Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2018 i Cruising Helmsman

SYDNEY’S Pittwater was taken over last November for the Multihull Solutions Pittwater rally. Thirteen multihulls participated in the biennial three-day event which incorporated easy cruising in Pittwater’s marine wonderland and a mix of relaxation and social occasions. The participants assembled at Café on Pittwater on the Friday afternoon for the weekend’s official briefing and distribution of rally kits over canapes and drinks at sunset. Competition was fierce the following day at the traditional figurehead competition off Scotland Island as entrants sailed past the mothership parading outrageous figurehead costumes. The f leet then sailed around Lion Island before anchoring at Refuge Bay in the afternoon for an idyllic afternoon of socialising, beach games and swimming with perfect weather. The now-famous prawn and punch beach party set the tone for an evening…

AFTER finishing her 2016-17-summer contract with the Australian Antarctic Division, former multihull ocean racing sailor and cofounder of the Australian Wooden Boat Festival, Cathy Hawkins, sailed monohull, Abel Tasman, 4,427 nautical mile from Australia to Kushiro, Japan. From July she clocked-up another 7,155nm on board Abel Tasman from Dutch Harbour in the Pacific Ocean’s Aleutian Islands, through the Arctic Ocean’s notorious Northwest Passage to the Atlantic Ocean and onto Greenland and Norway. This is her second story in her Northwest Passage series. First impressions ambushed my initial judgment of Nome and its inhabitants; it was like stepping into ‘Mad Max-ville’ both on and off the water. Or, as my fellow crew Dave described: “beyond Thundernome”. It had a ramshackle post-WWII feel about it and held a premonition of what is…

THE waters approaching Örö are treacherous. Submerged rocks abound and, if you do not pay attention to your charts, you will end up swimming in the cold Baltic Sea. It makes sense, then, that the inhabitants of this Finnish island have spent the last century with guns in hand trying to keep visitors at bay. We handed our sails and motor into the marina under the gun-slit gaze of a weathered concrete bunker, knowing the gun barrels were plugged with concrete while the bunkers are now a tourist attraction. Örö served as a grazing pasture for local farmers until the early 1900s. Then, as the First World War loomed, Tsarist Russia built a fortress on the island to keep ships away from its nearby capital St Petersburg. Civilians were prohibited…

“NO worries” said the skipper, a noted marine biologist, already in the water, “you don’t find stingers out in the open ocean. Just jump in, you’ll be fine.” Famous last words in my experience. On one memorable occasion a few years ago now, we were becalmed aboard our 39 foot Cavalier Noctiluca, 180 nautical miles from New Caledonia having endured eight horrendous days of stormy passage from New Zealand. This was my first bluewater passage and it was proving to be a true baptism of fire. Both the motor and our new self-steering gear had given up the ghost on the second day out of Opua when the storm hit. This meant resorting to a tiny storm jib, the only sail possible in these conditions. Nonetheless, despite its small size,…

COMPASS To convert a steering course from True (T) to a course to steer Compass (C) we must allow for both Variation (V) and Deviation (D). A simple way to remember the order of work is by using the mnemonic ‘True Virgins Make Dull Company’ or ‘Tele Vision Makes Dumb Children’ plus the word CADET (Compass to True Add East) to remind us if we need to add or subtract. Of course there are several saying about the compass and it can take a while to learn them all, maybe I am over-simplifying things but all you need to know is one, then the rest can be worked out easily. If you get a saying wrong you can make mistakes. If we convert from Compass to True the word CADET…

HAVING a pet on board is a much debated topic. Many cruising folk will say that having a pet on board will tie you down and is too much work. They say that international border crossings are difficult and you can never repatriate your pet back into Australia. We have always had a cat in our household, so when we became boat dwellers we were happy to try having one on board. Meggs, a slightly cantankerous, desexed male cat was seven years old when we moved from our house to our new boat so we were a little unsure how it would work out. There were teething problems. He was impossible to constrain to just our boat at a marina, his urge to roam was very strong. Luckily we had…

A LOT of marine work is beginning to take shape that will impact cruising in the Eden area. The Port of Eden is in the process of transformation with two major construction projects currently underway. They are the ‘Eden breakwater wharf extension project’ and the ‘Safe harbour project’. In the December report, expressions of interest had been announced to build a wave attenuator to provide safe marina berths for yachts. This attenuator is to be built so as not to impact on the breakwater where cruise ships berth. The Port of Eden is an active working port, a premier location for whale watching and fast becoming a popular destination for cruise ship stopovers. The key features of the breakwater wharf extension project comprises extending the existing wharf, deepening the adjacent…

NYLON MAIN AND SAIL COMBO Received on Facebook was the following request regarding the practical article in last year’s November issue on the construction of a spinnaker cloth mainsail for light air cruising: Are you able to find out what sail material was used for the jib. Interest in finding the combination they used, which was not included in the article, to understand the wind dynamics. Thanks. WAYNE FALLOWS Stephen Parry responds: Essentially we use one of two sails, being a jib or a drifter. The jib is a 100% sized, forestay mounted headsail, [not to be confused with a jib on a baby stay], constructed of 9.3oz Challenge high modulus cloth. Being small and strong it holds it shape well, particularly if there are seas about. This also gives…

WE left Moreton Bay in Manly Queensland in March 2016 to sail across to SE Asia. The safety of joining a rally appealed to us as first time offshore sailors and glad to this day we did it. Most of the fleet gathered and left Cairns in June, heading up the Queensland coast in the Coral Sea bound for Thursday Island. Out of the 35 boats on the rally, about 20 of us covered approximately 535 nautical miles in ten days. Pretty much the entire fleet then sailed out from Thursday Island to cross the Arafura Sea bound for Indonesia to check into Tual, the capital of the Kai Islands. This was the start of a journey that little did we know would change our lives forever. HERD MENTALITY Before…

THROTTLE CABLE JURY REPAIR When the engine on Bruce Nicholson’s Matilda failed to respond to the throttle he was glad to have already anchored after the day’s run. On shutting down the motor he discovered that the end had broken off the throttle cable at the swage connecting the threaded rod end to the internal cable. Unfortunately, the broken end was in the steering pedestal. Adding wire rope grips was not possible in the cramped location so Bruce end-for-ended the cable and removed the stainless steel tube from the fitting head. After adjusting the position of the cable clamp and lining it up, he joined the broken ends with wire-rope grips. While wire-rope grips are not designed for this purpose, they worked well. A final adjustment of the throttle cable…

ON a recent cruise to northern Queensland on the sailing catamaran Velella, sailors from other yachts often showed me their newlyfound treasures over sunset drinks and were curious about what they had found. This first article is one of a series describing the items commonly found on beaches. The most sought after items are the shells of sea snails, belonging to a large group of molluscs known as gastropods. Gastropods, as a class, include over 65,000 species second in number only to the insects; the class includes singleshelled sea snails and shell-less sea slugs. The name ‘sea snail’ is generally used to refer to molluscs with a single external shell into which the soft body can be withdrawn. These include conches, turbans, periwinkles and abalone. Those with shells into which…

IN the fast-paced world of production yachts a five year old design may be considered past its use-by date. But when such a yacht is built by Fountaine Pajot and designed by Berret-Racoupeau, the utility of this 13.3 metre catamaran is still well evident. The original Helia 44 design was upgraded in 2015 and became the Helia Evolution. Our test model, for a new Melbourne owner, gives testament to the longevity of this design. Fountaine Pajot are up to hull number 200 in those five years and we set sail with ten potential new owners for this test ride. This is clearly a design winner, so what makes it so special? The test yacht was fresh from the Sydney International Boat show so it included 300 kilograms of lead and…

AN ocean mapping system developed in South Australia is to provide real-time ocean forecasts to fishing industry and emergency services, which will also be freely available to sailors in the area. The mapping system, available through the eSA-Marine website, uses real-time satellite data to monitor sea level, wind direction and ocean currents for the entire south coast of Australia. The forecast technology was developed by researchers from the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) in partnership with the Bureau of Meteorology and the University of Adelaide. SARDI researcher Professor John Middleton noted that, “each day the Bureau of Meteorology produce a forecast for today and tomorrow and so on. Those forecasts give estimates of wind speeds, directions and also temperature. The bureau provides those forecasts so people can plan…

OVER the past few years, New Caledonia has been increasing its interest in attracting Australian sailors to the French Polynesia paradise. Increasing numbers of yachts making the way north east to compete in the Groupama race around the big island has become significant enough for the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA) to initiate the Sydney Noumea Yacht Race, which will set off in June 2018. Sponsored by Ponant Yacht Cruises and Expeditions it seemed sensible that the club’s bluewater cruising division would include its own cruising ‘race’ to Noumea as well. This 1,000 nautical mile adventure cruise comes with a number of benefits: the security of sailing in company and the peace of mind of being under the full safety umbrella of the Category 1 passage race alongside its…

TO a significant degree, marine archeology verifies shipping’s long history. For instance, at Atlit, Israel, located 19 kilometre from Haifa and 80km from Tel Aviv, archeological divers discovered a jar containing shells dating all the way back to the early Bronze Age (3330 to 2300BCE). These shells originally came from the Nile River, a distance of at least 1580km from where they were found. Whereas land-based archeology demands digging through strata to determine if at all possible when a particular item or site was first in use, the task is much more clear-cut in marine archeology. That is, for better or worse, shipwrecked objects all have the same last date of use. Ancient Mediterranean shipping was vastly less expensive than the overland hauling of goods from ‘point A’ to ‘point…

SUN ODYSSEY CONTINUES TO RISE During its 60th anniversary, Jeanneau keeps updating its various yacht ranges; the Sun Odyssey range now includes the SO490, SO440 and, its latest, the SO319. These models have added different design elements such as walk around access from cockpit to bow and cockpit coamings that lay flat for lounging to make them even more suitable for sailors around the world. These different design ideas led the SO490 to be named by the prestigious Robb Report as its ‘Best boat’. The 319 is designed to be fully equipped for a smaller sized yacht with a secure cockpit and wheel steering as standard, making this model aimed as the perfect family cruiser. Down below the Sun Odyssey 319 has two enclosed cabins, an appointed galley and a…

AS winter approaches, it can be tempting to pack up the sailing gear and go into sailing hibernation until spring. That is what we used to do when we were still working, sailing was for weekends or holidays between October and May. But the start of our full time cruising life on catamaran Take It Easy in July 2017 taught us a few lessons about sailing in southern waters in winter. So if you want to keep sailing all year long and enjoy some crisp but glorious days on the water but you do not live in the tropics, or have not got there yet, then follow these ten commandments. 1 THOU SHALT PLAN SHORTER SAILS The days are shorter with fewer daylight hours. It is best to reduce your…

AUSTRALIA had been calling us home for some time. Finally we turned away from Greece, south east towards the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean and through Asia to home. Our destination, somewhere on the east coast of Australia, was over 10,000 miles away. Compared to going west to Australia, our route was 5,000 miles shorter, or one ocean less. PREPARATION Ivory Moon had crossed the Atlantic in 2011 and all the equipment bought or installed then was still on board. We checked the SSB, the EPIRB, the liferaft, the ditch bag and all the systems. Everything seemed OK. We assessed the piracy situation. There had been no attacks in our transit zone since 2014. There was a joint naval force patrolling the high risk area with…