Journal Entries

June 2005

1 June - Last month was pretty hectic with work, but I did manage to get out for a sail last weekend. Colin and I decided to have a race along the river. As it turned out, there wasn't much wind and we drifted most of the way. We eventually anchored off New Farm Park which is a popular Sunday picnic spot, rafted the two boats together and had a barbecue. Here are a couple of photos of El Viajero taken from Colin's yacht.

and below is a photo of Colin's yacht "Soya" taken a little further down river.

6 June - This past week has been a little strange. I have had so much going on. My website and email has been down for some time due to a transfer of webhosting. With so much going on it's as if I have lost a week. I can't even recall where last week ended. I'm working feverishly to get through a backlog of work this week so I can go sailing for the weekend. It is my plan at this stage to leave on Thursday night and sail out to Moreton Island. I will spend Friday sailing up around the top of the island and if the weather is good, I will head out to sea. I am hoping to give El Viajero a short ocean run. It's been a while since she has felt the swell of the Pacific Ocean.

New! Video - I should mention that I just posted my first video clip on the website. Take a look in the "videos" section of the site and you will see it. I have chosen to publish my videos using Quicktime format which many people may not have. You can download it and I have also tried to keep the file size of the video clip to a minimum, which doesn't help the quality. I'd appreciate some feedback on the clip so I can make some improvements for the next one.

8 June - This coming weekend is a long one as Monday is a public holiday. Peter called me last week and reminded me of the Classic Yacht Regatta (known as "the Gaffers") on Saturday. I will try to make it back into the bay on Saturday for the Gaffer's Race. I don't expect I will do particularly well, but it should be fun to race El Viajero with all the old yachts. It should be quite a scene with all the old yachts racing across the bay and I'll make sure I take plenty of photos.

10 June - Well I did manage to get away today. I left at around 1pm despite the weather being very average. I had a good sail over to Moreton Island with about 10knots of wind for the first part of the trip. At the mouth of the river there was some activity on one of the commercial wharves. Police boats were patrolling the area and trucks going back and forth. At the wharf was docked a huge submarine. These are pretty creepy looking things. It reminded me of a story I heard about a yacht sailing in the Atlantic and suddenly found his depth sounder jump from 80 metres to 10 metres. He consulted his charts and decided to change course. Each time he did the depth sounder would show 80 metres then suddenly jump to 10. The only explanation he had was that a submarine was using him for practice.

I was a little concerned about the weather upon leaving but the forecast was for better weather over the coming days. Here is a photo showing the surrounding weather. You can see the rain patches in the distance.

It was a beautiful days sailing and El Viajero was lapping it up with her new rigging.

I was still an hour away from Moreton Island at sunset and came into the anchorage in darkness. Here are a couple of photos of the sinking sun.

11 June - Last night was beautiful. I was anchored about 50 metres off the beach with the hatch above my bed open, looking at the stars and listening to the waves rolling gently onto the sand. What a way to fall asleep. There was hardly any swell in the anchorage and I only got up during the night to check my position.

I had to be up early this morning as I was going to sail back across the bay to Sandgate for the "Gaffers" race at the Queensland Cruising Yacht Club. I made pancakes and a nice espresso for breakfast before heading off across the bay.

The photo below was taken at around 7.30am and there was just a nice breeze of around 8 knots blowing.

as I got a bit further out onto the bay and into the open water El Viajero started to stretch her legs and I was cruising just under 6 knots.

Here is a photo looking back at Moreton Island.

Prior to leaving the anchorage I had plotted my course straight across the bay to the entrance of cabbage tree creek. Here I am right on course.

After a couple of hours the wind had died off completely. You can see from the photo below how calm the bay was. It was not going to be a fast race if it stayed like this. I was forced to motor sail the rest of the way.

I finally made it to Cabbage Tree Creek at around 11.30am. There was a breeze of 4-5knots and all of the old classic yachts were lining up for the race. In total there were about 40 yachts ranging from 10ft to over 55ft.

The yacht below was one of my favourites. She is a beautiful timber ketch.

This was another of my favourites. She is a Sydney yacht and the hull is varnished timber. Up close the hull is flawless and has a mirror finish.

The yacht on the left in the photo below was my favourite of the day. She is 57ft and the most pristine yacht I have ever seen. Everything was varnished and polished to a mirror finish. I was told that part of her recent $2.5 million dollar refit included an automatic engine cleaning system which washed and dried the engine after each race. The whole engine cleaning process is visible from the mirrors mounted underneath the engine. I'll have to get myself one of those.

After the day of racing I headed back into the yacht club marina. I was happy with El Viajero's performance and I certainly wasn't the slowest yacht out there. In fact I'm sure some of the sailors were pretty surprised to see me come up behind them with my old sails and leave them behind.

As I headed back into the creek there were still a few yachts behind me.

Below is a photo of the yacht club marina with all the classic yachts berthed out front. It was a really enjoyable day despite the top speed of the race being 3 knots.

I'll spend the night at the marina tonight and will decide what I'll do for the next couple of days in the morning.

12 June - I didn't realise it, but there was another race today. I decided not to enter, but to head over to the tip of Moreton Island instead. I took a few photos of the start of the race and several of the most beautiful classic boats and rather than post them in this journal I'll put a photo album in the "photos" section of my site for the regatta.

As I left the regatta there was very little wind. Here is a photo looking back at the yachts getting ready for the start. They water on the bay was so calm it looked like a pond and the yachts all the way back there look like little toy pond yachts.

As I got out onto the open water of the bay the wind picked up and gave me a nice breeze. Once again El Viajero got to stretch her legs. This photo was taken from up on the bowsprit. My auto pilot mount is still broken but I managed to secure the tiller with some rope to keep her on course. You can see the solar panel (on the right side of the photo) angled up to charge my batteries.

It was turning out to be a great day for sailing. The photo below is of my instrument panel. The top left indicates wind direction and wind speed, top right is water depth, next down is my boat speed (4.8knots) and below that is the auto pilot which I wasn't using.

The wind direction wasn't ideal for me today and it was going to be a slow trip back across the bay. I spent the entire day sailing. I had to tack 6 times to get across the bay and finally arrived at my anchorage at 8.30pm. I dropped anchor in 15 metres of water, tidied up the sails and made some dinner.

I am sitting on the deck typing this, anchored 100 metres off a deserted beach. The moon's reflection ripples on the surface of the rolling swell and I feel like I am in paradise. I cannot find the words to describe how beautiful this is and unfortunately I can't take a photo as it is too dark.

It is truly the most amazing feeling being able to make passage across the ocean with just the wind in your sails. The only noise is the wind and the water. I get butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it.

I will finish putting the photos from the regatta into the album, then go to bed the same way I did 2 nights ago.

TIME TO HEAD HOME

13 June - I checked the tide times for entry into the river. If I was going to make it back on the incoming tide I would need to be at the mouth of the river no later than 1.30pm. I decided to head off at 9am as I wanted to stop and get some diesel.

Colin had contacted me on the radio and said that he was heading back as well. We decided to meet up along the way. He had two Dutch girls staying onboard and had taken them to Tangalooma for the weekend. There is no doubt about Colin, he always gets the girls. Here is a photo I took half way across the bay. We were sailing along side by side at this stage.

A bit further along the bay that creepy looking submarine was heading my way. Here is a photo taken not long before it started to dive.

I left Colin and his girls just after we entered the mouth of the river as I turned off to go down a creek to get some diesel. I arrived back at 3.30pm just in time for the turn of the tide. By 5pm I had cleaned the boat and settled back into life at the marina. I managed to get some good video footage over the weekend and have posted another video clip to the video section of my site. These short trips away are an excellent way to discover what I need to do to the boat to ready her for long term cruising.

18 June - It was work and life at the marina as usual this past week and the weekend has come around again so quickly. I have decided it's time to attack the bowsprit on El Viajero. I have been putting this job off as it is quite detailed and will take a couple of days to properly remove all of the varnish, sand the timber back and apply the new finish of cetol. You can see from the photo below that the sun has done most of the work for me. I started scraping off the remaining varnish today but decided that if I was going to do the job properly the two teak boards either side of the bowsprit will need to come off so I can access the small crevices. It's not as simple as it looks. I'm going to have to buy some tools tomorrow for the job.

19 June - So much for attacking the bowsprit today. It's raining! I will have to put it off until next week. Since it was raining today I took the opportunity to get some work done and also attended to a few small jobs on the boat. One thing I did was to clean out the bilge. When the work was completed on the engine and interior some bits and pieces had ended up finding their way to the bilge with the potential to clog the bilge pump or the float switch. The bilge on my westsail is unique to the later models. You can see from the photo below (which is looking aft) that the regular depth bilge which runs all the way through the boat finishes just at the start of the engine bay. From that point back the bilge drops to a deep sump. It is really quite deep, about half a metre deeper than the rest of the bilge. The bilge pump sits in this deep sump and it is a great design as any water that comes into the boat sits in the sump and doesn't go up into the rest of the bilge. The result is a totally dry bilge.

These are just some of the larger bits of junk I retrieved from the bilge. Better out than in.

I am actually enjoying the cold change (cold by Brisbane standards 14 degrees tonight) and being on the boat has such a nice atmosphere. I took the photo below at 11.00pm tonight. Notice the lifelines are removed from the front so I can work on the bowsprit. As you can see it's a beautiful night, the river is calm and there is a very slight fog in the air.

20 June - I decided to go out for a quick sail this morning and the weather here developed into a terrible storm. I had to make a run back into the bay later this afternoon as the seas were pounding El Viajero. Here is a photo of me coming back through the bar. I only just made it!

Ok, I didn't get out for a sail today but was stuck in the office. I obviously had some spare time on my hands tonight and since its raining and cold outside I thought I'd play around with photoshop. I hope never to encounter seas like that.

24 June - I finally bit the bullet and installed broadband internet onboard El Viajero. I have chosen a new technology which has a far greater range than wireless 802.11 (WiFi). I am installing an external directional hi gain antenna and signal amplifier and will test it over the coming months when I go sailing. If this works I will be able to go away for weeks at a time and run my office effectively from the boat. I have been working from the boat for the last couple of days and I keep in touch with my secretary via email. So far so good.

The weather has been very cold this past week and last night was 13 degrees. I have been running the heater each night and I am actually enjoying the cold change.

I have a busy weekend scheduled. Loads of office work to get through and that bowsprit which I had to put off last week.

29 June - It has been raining all this week and I still didn't get the bowsprit finished. I have been extremely busy at work this week and each night I would come home and try to do a small job on the boat. I decided to attack the interior of the port holes. They have been annoying me ever since I bought El Viajero and I don't think they have ever been polished in the 30 years they have been installed. It is not a job I have been looking forward to, as you will see from the photo below they have been seriously neglected.

Apparently bronze is supposed to look like this and the black coating is typical. I don't mind polishing them once a month and once I get them back to a shining gold, it shouldn't take too much to maintain them. It is a very intricate and time consuming job to get them back to a polished finish. It took me a while to figure out the best method. After about 5 hours (and very sore fingers) I finished just one porthole and wondered what I had started. However the photos do not do it justice. If you could see the difference it makes to the interior of the boat then you would know it is worth it. Only 10 more to go, then I can start on the outside.