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A week in Port Davey and Bathurst Harbour
A crewed expedition week into the Tasmanian south-west wilderness, where the weather window decides everything and there is no shop.
The route
| Day | From | To | Distance | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kettering or Hobart | Recherche Bay | 35 to 50 nm | Staging leg. You go no further until the window is confirmed. |
| 2 | Recherche Bay | Port Davey entrance | 60 to 80 nm | The committing passage. South West Cape and open Southern Ocean. |
| 3 | Port Davey | Bathurst Harbour | 12 to 18 nm | Through Bathurst Narrows. Sheltered and dark tannin water. |
| 4 | Bathurst Harbour | Melaleuca or Claytons Corner | 6 to 12 nm | Short legs, walks ashore, weather dependent. |
| 5 | Bathurst Harbour | Port Davey anchorages | 10 to 16 nm | Reposition for the return window. |
| 6 | Port Davey | Recherche Bay | 60 to 80 nm | Return passage. May be day 5 or day 7 depending on weather. |
| 7 | Recherche Bay | Kettering or Hobart | 35 to 50 nm | Conservative final leg with a buffer day built in. |
Port Davey and Bathurst Harbour are remote Tasmanian wilderness waterways reached by expedition, with permits and weather windows. That sentence is the whole itinerary. Everything below is about respecting it.
Who this suits and who it does not
It suits people who want genuine wilderness and will accept that the schedule belongs to the weather. There are no towns, no shops and no fuel. The water is tannin dark, the hills are bare quartzite, and on a still morning it is one of the quietest places in Australia.
It suits experienced offshore sailors as crew, and it suits non sailors who book a fully crewed vessel with a skipper who knows the coast. Both work. What does not work is anything in between.
It does not suit anyone with a fixed return flight in the middle of the window. It does not suit bareboat charter at all: charter vessels certified for sheltered or partially smooth waters are not permitted to make this passage, because a Survey: see glossary">Certificate of Survey sets the operating area. Read safety and commercial vessel rules and charter types.
It does not suit anyone who is uncomfortable being genuinely out of contact.
The shape of the days
Distances are rounded planning estimates. The two Southern Ocean legs of sixty to eighty nautical miles each dominate the plan. Everything inside Port Davey is a short hop of six to eighteen miles in flat, sheltered water.
Day one is a staging leg only. You move south and then you wait for the forecast to confirm. Nobody departs on hope.
Day seven is conservative and there is a buffer day inside the week. If you use the buffer waiting for a window, you use it. If you do not, you get an extra day in Bathurst Harbour, which is the better outcome anyway.
Decision points
The window is the only real decision. The passage around the south-west corner of Tasmania is exposed to the full Southern Ocean swell with no bolt holes worth the name. You want a settled two day picture with a known change well after your arrival. If you do not have it, you do not go, and the trip becomes a channel and Bruny Island cruise instead. Good operators tell you this at booking. See the D Entrecasteaux Channel and Bruny alternative.
The second decision is the entrance. Port Davey's entrance in a big swell is not a place to arrive tired at dusk.
The third is the return. It is very easy to go in and much harder to be patient about coming out. Budget for being weathered in.
Season matters absolutely. Tasmania supports longer expeditions from December to March, with southern waters running roughly November to April and large margins needed for frontal changes and cold water. See weather and seasons.
What to book ahead
Permits and park requirements come first, and your operator will handle them. Confirm what is covered.
Book the vessel a year out. There are very few operators running this and their seasons are short.
Provision completely, including redundancy for extra days. There is no resupply. Bring cold weather and wet weather gear rated for the Southern Ocean, not for a Sydney winter. See provisioning and costs, which is where the expedition premium shows up.
One honest warning
If you get into trouble here, help is a long way away and may be weather limited. That is not a dramatic statement, it is a planning fact, and it should change how you behave. Cold water means a person overboard has a short useful window. Being clipped on, wearing a lifejacket and carrying a personal locator beacon is normal practice here rather than an abundance of caution.
The second warning is more likely to affect you: you may spend three of your seven days sitting in one anchorage watching rain, and that is a successful trip, not a failed one. If that idea annoys you, this is not your itinerary.
Detail is on the Port Davey and Bathurst Harbour page. Operators are in the operator directory and the wider picture is in the region directory.
1 operator could run this
- Is the vessel exclusively ours, with no shared passengers?
- How much guest space do skipper and crew occupy?
- What catering, beverage and wharf charges sit outside the headline price?
- What is the minimum charter duration on a weekend or public holiday?
- Does the vessel's certificate cover every leg of this route, or does one leg cross into a different operating area?
Keep planning
This is an editorial suggestion compiled from public sources, not navigational, safety or weather advice, and it can be wrong. Passage planning is the skipper's responsibility. Checked 11 September 2026. See the disclaimer.