Journal Entries

October 2006

6 October - I finally got my stainless steel work done. The cockpit area has always felt cramped and being a double ender, space is reduced aft. The existing setup was not done well and was always fairly flimsy. There were only a couple of screws holding the rails and I wanted something more solid, particularly since this is where I am spending most of the time when at sea.

I removed the two solar panels and side curtains and had 1 inch stainless steel rails welded in. I had a curve put into the steel which roughly follows the lines of the boat. It is amazing what a difference it makes visually. The cockpit now feels much larger and gives me more room to sit. (I'll post some photos in the coming days)

I headed off sailing tonight at about 10pm. I was determined to get away since it is a full moon at the moment and it is just beautiful sitting anchored with a fool moon.

This was the moon as I headed out.

It was a pretty uneventful passage over to Moreton Island and I arrived at about 3.30am.

My anchoring technique involves dropping the anchor until it hits the bottom, then putting the boat in reverse then laying the anchor chain out at roughly the same rate the boat is going backward. It's not as easy doing it solo but I have it pretty well practiced.

This was working as usual, until the engine suddenly died. I went to the cockpit only to find that the rope from the dinghy had caught in the propeller. What was most annoying about this situation was I had thought this could happen and pushed the dinghy out to the side of the boat when I put it in reverse.

Anyway, now I had a rope tangled in the prop at 3.30 in the morning in the pitch black water and I was alone. It was at this moment I was so happy to have a Westsail. With an outboard rudder I can see the prop by looking over the side.

The dinghy was jammed hard against the boat and I jumped into it with my torch to look at the propeller. It was pretty straight forward, I put my scuba mask on and could untangle the rope without even having to go completely into the water. This took only a couple of minutes and I resumed anchoring. It was a good lesson for me though and a situation which could have been a lot worse. In future I will ensure the dinghy is alongside the boat.

7 October - Fortunately the weather is great and I had a very restful few hours sleep. There are a few more boats coming into the anchorage this morning. I was sitting on the deck looking out at all the boats when I saw a lot of activity in the water. A huge school of fish jumped out of the water. Most of the people on the boats all had lines out, including a few very fancy looking fishing boats. I am probably the worlds worst fisherman and I immediately jumped into the dinghy with my handline and a silver spinner lure and motored over toward the activity. I motored past several flashy looking fishing boats and within seconds I had hooked a fish. I pulled it in, turned the dinghy around and headed back to the boat. I probably spent all of 2 minutes away from the boat on my fishing expedition. It would have made a good Visa advertisement.

"Red plastic hand line - $4.00, Silver spinner lure - $2.00, looks on the pro fisherman's faces - priceless."

I was very happy with my catch and only wanted 1 fish for dinner. I'm not much into fishing as I really get a bad case of the guilts killing the fish. I did apologise profusely and covered his eyes so he couldn't see the knife coming. I still felt really bad doing it. Below is a picture of the fish, minus the head. The battery is there as a reference for size and not some bizarre experiment I did hooking up the dead fish to the battery (although this may work).

I let the fish sit in some lemon juice and ginger and put it in the fridge ready to cook tonight.

and this is how it turned out later for dinner.

After murdering the fish this morning I decided to go for a dive around the wrecks. Here is a self portrait taken with my underwater camera.

You can see there is coral and reef fish everywhere.

This little guy was pretty cute, he had made this old pipe his home.

This is some of the coral down the side of one of the wrecks. You can see all the tiny little blue fish which live within the coral.

And after an eventful day I sat and watched the sunset. I wish I could feel as good as I do right now when I am at work.

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8 October - The weather was very calm throughout the night and I got up at around 5am. The sun was rising on the other side of Moreton Island and across the horizon to the west, the full moon was still clearly visible. It's impossible to describe the visual impact this scene has. A photo just doesn't do it justice.

I stood on deck and looked around. There wasn't another person to be seen and as much as it would have been nice to turn to someone and say, "hey, check out that moon!", the fact that I was completely alone, in some way made it even more spectacular.

I leave the anchor lantern on overnight, hanging from the boom gallows. I was about to put out the flame and thought it would make a nice photo.

I made breakfast, tidied up and did a bit of reading. I needed to be back to the Brisbane river not earlier than 4.30 due to the tide running in. It was about 1pm and I decided to pull the anchor and head home. The wind was picking up and was blowing at least 15 knots by this stage. I had to start the motor to get the anchor up since the wind and tide was playing havoc with me. As soon as the anchor was up, I killed the motor, hoisted the sails and sailed out of the anchorage.

Below is a photo looking back to the anchorage as I'm sailing away.

After heading south for about a mile, I turned east and started across the bay. The photo below is looking back at Moreton Island.

You can see that the dinghy is tied up to the leeward side of the boat and trails just beside the aft quarter. I learned that lesson the last time I was in strong winds and the dinghy flipped about 100 times. This way it is protected from the wind and it seemed to work fairly well. When I do a long passage it will be stowed securely on deck.

and looking East toward my destination, Brisbane. You can see the wash from the boat in the photo below. I am cruising along at about 6.5knots here.

The weather was starting to pick up. It was blowing every bit of 25 - 30 knots by 3pm and I had a full main and full genoa with the wind on my starboard aft quarter. The waters on the bay really can get uncomfortable in heavy weather. The sea was up to 1.5 metres and because the bay is so shallow the frequency of waves is very fast. The photo below shows the following sea.

As I was heading into the main channel the motor cruiser below was heading out. This was about a 32-35ft flybridge cruiser and I don't know where he was headed but it was not a good time for him to be out here.

He was going very slowly and the boat was being pounded by the wind and waves.

This is the type of weather a Westsail loves to be in.

I made it to the river in excellent time and still had a following breeze pushing me home.

As I was heading under the Story Bridge, there were a couple of yachts docked. The one on the right is called "Kokomo", is about 160ft and has a full time crew of 6. The beam of this yacht is the same as mine is long. It belongs to a high profile Australian property developer and is only a couple of years old. Kokomo has already completed 2 circumnavigations. I wonder how much time the owner spends onboard.

The yacht to the left is called "Darling" and would be at a guess 65 feet. Despite being an enormous yacht, it is dwarfed by "Kokomo". These boats are HUGE!

I was still under sail and just over an hour from home. The photo below is looking up the river sailing with a gentle breeze. I was very reluctant to use the engine as I am extremely low on diesel. The last time I filled the tank was many months ago.

Moored along the river was an Australian submarine. The last submarine I saw was a U.S. sub in about January this year.

I was running a bit late to make the slack tide to come into the marina. I did have a go at it, but the wind and tide was pushing me around in a very confined space so I got out and tied up on the outside of the dock. I waited until 11pm when the tide was due to change again and got the boat in easily. I used to get quite anxious about putting the boat in and I have now learned to just take it very slowly and not to over rev the motor. I can practically drift the boat into the berth now single handed.

I like to get away from the city, but after battling rough weather all day and returning to the scene in the photo below, with the full moon and city lights, then it's nice to be back.

This weekend has reinforced the fact that the more fancy gadgets onboard, the more there is to go wrong. On the way back, all of my electronics shut down. I didn't even have a depth sounder. Fortunately I have paper charts and know the area quite well.

I am going to leave the electronics for the big fancy yachts with crew.

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14 October - The weather is beautiful this weekend and of course I'm not going away sailing. I decided to get some work done on the boat. There are so many things on my "to do list", and one job I wasn't really looking forward to tackling was servicing the main winches.

I've never pulled a winch apart before (I only used one for the first time when I bought my boat) and I'm not the most practical person. I started by jumping on the internet and researching as much as I could. It looked pretty straight forward and I prepared all the tools and made a start. Below is the winch before. It was not running smoothly and was quite difficult to turn by hand.

I will not bore you with all the details, but if you are interested (and thinking about servicing your winches) I have written a short article in my "articles" section with detailed photographs of the whole process. Below is the winch stripped down.

cleaning the main bearings (I'm guessing that's what they are called) with a small brush and kerosene.

and after a thorough cleaning, just like a new one.

and all cleaned, degreased, re greased and re assembled. Ready to go back into service.

and finally with the cover back on and polished. The difference is amazing. The winch now spins easily by hand and will make light work of the sails. After this exercise I found that servicing a winch is such a simple thing to do. If your winches are binding, pull them apart and give them a simple (but thorough) clean and grease. It's not rocket science and took me about 1 hour per winch.

I haven't got any other plans this weekend other than some small jobs on the boat, trying to design a wind generator mount and some office work. I wish I was sailing to Tasmania right now.

15 October - Since I have been away each weekend for the last month I had forgotten what being in the city on a Saturday night was like. It reminds me why I try to go sailing. The city turns into a virtual warzone each Friday and Saturday night. Alcohol is an enormous problem in Australian society and it makes me laugh when I hear many "white" Australians complain about the alcohol problems in the aboriginal societies and seem to ignore what is going on right in front of them in their own culture.

If you go for a walk at 1-2am in Brisbane city you will see large groups of seriously drunk people and I guarantee you will see the occasional pool of vomit, fights and guys taking a leak in the gutter. The police are always at the pub just up the road from the marina dealing with drunk and fighting patrons.

Anyway last night at about 1am I was fast asleep and I heard a couple of large thuds on the boat. I got up and looked outside. I couldn't see anyone but on deck was a can of rum and coke which had been thrown at the boat from the boardwalk and a couple of others had obviously hit the deck and bounced overboard. There was drink all over the cabin top and running down the side of the boat. What a nice bunch of people. Thanks for the drink sh#@head!

So at 1am I'm washing down the boat since I didn't want to wake up to a sticky mess on deck.

This morning I'm sitting on deck (which was nice and clean now) and a police boat comes into the marina and police are walking along looking at me from the boardwalk. I'm thinking, geez it was just a couple of drinks and who called them anyway. Apparently a couple of guys in a high speed inflatable ran into a yacht somewhere down the river last night and were thrown overboard. They haven't been seen since and they are expecting the bodies to be found today. The police patrols and coastguard boats have been coming into the marina all day checking between the boats. Hope they find them.

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28 October - Well since last week they did find one of the bodies in the river. I haven't heard anything about the second one.

Work on the boat is moving slowly but surely. The outboard motor brackets I had made when I had the aft lifelines replaced with stainless tubing ended up being way too high. I had to lower them by 30cm. Below is a photo of the high version and now the lower version which allows clearance of the boom and sheets running to the boomkin. To lower the motor I will attach a pulley onto the end of the boom and swing it out over the side of the boat to the tender and then lower the motor. The reverse procedure for lifting.

The high version:-

The low version after cutting 30cm off:-

You can see the 1 inch stainless steel rails running along the cockpit. They are curved to the shape of the boat and sit just outside the caprailing which provides a nice and extremely secure seat when sailing.

Below is the view from inside the cockpit.

I had the outboard brackets made for both sides so if I am ever in a place where access is limited to one side I can swap the motor over. It also makes a nice place to mount my GPS antenna. Below is a photo of the port side.

The wind generator pole will be going on next week and I have been struggling with trying to design something which clears the main sheets on the boomkin and is still strong. I think I have come up with a suitable design and it should be rock solid and not too ugly. It's a difficult balance to find between practical and aesthetic.

The base will be mounted on rubber pads to dampen any vibrations from the turbine. Below is one of the stainless steel base plates with dampening rubber. This is the main base and I will actually double up on the rubber I think. You can see the other smaller base mounted in the background.

I will post more photos next week when the pole goes up.