to Narcissus Bay in Manuka, which is located at the northern end of the lake, and was northwest from our location at Echo Point. With a 2 kt northwesterly wind, there was no sailing this day and we motored up the lake, tying up at the jetty – hopefully out of the way of the ferry.

From there we spent the day exploring the Narcissus River by packraft, before motoring back to Echo Point in the afternoon.

The following day we had another crack at climbing Mt Olympus, this time making it the summit! After conquering the mountain, we made our way back o the boat and settled in for our final night.

We woke on the Monday morning to another day of glorious weather, with a gentle 6 kt northwesterly wind blowing. The tail wind allowed us to sail back to Cynthia Bay, with the sails set up in a butterfly configuration (aka wing-on-wing or goose-wing) for most of the trip back. However, the wind was a little inconsistent, so our speed for the trip varied from a maximum of 5 kt to only 2 kt on occasions.

Our original plan on our arrival back in Cynthia Bay was to packraft an upper section of the River Derwent, but with forecast rain we instead took the opportunity for a hot shower and lunch at the cafe before heading home.

Epiloge

After the incident with the boat trailer tyre on the way up, we decided it was probably time to get the trailer serviced – neither Col or I being particularly mechanically minded. That turned out to be somewhat needed, although expensive, with both hubs needing work (with the bearings and seals being replaced), along with various rust in the trailer requiring attention and refinishing. But hopefully now, it is all set for our next adventure!