Eleven hours in a chair

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You can fly Melbourne to Launceston in an hour. We took eleven hours and slept in a chair, and would do it again.

Here's what that's actually like.

A taxi from the hotel in central Geelong to the terminal: Gheringhap Street to 136 Corio Quay Road, sixteen minutes, $33.58 including GST. The receipt says 16:02.

Which put us there thirteen minutes before check-in even opened. Check-in runs from two and a half hours before sailing until strictly forty-five minutes before — for a 18:45 departure, that's 16:15 to 18:00. We'd planned a 16:15 taxi and gone earlier out of nervousness, and it cost nothing.

The terminal is better than it needs to be. Anchors Rest café, lounge seating, free wi-fi, charging points. If you've a wait, it's a perfectly civilised one.

Except you probably won't have much of a wait, because —

We were on the ship at 17:13, an hour and a half before departure. A photo of the breakfast menu board timestamps it.

This is the thing nobody tells you: the waiting happens aboard, not ashore. Check in, walk on, and you've ninety minutes to find your seat, walk the decks and watch Geelong from the water before anything moves.

Ours was Spirit of Tasmania I — we only confirmed that the next morning, photographing her from the far bank of the Mersey, because the booking never names the vessel.

The Top Deck Lounge, still empty at boarding.

The Top Deck Lounge is genuinely pleasant — wicker armchairs under white canopies rigged like sails, timber underfoot, a pizza counter at the end.

But walk on and you find the ship's real character:

The arcade. Note the sign asking people to limit their gaming time.

A games arcade with a polite sign asking people to limit their screen time, and a full soft-play structure with tunnels, netting and grinning cartoon starfish.

The soft-play structure, empty at boarding.

This is not a romantic sea voyage. It's school holidays with a hull, and it's much more cheerful for it.

We booked two recliners: $572.83 for the pair, $286.42 each.

The verdict, and this surprised me: more comfortable than air travel. The seat is wide, it reclines properly, and there is a serious amount of leg room — more than you'd get for many times the money in the air. You are not wedged. Nobody puts a trolley into your elbow.

For an overnight crossing the recliner does the job. If you want a cabin you can have one, but on this evidence you don't need one.

We'd brought food from a Coles in Geelong, so we never tested the ship's kitchen. Having since read the board properly, I regret it more than slightly.

Dinner is served at TMK — the Tasmanian Market Kitchen, and it's self-serve: $32.50 for mains, with the salad bar, dinner rolls and a non-alcoholic drink (tea, coffee or post-mix soft drink) all included in that. Children are $15.50 for fifteen and under, $10.00 for ten and under, and free for five and under.

The Dinner Menu board, photographed at 17:13, just after we boarded.

What $32.50 buys:

• Carvery — Tasmanian roast of the day, sticky honey-soy and sesame chicken, roasted root vegetables, steamed seasonal vegetables, pan gravy and condiments.
• Hot dishes — crumbed fish and squid with umami seasoning, lemon and tartare; crispy fried chips; vegetable stir-fry with crunchy noodles; penne with tomato and basil; and a Massaman lamb and vegetable curry with basmati rice.
• Salads, all vegetarian — mixed leaves; roasted potato with chimichurri; spicy cauliflower with tahini; Greek lemon, fetta and grain; green vegetable.

Dessert is $9.50: apple and rhubarb with custard and crumble, pavlova with fresh fruit and whipped cream, or an Anvers triple chocolate brownie — Anvers being a chocolate maker at Latrobe, ten minutes down the road from where the ship berths. A nice piece of local sourcing on a boat that could easily have not bothered.

A roast dinner, a curry, a salad bar and a drink for roughly what a pub main costs ashore, eaten while crossing Bass Strait. Next time we book the sitting the moment we're aboard.

Breakfast is the simpler operation — a Grab & Go counter:

Morning Grab & Go.

Croissant $5.50, almond croissant $7.00, ham and cheese toastie $6.80, hash brown $2.50, muffin $5.50, yoghurt $4.20, juice $6.00.

And, quietly, fresh fruit: $2.00.

Which is a small joke at the passengers' expense, because you cannot carry fresh fruit off this ship. Tasmania is free of fruit fly and guards it hard — no fresh fruit or vegetables may leave the terminal at Devonport. So the ferry will happily sell you an apple, on the strict understanding that you eat it before the ramp.

We had the same problem in reverse: a punnet-heavy picnic bought that afternoon, all of which had to be finished at sea. Not the worst homework.

The forecast had a cold front crossing Bass Strait, and this is a notoriously unpleasant stretch of water. It's only fifty to seventy metres deep, so Southern Ocean swell driven by the Roaring Forties can't spread downward and stands up instead. Storm waves here reach fifteen metres.

Neither of us has anything to report about it.

That is the highest praise a Bass Strait crossing can receive. Take the tablets an hour before boarding rather than when you start to feel it, and there's a decent chance your night is simply uneventful.

You dock at 06:00, and then you wait.

06:03. The Mersey in flat dawn light.

The outer deck alongside the funnel, in the first light.

Sun about to rise over Devonport, under a mackerel sky.

And there it is, over the rooftops.

The waterfront, with a small yellow boat out on the river.

06:35. Still on the ship — and no longer minding.

Thirty-five minutes separate the first of those photographs from the last, and we were aboard for all of them. The 05:15 alarm is not over-cautious; disembarking a ship this size genuinely takes that long.

But look what the delay bought. A working river — a red bulk carrier at the grain berth, four cement silos, the town stacked up the hill — and then the sky went from flat grey to that.

Walk off, and there's a biosecurity point on the way out of the terminal. Declare anything fresh, or bin it aboard. It costs nothing to hand something over; it costs a lot not to.

Two things, and we'll do both.

Book much further ahead. We paid $286.42 a head for a recliner. Booked earlier that comes down, and keeping it under $300 per person is a reasonable target rather than a lucky one.

Take the day sailing instead. This is my sister's, and it's the better idea. Spirit of Tasmania runs daytime crossings between September and April, leaving at 9am and arriving at 6pm — nine to eleven hours, in daylight, across a strait we slept straight through. And because you don't need a seat or a cabin for a day sailing, it's cheaper as well as better.

We crossed one of the most storied stretches of water in Australia and saw none of it. Next time, the 9am.

Her words: better than expected, and she'd do it again.

Mine: the seat beats a plane, the ship is friendlier than its reputation, and eleven hours costs less than you'd think if you plan ahead.

You arrive in another state at dawn, having slept, with your feet on the ground and no airport anywhere in it. That's worth eleven hours.

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