Ruminations on summer 16.

Bauer Bay, South Molle Island, Whitsundays, 12/9/2016

 

“When you live like a turtle with your home on your back there are many options.” (John McK)

Option 1:  Sail Shanti across the Tasman to NZ for the summer months

Option 2:  Sail back down south to ?? (not too far, in readiness to begin sailing north again next year)

Option 3: Park Shanti somewhere safe and fly back down south.

The first option is certainly attractive – possibly too attractive (I might never leave!) 

The Bay of Islands is one of my favourite places, having cruised there before on “Soulmate”. 

However, the Tasman sea is a treacherous patch of water, notorious for its gales.  In a way I feel that this would be a good test to see if Shanti and I are ocean-ready.

Also there is my ageing father in Auckland, whom it would be good to be near.  He will be turning 99 next January.

As far as having a good cruising ground to sail in for the summer months, NZ could not be beaten.  I can’t think of anywhere else down the east coast of Australia comparable.

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Option 2 is to sail south to some safe port where I can leave Shanti to fly back to Melbourne for Christmas and then across to NZ in January for my father’s birthday.

This option was my first thought when it became obvious that I wasn’t going to make it to Darwin this year.

In October/November, when the northerlies blow, most cruisers will head back down the coast to get out of the cyclone belt.  Most will go back to their home base or where they came from.  I certainly won’t be sailing all the way back down to Melbourne, perhaps to Bundaberg, Brisbane or Southport.

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A third option is to leave Shanti somewhere relatively inexpensive and safe.  I was in Bowen recently, where someone told me they kept their yacht there between two piles for a year at only $10 a week.  However, cheap as it may be, it is still a cyclone prone area.

This option has least appeal to me as I don’t want to leave Shanti alone for too long.  One of the benefits of not pushing north this year was to give me more time to get to know the boat better, to iron out all the glitches, to do more of a “shake-down” cruise. 

To park and run defeats this purpose.

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I am still in the “information-gathering/ rumination” stage, with no great rush to make a decision.

My daughter Michelle flies into Hamilton Island tomorrow to sail around the Whitsunday Islands with me for the next 10 days. Youngest daughter, Shoni & Pierre & Felix are camping in Airlie for a week.  It will be wonderful to see them all again.

 

Meanwhile I see that Webb Chiles has arrived in Durbin. I quote him here on “fear”:

“Mostly we are afraid of the unknown.  I do not claim to have courage.  Courage is doing something you are afraid to do.  What I do have is nerve, which is the willingness, after making the best plans and preparations possible within the limits of your resources, to go ahead with an endeavour whose outcome is uncertain and may be fatal.”

His advice to others is to “sail enough so that the confidence in your own ability and your boat’s to cope with extreme conditions grows and becomes near certainty.”

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Webb Chiles had no self-steering windvane on his Moore 24 and relied on a sheet-to-tiller rig for over 90% of his Indian Ocean crossing.

I have watched a few UTube clips on this system and been interested to try it out.

This afternoon I sailed from Airlie beach to South Molle Island and made a new discovery:  Shanti sails herself beautifully to weather with only a headsail.

It was blowing around 15 knots from ESE; my heading was as high as I could point into it, doing around 5.5 knots under headsail alone.  I haven’t done much windward sailing so far, with practically all of the passage north having the wind dead behind or off the aft quarter.

Normally I would attach the tiller pilot arm if I needed to leave the helm for a moment, to go below to check the course or whatever.  Today I let it go and was amazed to see the tiller just gently moving back and forth by itself. The course fluctuated only slightly, keeping the wind angle between around 40 – 50 degrees off the bow.  Shanti felt perfectly balanced.  I was absolutely thrilled!

These are the things I need to play around with more.

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