Not quite ready to Leave Church Point

On Saturday I went for a cruise around Pittwater to get the batteries charged up a bit. Theyve been getting a lot of use lately with Jasons Power Tools, and the Xantrex had the House batteries drawn down to minus 125Ah. The two house batteries are rated as 80 Amps and experts tell me you get better life out of your batteries if you dont draw them down to more than 60% of their capacity - ie in this case minus 96. But it was nice to be doing something on the boat other than maintenance and cleaning up the dust and mess we are making - even motoring was better than being stuck on the mooring! As I motored along I noticed some absolutely picture perfect homes on the edge of the water around Scotland Island and the adjacent bays of Pittwater, and I also saw two yachts like mine - Eastcoast 31's. I went round to Refuge Bay which has dozens of beautifully sheltered moorings you can use, and after morning tea I went out into Broken Bay to watch the start of the 36th Gosford to Lord Howe Island Yacht Race. Apparently the winner of the very first LHI race was an Eastcoast 31 , but that was - well 36 years ago! Yacht design and materials have made yachts these days so much lighter, faster and stronger that I am sure Sapphire would be left way behind, as the winner typically takes not much more than two days to get there. When I leave for LHI in a week or so I am giving myself a week!

It was frustrating not to be able to do some sailing on Saturday because the wind was strong but we were in the midst of resealing the mast boot and the deck fittings at the base of the mast had all been removed. I had spent several hours scraping off all the old silicone from the base of the mast and surrounds, and also from the hatch which has also been resealed. Jason ususally finds menial tasks like that to keep me busy while he gets on and does the important stuff - today I got to scrape rust out of the heavy steel fitting that the mast sits in, and tomorrow I am going to paint it. Today I also cut out some new sound proofing material for the engine box and after it was all in place I started the motor and was pleased that the noise was definitely less. The list of things to do is quite short now and probably will be finished tomorrow, Tuesday when we will fit the Firdell Blipper, which is a passive radar reflector that goes up near the top of the mast - its purpose is to make Sapphire more visible to the radar of ships in the vicinity. It looks like a giant Capsule about 2 feet tall. Also tomorrow I am getting a visit from Marc Robinson the Radio guru. Ive asked him to come back and explain it all to me one more time because I realised the other day I can hardly remember how to make the HF radio work or how to use the Pactor Modem to do email.

After that its just a matter of waiting for some reasonable weather for the sail to Newcastle. You can see on the chart a nasty little low coming across and they are forecasting winds to 30 knots from the South and South east on Wednesday but easing to 15 to 25 knots on Thursday as the High approaches so that should be a good day to go North.

Goodbye Sydney

I left Clontarf and Sydney harbour yesterday with the Radio working properly, the SOB software working and picking up AIS targets, lights on the mast all fixed up, a lovley new Dodger and the hull clean and smooth. The forecast was for SE winds up to 20 knots and easing later in the day so I was looking forward to a lovely sail. I cast off at 9am with light wind but enough to get the boat moving at least and it felt good. Once out of the harbour however the sea was all over the place and in such light air Sapphire just rolled and crashed about going no where so reluctantly I rolled up the headsail and turned on the motor and headed north, "motorsailing" at 4.8 knots for Pittwater, about 16 nautical miles up the coast. To escape the engine noise I went up front for a while and later plugged my ipod nano into my ears. I get cranky when I cant sail, and especially when the forecast has been so promising.....

Apart from passing through a huge group of sea birds resting on the water nothing much happened till I was approaching Barrenjoey lighthouse. The wind finally picked up and I was pleased to be able to turn off the motor . Next, I was about to unfurl the headsail when I heard the unmistakeable sound of a whale exhaling just beside the boat! I caught a glimpse of its back and tail as it disappeared under the water a boat length away - and then it reappeared twice even closer and it was obviously a calf. On its fourth reappearance it was accompanied by its mother who shepherded the curious calf away from Sapphire and then they disappeared. Wow....suddenly a day of dreary disapppointment turned into a memory that will stay with me for ever...and thats life at sea folks! I was happy again.

And as the wind had picked up I was able to sail the rest of the way into Broken Bay and the length of Pittwater at 4 to 5 knots to a mooring near Church Point. I'll be staying here for the next week or so for a whole list of little jobs that need doing - such as fitting a Firdell Blipper to the mast. A What? I hear you say.....details next week.

The Learning Curve

The day I handed over the cheque and got the keys, I paid my sailing adviser to come with me for my first ever sail on Sapphire. He spent a lot of time looking over the boat with me, finding all the through-hull fittings, checking the safety gear, finding the fire extinguishers life jackets and life ring, the stowed sails, checking the oil in the engine and so on. And then we started the motor, cast off from our temporary mooring, headed out into Pitwater and pulled up the main and then the headsail. Next came that magical moment that still turns me on when I turned off the motor, everything goes quiet except for the sound of water slipping by , and we were sailing. It was a cool but sunny wednesday afternoon with a 12 to 15 knot breeze to help us across Broken Bay towards Lion Island. It was a wonderful feeling to be Skipper on my own yacht at last.

From then on it was just Sue and me as we headed up the steep learning curve, steadily pushing back at the boundaries of our own fear and inexperience. Each time we returned home after a sail I would think about all the things that we had done that day or that weekend that we had never done before - such as setting an anchor and retrieving it, doing a gybe, docking the boat against a jetty rather than onto a swing mooring - to fill up with diesel and water for the first time - changing a headsail, putting a reef in the main, negotiating a squall with gusts up to 36knots, discovering how to use the Raymarine Autopilot, the VHF Radio, pulling the Log out of its thru-hull fitting to get the growth out of the wheel so that it would work(!), sleeping and cooking on board..... everything was new to us as we explored the safe and sheltered waters of the Lower Hawkesbury, Cowan Creek and Broken Bay.

Eventually though we had to get Sapphire to Sydney Harbour - Port Jackson -where we had a permanent swing mooring at Five Dock Bay, and this meant "going outside" a term we heard from other yachties with a slightly anxious tone, meaning going out into the Ocean away from the protected waters and bays of Pittwater. On one of the sailing courses I met a guy who had a 34 foot yacht in Sydney Harbour for four years and "went outside" three times - always to Pittwater and back, and on one occasion half way back the boat started to fill with water. He discovered the water was pouring in through the stern tube and managed to plug it and get home safely, but then he decided to sell up and just charter yachts when he went on holiday.These scary war stories reflect the truth about the ocean, that it is a more dangerous place than coastal waterways and harbours, and demands a higher level of care and preparation and planning than is needed otherwise. And so for us , making that step up to sailing in the actual ocean was another big step up the learning curve that we were keen to make, though at the same time apprehensive.

Initially we had thought about getting my yachting advisor to come along as back up but in the end we decided not to, because by then we had been sailing Sapphire for four months and been out over a dozen times. We felt we knew Sapphire well enough and our own abilities well enough to be able to safely head out into the ocean as long as the weather was OK. The trip was only about 15 nautical miles but nevertheless we anxiously watched the forecasts over the few days before the planned trip.

Off Manley

In fact it all went well, except for two things: the wind was from the South west so we heading straight into it, and for some strange reason Sue got seasick and had to lie down for most of the ocean journey which took 6 hours as we tacked into a 15 knot headwind. Reaching in through Sydney heads for the first time was another "First" and we were ecstatic,the anxiety of the previous weeks vanishing as we sailed past the Opera House and under the Harbour Bridge, our first Ocean Voyage successfully completed.

Coming in through Sydney Heads for the first time.

Past the Opera House and Under the Harbour Bridge

On the Mooring at Five Dock

Over the next 18 months or so we went "outside" 7 times - south a short distance to overnight at Port Hacking, three returns to Pittwater, and another to Pittwater that I did by myself, and two trips to Port Stephens and back. There were also numerous day trips out onto Sydney Harbour, and a couple of attempts to head up to Pittwater that were abandoned because the winds were too light. And I hate motoring. And another thing I was starting to hate was sailing on Sydney harbour. I'll explain why in the next Post.