Pittwater

Pic: Barranjoey, palm beach and storm cloud from the nth-west (hawkesbury side).

Family sail

Lazy family sail with all the kids on board. Some where happier than others. These two loved their spot at the bow and spent a large part of the afternoon there, happily chatting away. It did take a while to get them to hold on with both hands but they eventually obliged most of the time. Definitely helped that conditions were easy, with the wind speed rarely exceeding 10 knots. We had the main sail reefed for the first time and used the smallest genoa, so it was pretty smooth sailing for kids, mums and ultimately dads.

Another Friday afternoon...

Doubt it gets much better than this.
Beautiful Friday arvo, sweet seabreeze, Gussy and Charlie executed a James Bond style last minute 'exit from the CBD alcatraz' rescue of myself and Yeatsy and in no time we had No 1 up and were beating up the harbour and out the heads.

No photos to show for it but a 1st class sail.

Only drama was snagging a passing kayaker with a lure - oops! He seemed to be OK.

Thar goes the assy

It was all going sooooo well.
One minute Jens is getting coached...

Then we are cruising under assy and trash-talking passing vessels...as you do...

Then this...

Halyard trouble

Last weekend...Charlie and I (plus my bro Nick) had a maintenance session and sail...that was...well not entirely unsuccessful.

Main missions were to get electronic instrument up mast and reaffix cable tie under bowsprit.

The instrument is up, but seemingly not working, and the cable tie is on, but it still needs tightening before we can sail with assy.

In the process Charles and I dropped two tools over board each, starting with me, in quick succession losing the shifter and pliers needed to tighten the bowsprit cable tie from the same pocket in my shorts. 

Charles also cunningly managed to jam the masthead spinnaker halyard - right at the top.  This may not be that easy to fix.  It ain't a complete disaster as we haven't used any masthead symmetric spinnakers yet, and probably aren't in much of a hurry to do so.  (And this is another reason all those spare spinnakers could come off the boat.)  But we will have to look at it before long - and it will probably need a pro.  Among other functions of the spinnaker halyard, it is the best way to get someone up the mast.

Anyway, we had a quick sail out around Clark (?) Island off Double Bay and back with a fairly brisk southerly.  We sailed under main and No 3 (smallest headsail) and that was pretty good, with Charlie helming all the way.

We sailed back on to the mooring pretty smartly but the sail-off attempt to start with was a debacle.  I waited for us to be on the right tack before casting off, only to find I'd tangled the dinghy's rope through the newly affixed bowsprit cable tie.  Attempting to hold the boat back with one hand while untying the crap knot on the dinghy painter was pretty tricky.


When it was finally done, we had no momentum whatsoever and were pushed backwards by the wind towards other boats, eventually relying on motor to get steerage.


Have to work on that...

Camping at Bantry Bay

Camping trip with both kids and dog a success.  Good weather is key - wet weather would be tough and too much heat would be difficult also.
Sailed up harbour, passed Balmoral and through Spit under main alone in constant NE in under 2 hours.

Laid anchor at Bantry Bay as moorings were packed, but the motor-bougains cleared out before sunset leaving plenty of room.
Got large deck tent up which helped alot with sun in evening and morning.
Slept pretty well and schools of Taylor collected under boat in the morning.
Stopped to fill water tank at Spit on the way back but the pump seems to be broken - so for the moment there is no way to get the water out!.
Dropped into Watson's Bay on way back for fish and chips.  Trip back with seabreeze behind a doddle.

 The beauty of Blues Pt Tower.

 You ol' seadog.

 Reading in the V-berth.

 Dinner under deck cover.

 Boog comatose after massive dose of fish and chips.

 Chops gets a feel for the foredeck.

Sarah with Boog test-driving lifejacket.

Easterly

Fun afternoon sail with Stephen. There was quite a bit of tacking necessary to get us through Harbour Bridge, as the wind (10-12 knots) came pretty much straight from the east. And the return would probably have been faster and easier with any kind of spinnaker, but the mainsail eventually did the job too. Did mean we were an hour late for practice though... I'm starting to feel more comfortable on the old Eclipse.

Steamin under assy - spin doctor helms

Roger, Phil and Sacha flying home from Quarantine Bay after finally getting the twists out of the assy.

Sunday Bromance

Steve and Gus get back to work after a swim at Lady Jane.
You wanna play Masters', Honey?

If you're going to pike...do it with flair

Sach
I'm not going to Newcastle anymore, but I'll be honest with you: I really don't like sailing. In fact, I kind of hate it. As soon as I'm in the boat, I'm just waiting to get out of it. I don't like the open water, I don't like the sea sickness, the spray, the deadly swinging beams, being near all those other boats, the windiness, the names of things - why is it called a 'jib', I don't even really like Sydney Harbour. It doesn't speak volumes about my masculinity, but there it is. It's good to share things that your friends love, but I'm sort of dreading it. I'll do it, but if there is some other way we could spend the afternoon that would be good.
BW

Footwear advised

Dug a couple of these out of my foot the other day. Pretty much had to be from stepping in the water at Snail's Bay. Dunno what they are but I've been limping all week.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? ...

Nup, it's Sacha. There he was perched high on the rigging like an ungainly over sized albatross, biggest bloody bird i'd ever seen.

So last Friday we'd decide a little bit of maintenance was overdue, we did a bit of cleaning up and made the boat ship-shape (rrrr - me 'arty's) and then it was onto the main event, putting up the wind direction thing-a-majiggy. Deciding I didn't like harnesses and ropes I volunteered sacha to go up, he accepted and next thing I know I'm looking up at a bloody big bird and hoping it's not going to shit on me.

Things we discovered:

1. Even though we have winches, it's hard to lug 80 or so kgs up there
2. We have the biggest mast in the bay (that's what I'm taking about ladies ;) )
3. The view's pretty good from up the top
4. Ships tend to rock, even in a bay, should be interesting the first time we have to do that in a storm

See a couple of pics below of sachmo doing his thing.

Asymmetric spinnaker management

Turns out, to lower the assy we should have been heading directly downwind, not upwind.

Source: http://www.cautionwater.com/article.aspx?articleid=76

This 'depowers' the sail, and hides it behind the main.
We live and learn.
The articles also say the sail shouldn't be stored wet.
Hmmm.

Sortie 8 - 6/1/11 - Sarah, Marco, Trish, Darcy passing oil tanker under bridge

A glorious sail. Moderate South-Easter. 

All the way from Snail's Bay to Parsley Bay on the one tack and the same on the way back.  Marco dealt much better with his life jacket today.

Darc was on the tiller much of the way.

Sortie 1 - 17/12/10