Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2016 i Cruising Helmsman

Below decks, the galley is arguably the most important area on the boat. Whether it is basic, like our friend Dick’s on Irene, with paraffin stove, no refrigeration and hand-pumped sea water; or state of the art like our friends on their Dickson 60 Sarau, with designated bar fridge, microwave, freezer and fancy, four burner gas stove. Our galley is somewhere in between with a fridge but no freezer, a microwave for use when the generator is running or the once in a blue moon visit to marinas and a basic, two burner gas stove. Whatever any galley is like there are some pieces of equipment, from thirty years of catering on board, which I consider essential but are surprisingly absent from many boats I have visited. They would all…

If you own a 42 foot cruiser, then this article is not for you. You have bought boat space. This is for those of us who own cramped trailer-sailers, wishing we had room to swing the ship’s cat. In our late fifties my then partner Joy and I decided a slow transition to retirement was better than the abrupt work halt, so we decided to build a boat that would suit short term cruising of one to two weeks and week-end sailing, preferably somewhere warm. Port Phillip Bay and Westernport are heaven in summer, but can be bleak in winter. We set up a wish list of basic requirements and started the search for our ideal boat. Our wish list had a primary requirement in that the boat had to…

Victorian TS launch the summer season Victorian trailable yachts once again gathered in Melbourne’s Docklands for its annual season opening event last October. The event builds on the success of the last four years where dozens of sailors have attended a dinner to celebrate the start of the sailing season and participate in the Cruising Helmsman Bob Couper Memorial Nautical Trivia Quiz. Bob Couper was a legendary and regular contributor to Cruising Helmsman with his column, `Ideas locker’ and with his later book `Cruising essentials’. The sailing quiz is now being conducted annually in honour of the legacy he left behind. The Sunday was a ‘Discover sailing’ day on the waters of Victoria Harbour for the general public to come and try sailing for free on a range of trailable…

The February 2013 issue of CH included one of my first boat tests for this magazine, the Beneteau Oceanis 41. Nearly three years later and the update is now available in Australia. In the October 2016 editorial I wrote about my interview with Gianguido Girotti, Beneteau’s marketing director visiting for the Sydney International Boat Show. He spoke about how the lessons learned from Beneteau’s First range of racing yachts were now being rolled out for the Oceanis range. The idea is not to make Oceanis fast per se, but more to make them better performing, utilising the stability of the racing design range. All to enhance the cruising experience. The (slightly) extended update released at SIBS, the 41.1, is one of the first to put Girottie’s concept on the water.…

Reasons why people head off on their yachts have always been many and varied, but for most of us it was to escape the rat race and pressures of life. Before mobile phones, after sailing away from the hustle and bustle of the city, we enjoyed that period of time without phones intruding on our peaceful lives. We missed our families, of course, but there was always the public phone at the next port and we made full use of them. Any emergency was handled through coast stations and the HF radio. For those of us who were sailing back then, lack of contact was something we accepted as the norm. However, I have noticed that modern-day yachties, who are used to having phone and internet access 24/7, usually become…

At 5am on 1st Sept 2015 Norfolk’s mooring lines were, for the last time, untied from the jetty. As we silently slipped away we waved goodbye to the little house at 53 Byron Street, our home port for the past +9 years. With a tear in our eyes and apprehension in our minds, we took hold of the belief that we were doing the only thing we can do and, because we were so bloody tired, quickly decided to enjoy the ride wherever it took us. Every day for the past six weeks was spent packing, tossing, agonising over what and how much to toss, storing keepables, selling off what we could and cleaning up behind ourselves. Robin and I bought Norfolk, a 14 metre pilothouse Bruce Roberts designed Mauritius…

Trying to make a great lifestyle safer Well where do I start, this will probably be too long so please feel free to edit to a sensible size, I definitely won’t be offended. The reason I’m writing to you is that I’m still alive today from a conglomeration of sayings, rules, safety gear etc. This is the result of a long history of being ‘out there’ as a bit of a risk-taker for all of my life, of which I can remember. Short history includes motorbikes from the ages 17 to 62; RAAF and commercial pilot for 40 years. The point I’m trying to make is that I’ve managed to get to a ripe old age of, lets just say 60+, and I’ve had a lot of fun and survived;…

It is funny how nostalgic you get when you know that something is coming to an end. When we left for Hervey Bay, with our Sabre 22 Trinity in tow, we knew it would probably be our last trailer sailing adventure. She has been a beauty of a boat, but the lure of bigger adventures is making us look further afield and, after seven years in trailer sailers, we are feeling ready to take the next step. So, we planned one final trip to Hervey Bay. We had been there before and loved it. The Great Sandy Strait had been kind to us and last year Wathumba had treated us to a week of idyllic weather that saw us snorkelling and lying around in the sun every day in mid-July.…

When we first threw off the lines to go cruising we quickly found that if we wanted to make this work we needed to cut back how much we spent. We had a reality check seeing our bank balance free fall and needed to reduce our cost of living. Clearly, living at the dock and being time poor had taught us bad spending habits and, now that we had cast off, we had to get our mind around the fact this is day to day life, not a holiday. We had not realised how entrenched living at the dock had become in our every day decisions. Now we have cut our monthly bills to a third of what we would have once spent. I know there are those out there…