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Archive Category: Sailing
The Sea Adventure: The 1st Day
Friday, 30 September 2005
We stayed the night at the home of Hoo-Ray! in South Gippsland and woke bright and shiny to check out the weather forecast. M looked at it dubiously. He was silent during porridge. He was in ‘decision-mode’. The forecast was for about 15 to 20 knot winds, increasing to 25 knots later on. And thus a little bit iffy.
M had provisioned for the trip like Jamie Oliver. He’d taken care of it all, and didn’t want to venture out in weather that would make his newly minted First Mate swim for home. I think he’d had nightmares about me stepping aboard and instantaneously vomiting straight over the side. Gunwale. Whatever.
So it was crunch time. If we were going to launch, we needed to get to the ramp at Newhaven by about 8.30am to get underway. If we left it any later we would be battling the tide, which would be concentrating on sucking us out into the unfriendly waters of Bass Strait.
“Right B,” said M, “I don’t think we’ll go. It will be too rough. We’ll just have to bash our way through. It’d be wet, and in no way a relaxing sail.”
I looked moodily at my porridge. My father wisely stayed silent.
“I don’t care if we have to bash our way. I want to go today. I’m not a princess. I can handle waves.”
M shook his head and cautioned me again.
“B, it won’t be much fun. We can just hang around today and go tomorrow instead.”
I shook my head. No.
And so it was that we turned up, after a forty minute drive, at the Newhaven boat ramp, which is right next to the Newhaven Yacht Squadron, and it’s very sexy yacht basin. I then assumed that we could back Hoo-Ray! down the ramp, into the water, and set off. But no. It was all going on with the rigging and the getting the mast up and the shackling of forestays and finding the jib. It seemed to me to take an interminable time. And the shackles. Who would have invented such a thing? What could be worse than with ice cold hands on rolling waves, trying to put a shackle on a stay or take one off?
A shackle is a bit of metal shaped like a ‘U’ with a pin that screws across, kind of like a screw on earring. Here’s what one looks like. Beyond fiddly. I can barely admit it, but even while M and I were rigging Hoo-Ray!, the boat was bouncing around on the trailer suspension and made me feel a little bit ill. However, I did not tell a soul.
Anyway, finally we got Hoo-Ray! sorted out. She slipped off the trailer (after some vein-popping pushing) and into the water. We tethered her to the jetty and dad and M went to speak to the people at the shop where we were going to leave the van and trailer locked up for the next three days. I was Master of the Boat. I tried sticking my head down below where we were to sleep. Instant quease. I tried a few more times, with the same result. I settled this by staying in the cockpit with my eyes fixed firmly on land.
Once they returned, M then had to spend what seemed an age setting up the mainsail and more rigging stuff. My dad stood on the jetty, holding the boat steady with the patience of a cow. Finally we were ready to actually leave. Go. Sail away. Vamoose! We sailed away from the jetty, waving to my dad, and M took the reef out of the sail, as we didn’t seem to be moving very fast. That only lasted for about ten minutes. Then the wind decided to visit. Big time.
Very soon there seemed to be an increasing number of Large Waves, and the wind was getting towards about 30 knots*. M felt that he may have removed the reef in the sail somewhat prematurely. So, as I took the tiller, he wrestled with the mainsail. As I hadn’t yet learnt the art of navigating the boat gently over waves, Hoo-Ray! and M both took a bit of a bashing. We furled the jib (all hail the invention of the furler) and were generally basted in brine. The direction in which we needed to head was directly into the wind… er… malestrom. The waves were very close together and about six feet high. Think of very big, liquid green corrugated tin.
Our aim was to go Rhyll for lunch and then to continue on our adventure by sailing across to French Island, and tucking under Tortoise Head for the night in the deep water that ran along the beach. However, the weather thought otherwise. After about forty minutes of seafaring battle, we fired up the outboard and began motor sailing. About four or five times M had to go to the front of the boat to tie something down or fix something that had snapped. I steered mutinously onward. Drenched and desperate to wee.
Rhyll materialised like some kind of wondrous figment. We aimed for the jetty at which M and my dad had tied up a month before. Bits of it were there, but the rest of it had sunk. It was quite perplexing. Then we aimed Hoo-Ray! at a far more rewarding structure. The public toilets. We pulled up on to the beach (after raising the rudder, the motor and the centreboard) and M and I jumped ashore.
“We did it!” M danced at me. “We made it to Rhyll!”
“I’m so glad!” I shouted into the widening gap between us. “I can’t talk anymore, I’m concentrating on bladder control.”
I loped in bladder controlling leaps to the public toilets and weed like the world’s most thirsty camel. It was heaven.
By the time I made it back to M, I was capable of conversation. M, in an indication of what life was going to be like for the next few days, made a sandwichy sensation of buttered bread, pesto, cheese and cherry tomatos. And a cup of Earl Grey tea. We licked our wounds and felt vastly improved.
I decided to stay with Hoo-Ray! while M went to have a look around. We were anchored so near the beach, that the boat was relatively steady. I curled up underneath in my sleeping bag and read a bit, snoozed a bit, and read a bit more until M came back and began ‘doing things’ on deck. Whatever he was doing seemed to involve a lot of walking about, and each time he moved, the boat bobbed in response. As did my stomach. The quease returned.
As it was a Friday, M reported that most of Rhyll’s five or six shops were open, and that he had found a lovely place for a drink… and maybe dinner. The thought of dinner did not excite me, but I had vague feeling that a stubby of Stella Artois might banish my sickness. We secured the valiant Hoo-Ray! and took a walk up the hill. The more I saw of Rhyll the prettier it seemed to get! We decided to be extravagant and eat at the fancy place. My thoughts about the Stella were correct. They had a lovely woodfire. The owner came and chatted to us and we told him we’d just sailed in, feeling slightly smug.
The menu was absolutely amazing, the prices were ridiculous and the food didn’t measure up to either. But it was nice to be out after our battle with the sea. We left at about 8pm to go back to Hoo-Ray! where we put on our slippers and settled in. After we’d lain there for about three hours, M groaned.
“I can’t take it anymore. I haven’t been able to get to sleep. That bit of the broken jetty keeps hitting the pole and keeping me awake.”
And so, if you had been there, you would have seen us at about midnight, motoring with great trepidation, to the other side of the little harbour. I stood on the bow with our Dolphin torch lighting our path and praying, while M steered valiantly through the night air. We found a spot. Checked that the anchor wasn’t dragging. And snuggled down again, this time for the rest of the night.
*What is a knot? A knot is the seagoing equivalent of a kilometre. It’s how you measure wind and distance on the water. However - one knot is equal to 1.8 kilometres. The odd thing is that as the wind blows stronger the power of the wind gets ridicuously stronger. Quite simply, you square the wind speed to get the power of the wind. Which is why 30 knots blows off your socks and twenty’s nearly plenty.
The Sea Adventure: The 2nd Day
Saturday, 1 October 2005
After our midnight adventures it was exciting to wake up in a part of the harbour that we hadn’t seen before (because we arrived in the dark). It was gorgeous. The houses of Rhyll surrounded the little sheltered bay, and there were big green hills a little further around, away from the township. M made cups of tea and his breakfast wonder dish ‘Egg in a Hole’. If you have not experienced Egg in a Hole, you should. It’s particularly good when camping.
How to make ‘Egg in a Hole’
Get a bit of bread. Bite a hole in the middle of it. Eat the bit you bit. Put bread in frypan with some butter, garlic (if you’re that way inclined), and some salt and pepper. Put ‘egg in hole’. Fry both sides. Stick it on a plate. Eat it.
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With breakfast done and dusted, I washed up in the bucket. (Not the one reserved for wee.) M chatted to a few passers by on the shore, and then we set off for French Island. I hadn’t realised quite how protected we had been in Rhyll. As soon as we got a fair way from land we where again hit by the Mega Wind. I’d texted my dad to ask him to text me through the latest forecast for Westernport Bay. Naturally 15 to 20 knot forecast we had read online just the day before had disappeared into the ether, only to be replaced by 25 to 30 knot winds - strong wind warning. Perfect. Not.
Again we reefed the mainsail (i.e. didn’t have the entire sail up, just most of it) and after a while decided to again rely on the motor as our destination was exactly where the wind was coming from. We had to tack to get there, which was going to take us a ridiculously long time in such strong winds. Of course M had to do battle with bits and pieces again. Throughout our trip there were only two things he did that drove me crazy. One was telling me to steer for ‘that tree over there’.
“Which tree?”
He would point, as the boat flailed from wave to wave, at what looked to me like a whole plantation of trees in the distance.
“That one!”
“Um. Ok.”
Whereupon I would just try and continue in the direction that we were already going, but would inevitably, in my efforts to ease us through the waves, fall off course until the boat, going sideways into the tumult, would encounter several large waves. The waves would fall on M, who would continue with whatever thing he was trying to fix while managing to point me back in the direction of his ‘tree’.
The other thing that disturbed me (although it shouldn’t, as he replicates his actions on dry land with doors) was his inability to remember to close the hatch. The hatch! The only thing keeping all our food and sleeping bags dry. As I do on solid ground, I would just close it myself every ten minutes or so, but because I kept losing track of the tree, it became imperative to keep the hatch shut. At one point I looked up, saw it open again, closed it, and one second later it was submerged under a big dumping of green water. M and I looked at each other with Tweety-Bird eyes.
It was a tewwible stworm. The bowt wocked and wocked…
The wind was going nuts, although the waves weren’t quite as big as the previous day.
“Don’t worry,” M kept shouting reassuringly, “Once we get close to French Island, it will be all sheltered. It will be much calmer!”
I, salt chafed, squinted toward the shore. It really didn’t look any calmer there. We motor sailed onwards, M and I both singing that Rolf Harris song in tune with the engine…
Sun-a-rise, he come in the morning
Sun-a-rise, he come with the dawning
Spreading all the light all around…
(…at that point we would do didgeridoo noises, which complemented the tone of the motor quite well.)
It took us what seemed like a couple of hours to reach French Island. The wind completely disregarded our wishes and blew even harder. Thankfully the waves got smaller as we got close to land. We nosed our way along the beach. Anchored. Too windy. Pulled up anchor. Moved along a bit. Anchored. Too near the remnants of an old jetty. Pulled up anchor. Moved right into the beach. And anchored again. We had found a ‘good spot’. Windy but ‘offshore’ so no waves at all.
“Once the tide goes out, we’ll be up on the sand you know,” said M, ever knowledgable about the whens and wheres of the tide.
“Will the boat flop on to it’s side?”
“Probably not.”
“Then it doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, as long as the tide is high when we want to get going.”
And with those words I tempted fate. But more on that later. M went for an exploratory wander and I stretched out on the boat in the sun, while trying to stay out of the wind. It got quite hot. We drank a cheerful glass of red wine each (yes - from a glass - we are so styley) and decided to go on a Walk.
I wanted to go and coo at the lambs that were sharing a paddock with older sheep and some cows. Of course once I got too near the fence, they all scattered. I was, again, happy that I gave up eating them. Less guilt. Our walk continued. I was looking for treasure. I found two tennis balls - only needed one more for M to be able to juggle. It was only five minutes until I found the necessary third ball, and M obliged me be juggling jubilantly. We found two more tennis balls after that.
The shores of French Island (or the part that we were on) were odd. It seemed as if there might have been a forest right down to the water, because the sand was full of little dead tree trunks. And areas of the sand that looked like rock, were actually some kind of rock-looking squishy bouncy stuff. It was strange. Maybe chicory comes from trees…
[Minor tangent: I just googled and it appears that ‘The island’s mangroves were burned in the 1840s for reduction to barilla, a plant ash rich in soda and potassium which was used in the production of glass and soap. However, heavy rains washed away most of the ash and the endeavour was abandoned.‘ ]
OK. Glad I sorted that out. Here are some pictures from our walk.
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It was quite hot, although still fairly windy, but by the time we made it back to the boat everything had slackened off. I went back to my book, while M went on a solitary jaunt toward Tortoise Head. But not before some tea.
It began to get dark. And this is where I come back to my marvellous idea of mooring the boat high and dry. Because as the dusk set in, so did the MOSQUITOS. Not normal small urban mosquitos, but large, swamplike creatures that had been waiting ten years for flesh. Not hordes, just a small, SAS-like battalion. They were ruthless and determined. I dressed myself so that the only things touching the air were my hands and face. I ran up and down the boat in a kind of perpetual motion. We had no insect repellant. I cursed the lack of Bushman. I stood looking down at a nearby little rock, willing the tide to give me some indication it was coming in. Never had a tide taken so long.
All I had with me that I thought mosquitos woundn’t like was some lavender oil. So I lit our little candle lantern, dabbed oil on the top and huddled over the fumes. I became miraculously mosquito free! We then basted M and the boat in lavender oil, so much so that if anyone had stumbled upon us, we would have been mistaken for feral aromatherapists. And still we waited. It was like watching a kettle boil. M tried to haul us out using the anchor, but the boat would not budge. So we both went for a dusky walk toward Tortoise Head. Keeping a nervous glance up our sleeve for the nearly floating boat.
OK, by now it’s dark. M had taken a compass bearing on the far side of the deepwater channel that began about five metres out. We aimed, when we finally floated free, to anchor in the channel so that we wouldn’t wake up high and dry all over again. FINALLY the tide came in enough for Hoo-Ray! to float. We each grabbed a plastic oar and paddled. Paddled hard. M kept and eye on the GPS and after 100 meters dropped the anchor over the side. The anchor rope played out a long way, which seemed to indicate that we’d been successful.
Further away from the beach it was a trifle more breezy and the mosquitos dissapated quickly. Such relief. M cooked up some pasta and added in the pesto he had made before we set out. With the addition of cherry tomatos, it was the most divine dinner of our sailing adventure, and blew the restaurant meal of the night before out of the water. We drank some red, ate some tim-tams and went to bed, hoping we would still be afloat in the morning.
We were…
The Sea Adventure: The 3rd Day
Sunday, 2 October 2005
We awoke in the morning to find ourselves thankfully in the middle of the 30m wide channel. The sky was blue and the wind cold. The wind had been offshore all night, and as the channel ran quite close to shore, it had been a quiet sleep. M ripped out another wonder-breakfast; this time porridge with brown sugar and cups of tea.
I had almost begun to get used to weeing in a bucket, although I would shoo M to the other end of the boat and instruct him to look valiantly out to sea until the bucket and I were done. We motored for about ten minutes to get Hoo-Ray! into the right position to go close around Tortoise Head. We were aiming for Tankerton Jetty on French Island where the ferry from Phillip Island docks. The plan was to then hire bicycles and see a bit of the island, however, I was a bit dubious about this, as riding bicyles into strong wind up hills didn’t sound like the most fun we had ever had.
The scenery along the way was amazing. Lots of wind generators (as French Island has no mains power) and old farmhouse looking buildings. Cliffs. Once we left the shelter of Tortoise Head the ocean swell kicked in, as did a five foot wind swell from another direction. Things got rough and pokey. It was almost a repeat of our previous experiences, and was a little wearing.
We could see all the unregistered cars left in the car park and bashed our way toward land in about 25 knots, only to find the jetty swamped by waves.It became obvious that there was no way were were going to be able to tie up and land. We gave up and turned around to an easier point of sail. We headed for Cowes.
Slapped our way back through the rough water off Tortoise Head and then a fast sail (for little 16′ HooRay!) on a beam reach all the way to Cowes (can you tell that my prose has been edited for sailing cred by M?). The more wind there was, the more I was unable to fathom how anyone could liveaboard for any length of time. I found it impossible to go below for any reason, let alone read maps or contemplate making a cup of tea. The only way I’ll be a cruiser is on a large multihull, thanks for asking.
We neared Cowes, which appeared from the sea to be all pub and pine trees. There was a jetty, but again the wind and the waves were mostly onshore and made landing way too dicey. I was urging M to sail toward the public toilets, but it was impossible. I crossed my legs and hoped pathetically for the best. M took us around to the next cove, and made a kamikaze swing into the beach, where we dropped anchor five metres from the rocks. M gazed valiantly into the distance, while I convened with the bucket, my one true friend.
Then came one of the best bits of our adventure. We followed th’e long shore along toward Rhyll, down wind, right near the beach the whole way. It was gorgeous. I fell asleep in the sun and lost my sunglasses from Lennox Head over the side [sob] - but it was a lovely sail.
We neared Rhyll and pulled up on to the beach where we had the time before (it seemed so long ago…yeah, all of 24 hours!) We wandered a little, because as it was Sunday, all of Rhylls five or six shops were now open.
We avoided the cheesy restaurant, chock full of weekenders in faux yachting apparel (unlike our bedraggled salt stained selves) and headed for fish and chips. Well, chips and potato cakes and… pumpkin cakes - which I’d never had before, but welcomed gladly into my life. We went and sat down by the walkway in front of the beach, with the live jazz from the restaurant wafting over from behind us. It was sunny and beautiful. I became ever fonder of Rhyll.
During our noshing, my phone rang. My mother, with the sound of a shopping centre behind her.
Mother: Hi B, where are you? Am I going to see you before I go?
B: In Rhyll on Phillip Island. And no. We had our goodbye lunch last week, remember?
Mother: But I want to see you and M before I go…
B: Well you can’t see us, because We. Are. On. Phillip. Island.
Mother: [changing tack] Well… The other reason I was ringing is because I’m over at Southland [for some reason she’s never just ‘at Southland’ but always ‘over at Southland’] and I’m in the National Geographic shop…
B: [eating chips, eyes closed] Mmmmm.
Mother: I wanted your opinion.
B: [instantly awake. shock and awe] Really?
Mother: Your brother won’t tell me what he wants me to bring him when we see him in London, so…
B: [helpfully] Drugs?
Mother: What?
B: Nothing.
Mother: So, do you think he’d like a five foot blow up kangaroo?
B: To do what with?
Mother: [oblivious] As a joke! To sit in his room! Don’t you think he’d think it would be funny?
B: No. No I don’t. I think you should buy him duty free gin, like I did. He whined that it was only Tanqueray, but he still drank it, and liked it. He didn’t have to Blow. It. Up. How long does it take to blow up a five foot kangaroo, anyway?
Mother: [deflated] Oh. OK. So you don’t think so?
B: [emphatically] I. Don’t. Think. So
Mother: [does The Sigh] Alright then… So. I’m not going to see you before I go?
B: Yeah. If you want to drive out to Phillip Island… I’ll call you when we get home, as long as it’s not too late.
Mother: [mollified] OK then… Have a good time!
B: Bye!
M had devoured the rest of the chips as I talked my mother out of a decision that may have ended in her own matricide and was getting itchy feet. We wandered back toward Hoo-Ray! and realised, belatedly, that the wind had swung around. The boat was no longer in such a good position. M decided to take it around the other side near where we had just been sitting. I could have helped, but I took photos from shore instead.
Once Hoo-Ray! was sorted, we went on a walk to the General Store and bought some ice. By the time we got back to the boat with it we were hot. We paddled out and jumped aboard. I arranged some of my favourite white wine (Giesen Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc) in a bucket with the ice, while M talked to a couple of people who were standing on the shoreline.
I’d just settled back with the paper, when M suggest (in a way that indicated he was pining) to go for another sail while the weather was still good. I couldn’t believe it. We had live jazz for free, wine on ice, some snacky things, newspapers and gorgeous weather. M looked like a labrador. I acquiesced, hardly believing that it was possible.
Anyway, so we went for a good sail. M was desperate to beat my speed of five knots that we have measured on the GPS while I’d been steering. I think he got to 6.2 knots. I tried to beat him again, and nearly tipped us overboard in the process… or that’s what it felt like. We weaved all around the boats that were moored, oohing at the pretty ones and making faces at the fuglies. Finally M said we could head back. There was still some sun left, although, by that stage it was cooling down.
We opened the wine, snacked on cheese, read the paper and wondered what the poor people were doing 
Saw a beautiful couta boat go by with two people and two dogs aboard…
After a good hour, we motored the boat back around to the spot where we had slept before, and despite our cheese filled stomachs, M cooked some excellent tuna pasta, which we ate as the day turned to dusk. I then tried to read my book by candlelight…
…while M played with my camera’s manual settings, trying to take the perfect ‘night’ shot. Which he did.
Red. Oomoo.
Sunday, 27 November 2005
This morning, I decided it was time to add another shade to my hair. Now I have achieved neapolitan ice-cream status. Three shades. Although here you can only see the latest one. Then I had lunch with my mother, who gave me a bottle of Light Blue, some chai tea and some earrings. Woo! My fave perfume of the moment! Thank you to Small Brother for passing on my texted perfume request!
Then M and I took Oomoo for a sail. OMG… it was far more windy than we’d thought. We only stayed out for about 45 minutes, tacking backwards and forwards as kite-surfers whizzed by. It was a little hairy, as the mast was bending like a banana. But it survived. I got completely soaked. Oomoo needed a complete hose-out when we made it back…
Scrambling, Sailing, Soundcarding
Thursday, 1 December 2005
Not dead. Just doing stuff. have got my new computer going! Woot! (as Kartar puts it). Turning it on for the first time was a little bit hairy. As I know next to nothing about electricity - except that you should touch something metal that is on the ground to discharge any static before sticking your hands into a computer) I kicked off my shoes, grabbed the metal pole of the standard lamp, pulled out my soundcard (the most expensive thing) and then pressed the ‘on’ switch. It just purred straight to life! I was gobsmacked. I would not have been the least surprised if the whole thing had caught alight and exploded. But it didn’t. Initally it only found one hard drive, but I switched around the hard drive ribbon and it then discovered them both (although the one that is supposed to be 160gig is only coming up as about 125gig - weirdly).
So it’s running Windows XP and last night I installed the soundcard drivers and breakout box. Yike! I really have to get the little stereo fixed so I can run my speakers…sorry…’monitors’… That’s what they’re called in studioland - ’cause you ‘monitor’ the sound through them.
Last night when I got home, M had come home early. It was a beautiful day and we were like a well oiled machine. We took Oomoo out for an after-work sail! I did most of the sailing. Yah! One of the perks of living right near the beach (though that will only be true for another few months, there are architects and builders circling close by - renovations are nigh - which is when we’ll be kicked out). Didn’t start making dinner until 9pm. And then I did the soundcard driver install…which is probably why I didn’t wake up this morning until 8.45am and scrambled into work at a quarter past nine. Having a tea break just before 10am when you’ve only been at work for less than forty minutes kind of lacks the ordinary thrill…
Farrier 720 Porn
Sunday, 18 December 2005
M has been a veritable recluse since we’ve been back in Melbourne. Some of our friends he’s only seen ONCE since July and others… he hasn’t seen at all. This is due to Boat. And the dawning and launching of Boat is very nearly nigh. If it hadn’t been for some last minute issues with mathematics vs. mast, I might be floating right now, typing this into my old Palm IIIx and posting via Pocketmail and my mobile phone. I am, however, still in the front room of our house, looking at the trees swish back and forth. Nevertheless, in lieu of launch pictures, here is some up to date boat porn avi files in case you’re interested…
Click HERE to see one of the hulls unfold (3.8MB)
Click HERE to see it fold back up… (4.1MB)
I really do not expect anyone to click here except multihull tragics who find their way here via Google, lured by the combination of the works ‘Farrier trimaran‘ and ‘Porn‘.
Holy shit, it floats!
Thursday, 22 December 2005
Am not able to do this announcement justice as I’ve just staggered into work an hour late, but I’ll post pictures and more excitement after I’ve made it through my work Christmas party. M and I got up at 4am this morning and drove out to Boat. Met up with my dad. The trailer that Boat is on is a bazillion (a legitimate measurement) years old with two flat tyres. We managed to pump one of them up. We trailed Boat in first gear on a somewhat hairy short trip (or it would have been short if we weren’t in first gear) to the Altona boat ramp. The weather could not have been more perfect. It was very exciting!
M bought Boat (which was then four bits of wood) on 31 December 1998. He has worked on Boat since then (with a two year enforced break in Hervey Bay). I am somewhat biased, but Boat is truly a work of art. It’s gorgeous! (And I’m not just saying that because he put in a bookshelf for me.) I am very proud of M, who has never really built a boat before.
Boat eased off the shonky trailer and into the water, with me and dad guiding it with ropes. I did wheel chocking and brake pedal pushing when necessary. It was such a shock to see Boat actually in the water! Finally, finally, finally! M was such a happy bear. And I do not use the description lightly. A Very Happy Bear indeed.
We motored around to Williamstown where M has somehow wangled a mooring, and dad and I had to leave him there and depart, very belatedly, for work. But not before polishing off a bottle of champagne on the way over.
CONGRATULATIONS M! YOU ARE A DEDICATED, EXACTING AND PERSEVERANT BOATBUILDER EXTRAORDINAIRE. Now, have a rest!
:o*
An Absence of Pictures
Saturday, 24 December 2005
There is a rather large gaping hole where pictures of M’s pride and joy should be. Unfortunately the camera got left on the boat, and, as the only way to get to and from the boat at the moment is on a very tippy surfski and someone (M) keeps forgetting the waterproof bag - the camera remains on the boat.
Last night we attempted to have our first boat picnic with E and DJ, who were very keen to get aboard. Welcome to weather dependency. E made a gorgeous picnic. M paddled out. E and DJ drove to pick me up from Newport train station. Suddenly, we were in Kansas. The weather went psycho. DJ actually works at the BoM and had told us on good authority that this was not supposed to happen until about 11pm at night.
It was impossible to get out to Boat, and thus we picnicked in the park instead, which was almost as good. We toasted Boat and Christmas with champagne and lay on the grass. The boat visit was postponed for another, more amenable day. We spent an anxious night listening to wind howl and thunder boom, wondering whether Boat was tethered properly or was chafing through the mooring rope and poised for flight…
Boxing Day
Monday, 26 December 2005
After a large lunch at my mum’s place, M and I scooted down to Williamstown in the van, and met up with Chris. We went for a jaunt down the Yarra River - which is not something we’ll be able to do (for a while, anyway) once we’ve got the mast on.
Everything is different
Saturday, 31 December 2005
This time last year, M and I had just spent the night in the carpark of the Broken Head caravan park, a few kilometres south of Byron Bay. I remember that, like today, the weather was sublime. We had hardly any money at all. The first thing we did was go for a swim. Every time I go and swim at one of those northern New South Wales beaches I decide I want to stay there forever. We rinsed off in an outdoor shower near where we’d parked the van. We meandered our way to Rosebank, as we weren’t allowed back into Byron without paying a $50 fee. It is odd to think that we have known the people whose house we showed up at for only 365 days!
This time, things are different. Different state. Different house. Different job. We have a beautiful boat - the mast went up yesterday (thanks to the muscle of Dylan and Rach) and it is finally proper! There is a bit of money in the bank. We have a new mattress. We continue to be in limbo as far as the future goes, but I’m hoping that will resolve itself over the next month or two.
So tonight, instead of kicking back with two people we know and lots that we don’t*, we’re going to be out on Port Phillip Bay in Boat with D, R and Small Jack. We have lifejackets, an esky, beer and a designated sailor. Yah! HAPPY NEW YEAR!
*This is not to say we had a bad time last year, in fact, we had one of the best NYE that we’ve ever had and then demanded to stay on longer because we didn’t want to leave. Just so you know.
A (Very) Short Film & Welcome to 2006!
Sunday, 1 January 2006
This arrived - a link to a little movie made by my uncle - it’s about 3MB. It’s called The Butterfly Effect. Happy New Year! We had a good one - it should have been filmed as a feelgood comedy, where you think everything has gone awry, only to be saved in the nick of time. It contained vomit, pathos, cheese, mud, seaweed stench, cake, much beer, champagne, a boat and the night sky. D and M have the bruises to prove it. I’m off to read Harry Potter from beginning to end, because I’m on holiday and I can.
Au Revoir
Wednesday, 4 January 2006
We are about to embark on our first sailing journey. Thermos full of hot tea (reviving), boat full of tinned food (much to M’s despair, as it makes the boat ‘heavy’ - der), bags packed and cats in cattery. Would be able to update [miaow] if Pocketmail wasn’t so bastardly…
Bye!
Sailing Holiday - Day 01 - by M
Wednesday, 4 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
I slept on the boat. B stomps and yells along beach and pier untill I get up and take boat around to the dock. Load some tasty things then sailoff. No motor. Very 1890’s.
15 knots gusting to 20. Rough and lumpy. This is the first big sail for the little guy. Try sailing with jib an then mainsail only. Put up the full kit and power on to queenscliff. Boat gets a 5 hour bash. I sit and wait for something to break. I study mast then rudder then back to mast etc. B sleeps like a possum in the cabin. Nice. Nothing breaks! Arrive Port Phillip Heads. Sails down and motor through the cut into Queenscliff. Very Jason and the Argonauts. Awesome. Try to grab mooring but we swing around and glance a yacht. Full tilt revese saves us. Apologise. Surf ski over to spy bridge and sus a wonderful possie. Motor in. tie up. Wahoo. Chips and beer over a game of pool at the pub. The circus is in town. A crazy canivale conoodling sleep.
Summer Holiday - Day 01
Wednesday, 4 January 2006
For two days we have run around like chickens. I have had the interesting experience of driving from Hampton to Williamstown with three cats in their individual travel carriers with me in the front seat of the van.
I have blogged before about how Sonic was one of my favourite cats, other than Saf and Mow. She holds this title no longer. In fact, she’s lucky that I didn’t use up one of the few lives she has left and piff her off the Westgate Bridge. She yowled the entire 50 minute journey. I sang steadfastly over the top of her.
I’ve been up past midnight the last two nights helping M organise our boating holiday. We managed to have our first sail during this time and Boat sailed like a dream.
I was elected provisioner, and had great fun coming up with about eight different meals I could cook. As I’ve read heaps of sailing books, I knew all about provisioning. Buy the tins, write contents of tin on tin in permanent ink, rip off labels. The labels were destined to fall off during the voyage anyway.
The supermarket had stuff in tins that I never knew existed. Diced capsicum, nut-o-lene, mushrooms…. Then I stumbled on ‘Surprise Peas’ and ‘Surprise Beans’. They were indeed. I bought two packets of each. I bought condiments, dried herbs, pasta, rice, tinned corn, tuna, tomatos, beans…. I met my mother by accident as I was shoving my trolley amongst the vegtables.
“How long are you going away for?” she asked, eyeing my haul.
“Um, about 12 days.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Mum, I really wouldn’t want my trolley to end up on your foot.”
She made a big show of using a different check out than me because I had SO much stuff.
I went down to see how M was going at the boat. He was just walking through the carpark as I pulled up.
“Look!” I bounced, opening the back of the van. “I provisioned! I provisioned!”
“Holy shit.” M looked at the nine bags of shopping. “Multihulls are supposed to be light that’s how they go fast.”
“Right. But tins are what you use for food on boat journeys. That’s what all your books say.”
“All the people in the books have lead keeled monohulls. Tins don’t make much difference to them.”
“So when I’ve been telling you about how I’m going to write on tins, rip off the labels and stick them through the hatch covers on the outside hulls, have you just heard ‘let’s get more red wine’?
“Hulls! Hulls? No. I never knew what you were talking about. And don’t call them ‘hulls’ call them ‘outriggers’ - and you’re not putting any tins in them.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
We wade out to Boat with the shopping. My shoulder is still dodgy, so unfortunately M has to be mule-boy. He lectures me all the way out on how the boat should sit in the water. How we should treat the expedition as a backpacking trip and that we should only take what we can carry on our backs.
Whatever. I pack everything away in hidey holes and M can’t believe my skill at making things disappear.
The next day we go to Bunnings for supplies. The VHF marine radio (that we have no license to use) FINALLY arrives in the mail. We get an EPIRB and a rocket flare. Safe, safe, safe. This is all in case we decide to venture out into Bass Strait with the aim of sailing from Port Phillip to Westernport Bay.
Everything is packed. I have organised marine weather forecasts to be texted to M’s mobile phone three times a day. M has sewed sleeping sheets for D and E, who are hoping to hook up with us on our second day away. They call and ask where and when. We explain we are at the mercy of the weather, we have never sailed Boat anywhere before and that deadlines can’t safely exist on a sailing holiday.
M goes down to sleep on Boat. I stay home for one last sleep in the wonder bed. We agree to get up at 5am. M will come home and we will do last minute stuff before departing at about 6.30am.
I wake at 5am. I shower. I make a thermos of tea. It’s 5.40am. No M. I send quick emails to my dad and my sister. No M. He doesn’t answer his mobile. I drive the van down to the beach. Boat is floating happily at anchor, about 50 metres out. I imagine M unconsious below deck, bleeding from a head wound, unble to move with a comminuted fracture of the left femur and a fluttering pulse.
I walk to the edge of the water, whistling loudly. It’s about 6.10am. I hope that there isn’t anyone else sleeping their boats. I stand whistling for about ten minutes. Then I move to the pier which is my last option before wading out my undies. I stand on the pier, whistling as loud as I can between my fingers. I wonder if any of M’s blood has got into a drainhole in the boat and leaked out into the sea, where it will be smelt by a shark. Now I’m scared to wade.
I whistle furiously. Finally, there is a reply. M’s head emerges from below the hatch. It’s as much as I can do not to take my shoe off and throw it at it. He dances. I shake my head. Then I realise he is not dancing, but weeing vigorously into a container. Again.
We finally sail away at about 9.15am, heading across the bay to Queenscliff. I learn that it IS possible to be in the cabin whilst sailing and not vomit. You have to lie down! I sleep for two and a half hours, only woken a couple of times by the winch being used directly above my head. It’s bliss. M is delighting in Boat, she performs beautifully.
A few nautical miles out from Queenscliff we’re doing 8.4 knots- our top speed of the day, which we find wholly thrilling. M pulls down the sails and we motor into the harbour. Things go awry. The current is strong, there’s only one public buoy to secure the boat to. We try, fail, and end up hitting another boat. ARGH! We reassure the other boat that there is no damage [phew] and after a cup of milo at a dragging anchor, M goes investigating on his surf ski and finds an excellent, if somewhat kooky, spot.
It’s lovely. We have to get a guy who is fishing to pull in his line for a moment so we can get past.
“So you’ve finally finished the boat?” he says to M, as he casts back out.
“Sorry?”
“You’ve been working on the boat in Altona for a few years, haven’t you? I had a place just down the road. Used to go past the boat all the time mate.”
He and M get involved in conversation, while I collapse in the cabin, totally relieved that guy whose boat we hit was so nice about the whole thing.
M then discovers that his new friend is a fishing mate of the guy whose boat we have just tickled the paintwork of. So we’ve come full circle.
We walk wistfully past my boss’s sexy holiday house and go to the pub, where I beat M at pool in front of the public bar. We saunter back to Boat, all snugged near a wall. I make dinner and we have our first cooked meal aboard. Vegetarian spaghetti bolognaise. I apologise to M for only using one tin and half a jar of pasta sauce. We need to eat the contents of several tins per night to MAKE THE BOAT LIGHTER.
I’m sitting here now, typing all this on my old Palm IIIx with it’s portable keyboard. Thank you, Palm, you bloated capitalist opportunists. I actually have a Palm Tungsten T3 which has been thoughtfully made incompatible with all of the add-ons that I bought for my old Palm IIIx. I now have infared this to my T3 and wait until I get home to post it. Sleep now.
Sailing Holiday - Day 02 - by M
Thursday, 5 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Leave our cosy nest and motor out through the cut again. SE wind very light. We anchor in front of town and burn some snags for my breaky. 30 feet of crystal water. Wind comes in and we have to get going. Cold snags for later. Tack up toward Popes Eye then stumble on the seal house. Hung out with the stinky sea dogs for a while.
Across up to Point Nepean. Remote and old. Clean clear water. Fanged it back along the beaches toward portsea. Hit 11.8 kts next to the beach. Grins. Got snug in the corner at Police point.
We draw 400mm. Had a few beers and some chips at portsea pub. Went for a walk and mingled with the beautiful people until they got nervous and we thought it best to leave. Moved the boat. Deeper sandy. Dave and Ellise turned up. Had few swims. B cooked tuna mornay. Yum. Nice sleep.
Summer Holiday - Day 02
Thursday, 5 January 2006
We awoke in Queenscliff, me with a stiff neck due to my freakish and regrettable decision not to bring a pillow. Sleeping on my left side instead of my right (shoulder sore) is bad enough, but then sleeping on a rolled up jumper? Horror.
M got up first, and when I rolled over on to his pillow (which he never travels without) it was so blissful that I almost wailed in frustration at my pathetic effort to tough it.
We had a cup of tea and then hit the supermarket - no, my provisions were not in question, but we needed a dustpan and brush. Then weventured to the gourmet delicatessen place in search of kangaroo sausages. I have decided, after much pondering, to extend my vegeaquarian diet to include jumpmeat. However, they had none. M bought some red wine and garlic ones that were so lean, they barely spat in the pan.
Just as he’d finished cooking them, M took a look at the tide and became Action Man.
“We have to leave. Leave now! Or we’ll get stuck here! Help me…”
With a small degree of panic and one singed beach towel, we extracted Boat from her mooring and motored away down the channel, ducking our heads as we passed the boat we’d hit yesterday.
The anchor went down right near Queenslcliff Pier. The water was clear aquamarine. I sat on net with my book, two bits of sour dough bread and some plums. Bliss. M gnawed on his sausages.
Just before the wind really kicked in, we put the sails up and headed across to Portsea/Sorrento via an albatross colony and a seal colony. M fanged Boat up to over 11 knots. We did eight knots to windward. The sailing was exciting, the weather was sunny, but the wind was f-r-e-e-z-i-n-g. I need to learn to wear more layers, even if it ‘looks’ warm.
We reached Portsea, and again took down the sails too near other boats. Muted panic as we extricated ourselves and ended up moored just before Police Point. M swam from the boat. I used the surfski. We then wandered toward the pier, looking somewhat dissolute with our plastic bag of dry undies and a towel. I realised, as I walked through all the dentally enhanced bathing box owners, that we had pulled up on the rich end of the beach. Down near the pier, the difference was obvious. Everyone was a bit fatter, a bit paler, their clothing was less painfully co-ordinated and everyone was a lot louder. We fitted in quite well.
Sailing Holiday - Day 03 - by M
Friday, 6 January 2006
Big chilly swims in morning. E goes in nude and can’t get back onboard. Much hilarity. A clifftop Portsea person raises the Australian flag. E and B serenade them with the national anthem in cat voices. Fully reef sails as forecast is for 25 knots and am not sure how things will be with 4 onboard. Turns out that E and Dave are naturals and are a hoot to have onboard.
Go out to smell the seals again. Then up along coast the Heads. Across to Queenscliff and back to our own little trimaran shaped nook. About 20nm in total. This time its low tide so we set about getting all the rocks out of the way so we can sit on the sand next to the park. Long walks in town and all meet at pub. As you do.
Sailing Holiday - Day 04 - by M
Saturday, 7 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
A south easterly breeze at 20knots. Lazy lovely sail around spy island (the ASIS base) then along beaches and coast downwind to Port Arlington. Ran aground… as i like to noodle right next to the shore (and I wasn’t paying attention). Rudder a bit sad. Nevermind. Get to Port Arlington and the promise of fresh mussels. Drop anchor off the beach.
It’s a good spot. Wind offshore. Snorkle and jump off the pier for a while.
Big walk around town and up hill. Drinks at a cool bar. Buy 3 kilo of mussles off a boat and cook em up with some white wine. The ‘slurp for the cook, slurp for the pot’, recipe. Good sleep.
Sailing Holiday - Day 05 - by M
Sunday, 8 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
More south easterly winds at 20 knots. Tacked all the way back to Portsea. Back at Portsea pub and we blow a bomb on a yuck seafood thing. An extravaganza of batter, good scallops and dodgy prawns. The brown feast. The guys leave mid arvo. B and I decided to go to Westernport the next day. We stay the night at anchor in Portsea (near the exit to Bass Strait) even though we know there is an onshore blow going to hit that night. What a yuck night. Some sort of NASA sensory training hell. Got both anchors down and hung on. B went green, but managed to cook a curry without indulging in any hurling. A night of little sleep. It’s hard to wee when you can’t get your balance.
Sailing Holiday - Day 06 - by M
Monday, 9 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Our first north easterly. 10 to 15 knots. Left for the heads at 7am. Aiming for high tide on the rip bank. Still 2 hours of flood. Swirls and eddies were huge and scary. A big SW swell was running. Also a SE swell. However the combination of the high tide and flood stream make it tame.
We did around 6 knots all the way to Westernport. Wind left us for an hour and we motored. B slept. Boom of swell crashing onto beaches and headlands. Went close to Cape Shanck. Past Bushranger’s Bay. Wild being out there. Felt like we could tackle anything. I keep looking across the blue swells, out to sea and an endless horizon. Dolphins hung around and swam with us.
Wind drops out at entrance to Westernport motor up to Cowes. Drop anchor on the beach. Do washing. Meet Ray! (Father of B, loitering on the beach with camera. Highly suspicious.) Hot. Sail off to Rhyll. Nice sail. Anchor in front of the overpriced pub. Ignore pub and hit the fish and chip shop next door. Flathead tails and chips for dinner. Great sleep.
Sailing Holiday - Day 07 - by M
Tuesday, 10 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Breakfast aboard. Meet Ray at Newhaven at 1.30pm. Low tide. Sailed off to Tortoise Head. A fast hoot of a sail. Boat whizzes along. B stays below, sleeping and reading Chandler.
Anchor up close to shore. Close-ish. Ray and I stroll up the headland. Wild beach wild views. We were going to stay the night but decide to tack our way back to the conservation park between Ryhll and Cowes. Sail off toward Sandy Cape then into a beautiful quiet lagoon near Rhyll. Rains all night. Curry. Snug. Fun with Ray hanging around. Wine and beer.
Sailing Holiday - Day 08 - by M
Wednesday, 11 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Back to Rhyll. But not before an exploration of the lagoon, which turns out to be horseshoe shaped.
Ray shouts us organic scrambled eggs for breakfast! [Awesome chai latte - Ed.]Sail up Settlement Point at the eastern side of French Isalnd. Surprised at how lovely and wild the area looks. Will have to come back. A fast sail to Newhaven. Ray steers a lot of the way. He is a good sailor and seems to enjoy getting amongst the rough stuff. A couple of days of really fast sailing. Drop him off at Newhaven at 330pm dead low tide. Hit pier… wah. More repairs for when we get home. Sail back to Rhyll. Go for long walk. Visit the general store. We have flathead tails and potato cakes again. Yum! Have to wait for tide around at front beach. Then scoot to the side beach in front of the pub. We tie up in such a way as to be able to pull ourselves up to the sand. Very nice. Good sleep.
Sailing Holiday - Day 09 - by M
Thursday, 12 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
A long walk up the hill at Rhyll and across in front of the lagoon. Unusual nature trail. We vow to return. Back via general store and coffee in café. Goodbye Rhyll. Set out toward Cowes. Quiet easy sailing. Lovely day. Didn’t know where to stop at Cowes as we wanted to explore and try to get some navigation light bulbs. Ended up anchoring off the sailing club beach south of the town. An F 28 was in the club grounds. Outer Limits. Wah. We walked around town. Went to op shops and had a coffee. Went to hardware shops for the bulbs. No luck. Bought new sunglasses and op-shop shorts. B got a good deal on a bikini.
Back to boat mid arvo. It’s stuck. We push and push. No one helps. I winch us along the anchor line, which loosens us a bit. After about 25 minutes, we float free. We decide to scoot over to Flinders to save ourselves travelling time to the heads in the morning. Hopefully it has shelter for a south wind. I punt that it does. We set off up the channel. It is open to Bass Strait and the wind kicks in. Tide is against the wind and soon waves get to around 2mtrs – stacked close and messy. I power up the boat and she slices and flys thru but it is a wild ride. Poor B gets a tad pale. I head off track and beat up toward the straight inside Cat Bay. I have surfed Flynns Reef inside the bay a few times. So I knew it. It is way calmer. One last rough ride across the entrance to Westernport and we arrive. Flinders is calm and totally beautiful.
We anchor off the beach and step ashore in 12inches of water. A big wander through town and coffee. B still green. Back at the boat at sunset we cooked up a tuna tomato thingo. I set up all the pilotage needed for a boisterous return to Port Phillip Bay. A night start. Sectores to turn by. Dawn by Cape Shanck. Etc. I put a a bunch of waypoints in the GPS as back up. I won’t rely on a GPS ever. But if it’s not broken and hasn’t been dropped overboard then it is good to double check my pilotage.
Sailing Holiday - Day 10 - by M
Friday, 13 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Leave at 4am. Dark and windy. 20 knot southerly. We get out past West Head and turn into Bass Straight. A big swell and lumpy wind waves in the dark. Kinda fun as the little tri all reefed down tackled it easy and made me confident. Sun comes up like a big bald head not far before Cape Shanck. B goes below to sleep and I reef down to just the storm jib as the tri was going way too fast to be at the heads by high tide on the Rip Bank.
We settle into a beam reach climbing over a friendly swell as big as houses and an unfriendly jagged wind chop. Not a smooth ride at all. I decide to arrive an hour early and see how it is. The flood stream continues to go into the bay for 3 hours after high tide at the heads. I put up the mainsail and fanged it the rest of the way and got there a tad early but near the top of the tide. Point Nepean surf was going off and we sailed in close to get a look. It is nearly high tide and calm so we whip in on the flood stream. Some guys are surfing the point, so we go closer in for a look. B sleeps nearly the whole way leaving me to ponder the wilds of nature.
After getting down the bay a few miles we cross the shipping channel and go back thru the cut. I love our little nook next to the spy bridge. I go in a little too eager and hit the old metal wall. Eeeeck. More repairs to to… Go to a svelte garden guesthouse café. [Athelstane House - Ed.] A piss poor ploughmans lunch and some divine wine and I’m ready to crash. B goes into op shop mode and I trudge along. [He says ‘trudge’, I say ‘dragged’ - Ed.]
To celebrate our return we get 2 kilo of fresh mussels for dinner. I sleep and B makes the boat a palace. Dinner is divine. Sunset sees us beset by mozzies… it is a slaughter on both sides. The boat smeared with blood… theirs and ours. Delirious, we start throwing full jam jars at them.
Sailing Holiday - Day 11 - by M
Saturday, 14 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Boat a shambles. Go off to breaky, coffee, op shops and an art show… as you do. Got back just as Chris and Jodie get into town. A wild clean of the boat and here they are.
A trip into town via car to get mossie coils and some beer/ice. Then out through the mythical cut and into a sunny 15knot south wind. Hello Popes Eye, hello albatross colony and hello seal colony. Phew. Jodie goes into shut down as she doesn’t get the boat thing at all.
I tack us across to Portsea and we step off onto the beach and scurry up to pub to have medicine. Beer and chips. Jodie comes to life. A nice and cruisey sail up the heads along the national park where we see some lazy dolphins, and then downwind back to Queenscliff. Jodie chatting and having a hoot untill she trips into the cabin and bangs her poor head. Ouch.
Back in our nook and she retreats to the car to chill. I hand her a wine an hour later and the party begins. B and I had run out of cruising funds and out of cooking gas so we tweak all our guest’s nibblies and conjur a surpring array of tasty bits. Add beer and awesome wine and we call it a dinner. We chat and laught for a few hours then bed.
Sailing Holiday - Day 12 - by M
Sunday, 15 January 2006
(The following is written by my secret guest writer, only to be known as ‘M’.)
Had to say see ya to the girls as we had a 30th birthday to get to mid arvo in Melbourne. A 5 hour downwind sail. B reads books. I dream. The waves got bigger close to the city and the tri went into surfing mode. B hooted. Wind got up to 15/20knots and we decided to reach across for a while even tho it would make us late. The boat flew along a 12 knots steady. The pop top was up and spray was getting in but we couldn’t stop. It is addictive to go fast! End of trip mid arvo. Boat on mooring and us bundled into a car by B’s parents and the Grassy Noel.
We survive. Boat performs as I had hoped. Top speeds are a hoot to sit near. Nothing breaks. We didn’t throw up… what more could you want?
There’s no place like home
Wednesday, 1 February 2006
We have about five weeks before we need to get out of our house. It’s almost time to start our next big project. M and I have 95% agreed that we’re (well, he’ll be doing most of it) going to build a Schionning Wilderness catamaran. Yike! A big boat. We plan to approach it like we did the house [wow - I forgot I still had that site online!] - as a one or two year project.
We spent last night being very adult and doing lots of sums. I tried desperately to plot how best to utilise the bank without having to give it much money - pretty much a doomed quest. M has been very proactive and has been emailing the designers, making exhaustive budgetary lists and investigating builders insurance. (Blondely, I only realised yesterday that this kind of insurance isf for the project you are building, rather than insuring the builder himself. D’oh. Just call me Bambi and be done with it - just don’t shoot my mother, it’s her birthday today.)
The looming issue is where to build. We want to do it onsite. So we need a shed of 90sqm or larger which is on a block that also has a house. It’s pretty much impossible to find for what we can pay (around $200 p/w) in the Melbourne area. Obviously the nearer to the water we are the better, as the cost for transporting the boat to the water in order to launch it will be dependent on the length of the journey. Thus, we also need to be somewhere that can cope with an over-sized vehicle.
I’ve been looking and looking. I usually use domain.com.au or realestate.com.au, but in the last day or so I’ve found homehunt.com.au very good and commercialrealestate.com.au. We have thought about leasing an industrial space, and living in one bit while working in the other - this is quite practical, but not hugely attractive. I am starting to get to the end of my tether and am dwelling fondly on the idea to moving to somewhere in northern NSW with an acre or two and some sheds. Of course, then I’d have to find a new job…
And it gets complicated all over again.
Kill Kill Kill
Friday, 17 March 2006
Some complete c*** has stolen my our little Tohatsu outboard motor. We are waiting to see if it’s going to be covered by insurance. It really, really sucks because:
1) we never buy anything new, always secondhand, and this was pretty much our only brand new (and thus expensive) thing, and…
2) the trimaran is now stuck where it is, and even if we do find the trailer (secondhand - of course) we’ve been searching for, we won’t be able to get the trimaran on it without a motor.
ARGH! When they said it was going to be a bad month, I didn’t realise quite how bad - although, of course, it is only a motor, and we can probably get another. Have to keep it all in perspective, which sort of easier than normal as one of our friends has been very ill in intensive care. She is now much better, and far more important than a motor. But it does, however, still suck. And the police haven’t been hugely helpful and are (kind of understandably) very short on boat knowledge - e.g. “So it weighs as much as, um, a dog?” ARGH!!
To Sea
Saturday, 25 March 2006
M has found a mooring for the trimaran in Cannons Creek, and he would much prefer a secure mooring in a creek to taking down the mast and putting the boat on a trailer. So we are setting off any minute to sail to Queenscliff, where we will stay the night, and then tomorrow morning we head out into Bass Strait and around to either Flinders or Tortoise Head. We probably won’t make it to Cannons Creek until Monday morning due to the tide. Then it will be off to my dad’s to build the cat home! Bon Voyage!
We Made It - Cannons Creek
Tuesday, 28 March 2006
We had a blissful sail over to Queenscliff, if you forget about us dragging the trimaran away from the pier at Sandringham in a 30 knot wind only fo rme to end up hanging off the side of it like some recalcitrant water rat until M jumped aboard and started the (new) motor. (Don’t know whether the insurance is going to cough up for stolen motor yet, still have fingers crossed, which made it fairly difficult to sail.) Other than that, it was lovely. We pulled up in our normal spot near the spy bridge and hit the pub so I could get a shandy to cure my slight case of sea sickness.
Sitting in the beer garden of the pub, reading the newspaper, M was coralled by two small children.
“Excuse me, excuse me!” piped the little girl. “Are you a Wiggle?”
M slumped into his chair, apparently hoping to be turned to ash and blown asunder in a light passing breeze.
“A Wiggle! You a Wiggle!” insisted the littler boy.
“No,” said M gruffly, “I am not a Wiggle. Really. I never was a Wiggle.”
The little girl was unmoved. “Are you Jeff the Wiggle?”
“You look like a Wiggle,” her brother said. “Jeff?”
I was laughing so hard that I was immobilised, with silent tears of mirth plopping down the front of my t-shirt.
M shook his Wiggle-like head.
“I am not a Wiggle,” he said, with an air of weary resignation, “but if you get me a yellow skivvy, I’ll see what I can do.”
This was too much for the small children, who were being summoned by their parents. The parents had obviously spied my inelegant lack of control and thought it best to remove their offspring from the proximity of the tearful, shaking silent friend of the famous Wiggle.
Once the children had returned to the other side of the beer garden, where they remained with their eyes fixed on M, I began to calm down. M, however, began to wail.
“What is it? Is it my hair? I’ll cut my hair.”
“The Yellow Wiggle already has quite short hair.”
“Oh. Is it my face? Should I grow a beard? I have to do something. Does everyone think I’m a Wiggle?”
“M. You idiot. It’s everything. You are, for all intents and purposes, the Yellow Wiggle. Everyone under the age of eight in Australia will agree with me. Do you think you should be drinking beer? It might not be good for your image.”
M accompanied me mournfully back to the boat.
We ate cheese, a bottle of red and a pesto, rocket and tuna roll each for dinner (M was catering like a god). In the morning we headed off just after it got light, after scrambled eggs and cups of tea. Our new little motor was performing beautifully, although it had its own kind of quirks that we were just getting the hang of. There was almost too little wind to get out through the heads, so we motor sailed, waving to the webcam that Christian had told us was there, so they could see us at home. The water was flat as a tack. Bass Strait was almost glassy with big rolling swells. We were accompanied the whole way by the squarks of penguins - we occasionally saw some, but nothing like as many as we could hear all around us!
By the time we got to Cowes, the wind, that had been fading in and out all day, decided that it was time to pack up and go home. We motored from Cowes to Rhyll, where we pulled up on the beach and went in search of pumpkin cakes (as opposed to potato cakes/potato scallops) from the fish and chip shop. They weren’t as good as last time, being more grease than pumpkin, but we had a beer each, and then headed back to the boat. We motored around to the other side of Rhyll to try and escape the worst of the southerley wind that was predicted to come through during the night, convieniently forgetting to replenish our water supplies beforehand.
A lovely pesto, pasta and cherry tomato dinner. We listened to some ABC podcasts on my palm pilot, until the battery ran low (which took, oh, all of half an hour). I then tried something that has been on my mind since our last big sailing odyssey. I plugged my palm usb cable into its cigarette lighter extension (for car charging) and plugged that into a female cigarette plug which had two crocodile clips that I fastened to a wheelchair battery. It worked so beautifully that I was completely charmed. Will post a picture later.
M woke up late, so we didn’t get underway until about 7am, when we should have left at 6am. It was doubtful whether we were going to make it to Cannons Creek in time for high tide - the only time to get to the moorning. I sailed the first leg of the trip, coaxing Boat to about seven and half knots, to the envy of M. The wind was a little flakey. After about two hours or so, I could no longer keep my eyes open and headed down below for a sleep. My sleep was punctuated by dreams of dancing elephants who kept falling over. After I got up I found that M had had to do lots of jibes, as well as trying to plot navigation points on a chart. Freak. He could have just woken me up - but I think he enjoyed being a solo sailor and doing it tough.
Motored through Warneet, where a slew of boats had convieniently moored right in the middle of the channel - thank goodness we hadn’t had to navigate in the dark, it would have been a disaster. It was exciting to see lots of other trimarans around! We took a right, up Cannons Creek. M had me scampering like a monkey, organising all the stuff we were taking off the boat (everything) as we wouldn’t be back for at least a month and didn’t want anything left aboard to be stolen (unlikely, but possible). The tide was high enough for us to pull along side the little concrete dock at Seahaven (M’s recently discovered multihuul heaven) and unload all our stuff.
After we had got everything ashore, we attached a dinghy and motored out to the mooring. I hooked it with a boathook (first go - had never done it before!) and M secured us. We locked the boat up and said our goodbyes. M, me and new Tohatsu went ashore in the dinghy without mishap, and had cups of tea with the Multihull Men, before taking off in the Humber to Loch.
Third visitors and Don’s Party
Friday, 18 August 2006
We were visited by Mung, Rach and two small boys. One quite a lot smaller than the other. I made potato and leek soup. They gasped appropriately at the (finished for one day Oh. My. GOD.) shed and checked out Surfarosa, who was pulled up at the dock ready to sail away in the morning. Luka (who is actually some bizaare age - three?) gasped at the crane and was somewhat wary of Jake the Ostrich, preferring to dig up our driveway, fuelled by a spoonful of soup.
M & R were on their way down the Prom to share a cabin with mates of theirs who have a kid called Atto. Atto, we were informed means…oh, I am too unmathematical to explain it, but wikipedia has got it here. It’s a kind of scientific measurement. As these people have another baby on the way, we all spent valuable time musing over other possible measurement names. M came up with Milli Bar for a girl and Hector Pascal for a boy. I came up with the unisex appellation, Fathom Furlong. [GuFFaW! - hee, hee. I laugh as I type it. Pathetic.) Anyone have any others?
After the departure of our Third Ever Guests, we headed down to Loch as we’d left our flares and petrol containers there. The father figure had been evasive when we called, and then crumbled and said we could come to dinner. What he didn’t say was that he already had guests. GROAN. It was a tableaux straight out of Don’s Party (or so M tells me - I read it too long ago to remember, and never saw the film). True to form, I drank their Coopers, M had a go at the red wine, we ate pavlova and then took off into the night, followed by the sound of the father figure swearing when he thought M hit one of his apple trees with the HiAce.
Back at the trailer the only thing missing from our provisions were our wheelchair batteries that M uses to power our marine radio and I (more importantly) use to charge up my palm pilot full of podcasts etc. The Palm Tungsten T3 is widely reviled for it’s crap battery life, and I’m violently impressed to have found a way around it. Too bad we couldn’t find the batteries. I had the bright idea of climbing the shelves in the spare room built-in to see if they were up the top, and fell spectacularly on to my tailbone - the perfect injury for a few days hard sailing.
M came running in to find me writhing on the floor, with my only coherent sentence being “don’t touch me, don’t touch me”. When we were little we used to have a picture book called Stanley and Rhoda where Rhoda would say “Don’t TOUCH it. Don’t LOOK at it.” And that’s exactly how I felt. Thus M had to do the rest of the preparation and packing (I swear, it wasn’t pre-planned).
Back to Tortoise Head.
Saturday, 19 August 2006
For this sailing escapade I was christened Mr Burns - for the Simpson’s character who has all the physical strength of wet bread. But more of that later. We motored off down the creek just before 9am. I like being able to gaze at all the houses that have property down to the water. Cannons Creek is quite lovely (particularly in off-mozzie season) - too bad Parks Victoria are apparently going to remove all the channel markers (how helpful and somehow typical - we’ll just guess where the channel is shall we? And who do we sue when we savage the hull? Oops - here I am thinking like a Yank.)
We got to Warneet, which is remarkable also for it’s prettiness, and all the dickheads that moor their boats in the channel. This, startlingly enough, makes it quite difficult to navigate. In these trying times I wish I had a Humber Of The Sea, with which I would just push everything aside that shouldn’t be there, damning all their paintjobs to hell. Or wherever.
Anyway, we decided to head for Hastings and see if we could pull up on the sand and hit the cafe for breakfast. An excellent plan. We haven’t really had the boat long enough to be blase about sitting at a cafe overlooking the beach where Surfarosa is pulled up.
“Look at that sexy boat,” I say to M.
He looks dreamy.
“I’d love a boat like that,” he says wistfully.
“Maybe one day.” I am pensive.
“Oh hang on,” he says, deplorably perky. “That’s OUR boat! Ha!”
We are evil and smug.
After scrambled eggs we sail (not motor) off the beach and back out into the bay. It’s a cold and wettish journey over to Tortoise Head, where we forget how to navigate the channel, and have to turn around and try again. It’s bliss to be able anchor and make some hot milo. I could sit and read the paper until it got dark enough to crack a bottle of red and begin thinking about dinner, but M, blue-heeler like, is keen to walk.
We traipse the beach in front of the chicory kiln again, looking for treasure in the detritus that has been thrown up on the sand in a recent storm.
Last time we found six tennis balls, without a court in sight! This time it’s one tennis ball, two thongs (left ones, naturally, for that is the Law), a chopping board, a stubby holder, two foam fishing sinkers and chunks of thick thick glass that looks excitingly old and relicky. The Charles Dickens of broken bottles. I keep most of it.
Dinner is camping fare - tuna mornay Ellise style - and we collapse before 9pm. No television is a good thing.
From Tortoise Head to, um… Tortoise Head
Sunday, 20 August 2006
Not sure how long it’s been since we slept for over 12 hours, but we didn’t get up on deck until after about 10am. Lying in my back cabin I was just gently plashed from side to side, looking at the sky through the little window. Divine. M made smasher breakfast du jour - Egg in a Hole. And cups of tea. We whiled away another hour or two and thought we’d head over to another favourite spot. Rhyll.
Pulled up on the beach. As usual, I made a dash for the well situated public toilets having scorned the porta-loo onboard after M dumped Mr Hanky in it. Noodled up to the Rhyll Bazaar and ummed and aahed over an old 1970’s crockpot. I let it go in the end, but am still keen to get one, but maybe slightly less archaic.
Then, the cafe on the corner. They were busy. Service was slow, but worth the wait. We languished over newspapers, and M had a second coffee to prolong the whole experience. We checked in at the chandlery on the way back to see if they had an update on the weather. The guy checked the forecase on the net, and M’s eyebrows peaked. He became Man of Action. We left Rhyll post haste for Tortoise Head. Again. As it would be far easier to leave from there in the morning (as opposed to Rhyll) to catch the high tide around 11am Monday at Cannons Creek (which become mud at low tide).
We made it to Tortoise Head on dusk, using me with binoculars and the GPS to tentatively make our way back through the channel to where we had spent last night.
Too dark to go ashore. Pesto and pasta for dinner, a modicum of chocolate, and early to bed. M warned of a stiff mornings sail ahead…
I Am the Captain of the Pinafore
Monday, 21 August 2006
…to be continued. At ease.
The day so far (at 9am).
Tuesday, 22 August 2006
Woke up in the back of Surfarosa (for that is the name of the trimaran) at Stony Point, where we had to take shelter yesterday afternoon. We had tried a few times to get into the channel that would take us through to Warneet (and then up the creek and home) to no avail. It was dicey. We tried to sail into Hastings, but couln’t make it into the marina there either. The wind was crazy, the sea was choppy, and our little motor wasn’t really up to the job.
So, to cut it short (as I will write up our journey and post it later) I had to bail - and it just so happened that Stony Point is at the very far end of the train line. So at 6.17am M