She leaked; her timbers were poor material for a seaboat in quarters where heavy weather was to be expected; and the accommodation she offered for a fairly extended cruise was cramped and uncomfortable.

But she was the best craft the Governor had to offer, and Flinders was too keen for the quest to quarrel with the means.

In those days fine seamanship and endurance often had to make up for deficiencies in equipment.
There were not two happier men in the King's service than these fast friends, when they received the Governor's commission directing them to sail "beyond Furneaux' Islands, and, should a strait be found, to pass through it, and return by the south end of Van Diemen's Land." The affection that existed between them is manifest in every reference which Flinders made to Bass in his book, A Voyage to Terra Australis.

"I had the happiness to associate my friend Bass in this new expedition," he wrote of the Norfolk's voyage; and it was a happiness based not only on personal regard, but on kindred feeling for research work, and a similarity in active, keen and ardent temperament.
The sloop was provisioned for twelve weeks, and "the rest of the equipment was completed by the friendly care of Captain Waterhouse of the Reliance." A crew of eight volunteers was chosen by Flinders from the King's ships in port.

It is likely that some of them were amongst the six who had accompanied Bass to Westernport, and Flinders to the Furneaux and Kent Islands, but their names have not been preserved.
The Norfolk sailed on October 7, 1798, in company with a sealing boat, the Nautilus.* (* There are three accounts of the voyage: (1) that of Flinders in diary form, printed in the Historical Records of New South Wales Volume 3 appendix B; (2) that of Flinders in his Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 1 page 138; and (3) that of Bass, embodied in Collins' Account of New South Wales.