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