sailing try-outs

This week end we took some friends Chris &kathy and Steve &liz out for a sail, lucky for me both the boys are keen multi sailers and when they heard that trinescape hadnt really been tried out they were both keen to see what she would go like .Tina and myself have sailed her with only the head sail quite a few times and only once with all sails up but the wind was only about 5kts but she pointed very well but we were keen to see how our one off design would perform !. We left our mooring at about 10.00 o'clock and there was little or no wind but the forecast was for an afternoon sea breeze of 15kts ,we motored for about 3 hours and eventually we anchored for lunch and while there we threw over a few crab nets and we ended up with 10 blues yum! .After having lunch we packed everything up and prepared the sails ,while tina and i up anchored we slowly motored into the wind to allow the boys to set the main and also un furl the head sail by this time we had about 15 kts of wind gusting to 18 every now and then ,well as soon as i beared away the sails filled and we were off !the best i have had the boat up to was 6kts and that was with the tide behind me! well she blew that record in seconds and we were sitting on 8 kts and it was fantastic!, it was a bit later when we realized that we had forgotten to put the batterns in but we all thought bugger it -next time, all the girls were laughing at me because i was grinning like an idiot but i didnt care i was on cloud 9 all my fears about how our one off design would perform were laid to rest the boys were very impressed with her performance and how she handled the conditions as there was roughly a metre and a bit sea running and there was no bridge deck slamming at all even though we only have 700mm clearance they say 600mm is the minimum but we were ok . We sailed for about 3 hours and we enjoyed every minute of it i cant wait till next time untill then seeya later

quiet weekend away

My wife Tina and i had been planning our christmas get away for months it was just like a military operation all our lists were ticked off and after checking with the weather people it was all systems go for our 6 day get away. It was after lunch when we finally let go our mooring ropes and as usual we had to motor thru barker inlets twisting and turning channel but after clearing the Stkilda channel marker we unfurled our head sail and in 10-15 knots we took off our destination was Port Gawler river but because of the tides we would have to anchor off the mouth of the creek for the night and enter on the 7.00 am morning tide it is roughly 27 ks sailing to get where we wanted to go and the weather forcast called for the weather to moderate as the week went on well after clearing the black pole which was roughly the half way point the winds picked up a tad but with the weather supposed to be moderating we pushed on well we finally anchored at 4.30 pm the water depth was 3m so because of the conditions we put down 30 + m of chain and we reversed to set the anchor well which it did by this time it was just on dusk and apart from our mast head anchor light i also fitted a tempoary anchor light under our boom as a lot of pro fisherman come up this way and i wanted to be seen. Well the winds they started to pick up and up we had atleast 1.5-2.0 m waves i dont know how Tina did it but she cooked us tea and the conditions on board were terrible you could not stand up with out a hand on something and we both stumbled from time to time,the noise of the waves on the bows was quite scary and the best place to be was in bed and even in there we were thrown around . Before going to bed i went on deck to check the anchor nipper which done an amazing job considering ,i also set the anchor drag alarm on the chart plotter and i set the depth alarm on the depth sounder and then we both went to bed and slept on and off until the anchor drag alarm went of at 2.30 am the conditions had deteriated further and for the first time in my life i felt sea sick and i had to hang on to study the chart plotter to see how fast we were dragging but bless that anchor it re-set itself and after a half an hour or so of watching the screen i reset the anchor drag and went back to bed and tried to close my eyes to get some rest but i only managed some disturbed sleep . As pre-dawn filtered thru the over head hatch in our bunk we both got up and prepared to up anchor and enter Pt gawler river but that is another adventure for my next post suffice to say we went from bad to worse