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Seasons....

23/1/2016

With our little expedition to the Palm group over, it was time to break out the mothballs and prepare "El Gato" for the cyclone season in Nelly Bay.
Graham Symonds helped me strip sails off and stash them away before he flew back to Fremantle, and then I doggedly worked through my "to-do" list as every day seemed to grow a little hotter, a little sweatier, and more tropical than the one before it.
I soon adopted a routine of working in the mornings and swimming in the pool in the afternoons. With, of course, the odd cocktail or cold beer for sundowners.

Just another of the endless "to-do" lists. Boats!

There was probably a lot more swimming in the pool than working, but then, I am retired after all.
It feels dreadful leaving a boat to just sit in the blistering tropical heat over summer, but there's nothing much else to be done and Summer back home is calling.
It's a different world back in Torquay, and there will be a whole new "to-do" list when I'm back on the boat again too. The plan is to make a few trips North over the summer to keep an eye on the Big Cat, before setting off again next year. Having grandkids now based in Far North Queensland gives me one more reason to keep commuting up there, so I don't mind at all.
Meanwhile in Torquay I've been working through new mapping, navigation and weather-forecasting software for next year, and tossing around lots of options. SEAiq, VentureFurther, iSailor, OpenCPN, MacENC, Google Earth, PredictWind Offshore, WeatherTrack, HF WeatherFax and XGate are all getting a look-in, as well as upgrades to our existing Navionics package. The advances in technology are amazing and the potential uses for our iPads, mobile phones and laptops are boundless. Now, where were those paper charts....

Torquay's all about surfing, too, so I've been gradually getting back in wave riding trim after suffering a cruel back injury soon after my return...

2015 voyage, from Southport on the Gold Coast and north to Townsville.

So "Surfing" and "Pain" are synonymous at the moment. It's possibly a coincidence that when I'm on the boat, in tropical weather, back problems disappear.

On the menu for April is a surfing trip (without the boat) to The Maldives, so I'm hoping the tropical weather theory will stand up.

And in May, we'll be back on "El Gato" and heading for Cairns, and a whole new adventure.

Townsville, the view from Magnetic Island.

The Spot.

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The Skull Cave on Fantome Island.

22/1/2016

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The Goat Boat.

We sailed around Maggie Island in very blustery conditions, to drop anchor for the night in Horseshoe Bay, and the next morning it looked like we were due for a perfect sailing day. Which it was. Graham races Hobie cats in Perth, and was keen to take the helm.
With a 25 knot breeze from behind us, I set the jib, and the mainsail stayed in the bag. As the day progressed, the wind backed off a little and I swapped the jib for the big Gennaker, then we just cruised comfortably past Palm Island itself and around into the bay at Fantome Island.
(Palm Island, which had a couple of years ago been encouraging and welcoming cruising boats, was now asking them to stay away because the island was suffering extreme drought and running out of water. Aboriginal settlements still get a raw deal.)
The site of an old leper colony, Fantome still has the wreckage of the settlement, which hasn't ever been cleaned up properly and is strewn with asbestos and rubbish from the buildings. It's a beautiful little island, but a disgrace that the Queensland Government hasn't dealt with removing the mess properly.
It's a very unique little spot, and we'd enjoyed it when Mary and I had come through in "Endurance" the previous year. (It was the site of my marathon swim sprint to retrieve our dinghy that had worked itself loose.) Needless to say, I kept a close eye on the dinghy this time.

We had a good wander around on Fantome Island, and on the north end, away from the Leper Colony ruins, came across old campsites with bleached bones lying in the sand. Okay, I was kidding about the Skull Cave. There's no Ghost Who Walks or even any masked gentlemen running around in purple lycra. There is a beach though. And there's no pirates or treasure hunters' buried remains, but goat bones. Whoever had been using the campsite, over the years, had been barbecuing goats. (Goats were introduced to many of the offshore islands during the 19th century. It was reasonably considered that they would provide food for passing sailors, and they thrived. Most of the continental islands inside the Barrier Reef still have a healthy feral goat population, despite Queensland National Parks' best efforts to eliminate the hardy little buggars.)
I found a perfectly intact goat skull, nicely bleached, and decided it would make a great boat mascot. Fantome also has lots of giant clam shells lying around and absolutely massive piles of bleached coral. But of course, it's probably illegal to take any of that.

Graham loved helming the Big Cat and is a great technical sailor.

The ruins at Orpheus. I hadn't mentioned the plague of Death Adders which inhabit those ruins to Graham.

On with the tour, and we headed a few miles north to pick up a mooring at Orpheus Island, another beautiful little spot in the Palm Group. Here there's some great coral reef, and we dinghied to the beach on the high tide, and snorkelled the reef on the low tide.
There's a few moorings at Orpheus, and by Sundown there was a fleet of four or five cruisers....all catamarans.... settling in for the night. By now, the gale-force wind and rain had completely dissipated, and we were enjoying classic North Queensland conditions.

El Gatito visits the beach.

The luxury cruiser "My Way" is rumoured to belong to motorcycle racer Mick Doohan.

The motor-sail back to Magnetic Island into a gentle headwind was easy, highlights of the crossing being encounters with a Hammerhead shark and a banded sea snake. And the day was complete when we found a wind pocket that whooshed us through the western passage past Magnetic Island and around to the marina at Nellie Bay, with Graham at the wheel being careful to avoid the nasty reef in the middle of that passage.

The poor ol' goat's getting a workout. No Resting In Peace for him....and the final indignity has been stuffing him in my bag, bringing him home and hanging him on the wall of my study. Trophy Goat!

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Island Time.

21/1/2016

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An Australian tropical lifestyle. Townsville street art.

A cosy spot to hide from cyclones.

I do like being in Townsville and had been looking forward to parking there and getting comfortable.......

....but as much as I have enjoyed the Townsville Yacht Club, unfortunately their space for big cats is limited....the marina was planned and built before the explosion of catamaran numbers along the Queensland coast, and double-sized pens are in short supply.
So, it's off on the ferry to Magnetic Island, to check out our options for berthing there for the season instead. Bingo! Friendly managers, a great spot available, safe and secure, and a bit of a cost saving as well, more than enough to cover a lot of twenty minute ferry trips across the channel.
Magnetic Island is a few miles off the coast of Townsville, and while it's officially a suburb of the city, it's a world apart. The marina is adjacent to the ferry terminal, and fronts a luxury "Peppers" resort, complete with a giant swimming pool and a bar that serves an excellent Caipirinha. I'm not really allowed to swim in the pool because I'm not a resort guest, but I figure if I order enough Caipirinhas I should qualify. There's a small supermarket close nearby, a smattering of shops, and a bus stop that serves the island's other settlements.
"El Gato" is at home for the cyclone season!

The busy anchorage at Horseshoe Bay on Maggie Island, from the Sunday Market on the beach. A 20-minute bus ride, or one-hour sailfrom the Marina. The anchorage empties out once the summer Northerly wind kicks in.

With the boat happily docked, Mary packed up and headed for home while I stayed on, meeting another old friend for a few more days sailing. When Graham Symonds flew in, (also from Perth) the wind was gale-force howling from the SouthEast, and if we'd headed north to the Palm group of islands, I wasn't too sure about when we'd be able to make it back home. Sailing into gale force headwinds isn't my cup of tea.
So we had to hang out for a couple of days waiting for the weather window, lazing around on the boat, and then we were away.

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The Solo Solenoid.

20/1/2016

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Steve's fish.

Knowing that Townsville was going to be the End Of The Road for the season meant that things were all a bit subdued. It was a relaxing trip north, with respective anchorages at Shag Islet, Cape Upstart and Cape Bowling Green. Easy sailing or motor-sailing, lots of flying the big Gennaker, and lots of lounging around in the sunshine on deck.
And the BIG news is that we finally caught a good, edible fish, with Steve Koehne reeling in a nice spotted mackerel. At last, all that trolling expensive gear from the back of the boat paid off. Fish Tacos for lunch!
We tried for mud crabs at our anchorages at both Upstart and Bowling Green, without any luck. It seems that our smelly tinned cat food bait hasn't been working lately. Maybe it's the wrong brand.
But, being a boat, (there's always a "but") something had to stop working, and this time it was one of the engines which wouldn't go. No go at all, the starter wouldn't kick. I phoned my sparky friend Colin in Townsville, who gave some advice but my attempts to short-circuit the solenoid with a screwdriver didn't work.

Fresh fish Taco just waiting to be eaten on the bridge deck.

In fact, I was lucky not to set fire to the engine with my little effort! However, the boat runs fine on one engine and we continued on our merry way towards the Townsville Yacht Club, when the comedy began. I had been quite happy with my recently-learned skill in steering the boat in close quarters, by working the two engines in opposing directions.....just like driving a Bobcat.
But with a strong crosswind, and just one motor, the boat proved to be uncontrollable. So we missed our berth on the first pass and careened off towards some big expensive boats, piles of rocks and a concrete slipway. Fortunately there was an empty berth that we were passing and we were extremely lucky, with an energised Colin on shore, to lasso the closest cleat. And with a bit of bumping, pulling and pushing, we were safely tied up.

Good Morning, Townsville!

Safely tied up in Townsville.

After the dramas in the Whitsundays, and this little effort in Townsville, I think Steve was happy to head for the airport and back home to the safety of Perth where he's doing his best to eat all of Western Australia's crayfish stocks.
And we recruited Colin Grazules to sort through our niggling little electrical problems, ordering a new solenoid and rewiring our anchor winch's remote switch, which had also been playing up. Then, started to think about the available space for giant Catamarans at the Townsville Yacht Club, which had been "Endurance"'s home for the cyclone season two years previously.

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In the Shute chute.

19/1/2016

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It was haul-out time, to repair the damage from our little encounter with the rocks a few weeks back. We were booked into the Shute Harbour Slipway, the only place in town apparently, that could deal with our beam. So, we slept just offshore for the night and had an appointment to come into shore on the early morning high tide. We were kind of expecting something plush, especially after our last haul-out back at BoatWorks on the Gold Coast, which was brilliant.
No such luck in Shute Harbour, where we were precariously balanced on blocks of wood on a dodgy little vintage trolley, hauled ashore by an efficient, but equally vintage Ford Prefect motor, hooked up to a winch. With a no-doubt vintage length of steel cable.
It was a harrowing experience, with the apprentice swimming around under the boat, the little motor chugging away, the tide starting to run out, and the boat still dragging on the bottom because there weren't enough blocks of wood under it. Anyway, it went on for a while, but eventually we were high and dry on a dusty, rubbish-strewn concrete slipway, the boat was tied down and we clambered ashore to check the damage that Pearl Bay had done.

Almost ashore at the slipway. The Bougainvillea's a nice touch on a rough ol' shore....ya can't beat the Tropics!

And the damage was much worse that I'd imagined. When I'd previously dived on the keel, that's all I'd looked at, thinking that we'd only connected with the rocks on one side. But, in fact, both keels and one rudder had been comprehensively scrunched.

This is what rocks can do to fibreglass. Ouch.

But Billy and the boys took it all in their stride, setting about sanding and grinding furiously, until the bottom was bared and we just had to cool our heels waiting for it to drain and dry. After a day or two wandering around what there is of Shute Harbour, we decided to escape the grotty little slip and move into a motel in Airlie Beach for a couple of nights to await the arrival of our next guest, one Mr. Steve Koehne. Steve was flying in from Perth to join us on the voyage North to Townsville.
After a couple of nights in the luxury of the motel, I called the Slipway to check on progress....which wasn't good. The boat had fallen off the slipway trolley and damaged the new repairs!

Dragging poor ol' Steve along into our drama, it was a few days more of stress before everything was finally sorted. We had rain, wind, a few more painful incidents and we were wondering if it would ever end. But with the deeply discounted bill taken care of, we were finally out of there and back in the water with the boat all fixed. To be fair, it was all a grotty and awkward few days in a seedy little slipway, but the guys worked hard, fixed the problems, the boat's watertight, everything looks good and its time to move on. Life ain't all beer and skittles!

Vintage trolly and dodgy wooden blocks.

We had to hire two cranes to get back on the trolley.

It was wonderful being back in the comfort of Abel Point Marina again, socialising with the neighbours and stocking up for the Townsville run. Playing with the flash new dinghy and sign writing the name on the side....I love getting out the old brushes!

El Gatito....the little cat, or "The Kitten".

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Tradewind Days

3/1/2016

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Mr. Brooks.

Once we had Rod and Andrea aboard, we had to cool our heels at the marina for another day while I followed up on my dinghy business. But on the second day, we had 25+ knots from the south east, classic Tradewind conditions.
The afternoon and evening were predicted to blow up even stronger, so the plan was to scoot across the Whitsunday Passage and into the shelter of Nara Inlet.
I would have to say it was the best sail yet on the new boat. We had full sail up, and if it was even just a whisker stronger, or a longer trip, we would've been seriously reefing down. Everything I've been told, read about or overheard about cruising catamarans is that unlike a monohull, which heels over and spills wind from its sail, they don't let on when they're overstressed. Reefing at just a little over 20 knots is sensible. But the boat just charged ahead, cracking up to 12 knots, smooth and powerful. It was like we were running twin V8 engines....quiet ones. A memorable sail!
Once we'd entered Nara Inlet, we were amazed at the numbers of boats the same plan as us for the night...it's one of only 3-4 anchorages in the entire Whitsundays that can comfortably deal with 35 knots of wind. So it was a bit sketchy finding a spot.
Once we'd anchored, I launched the dinghy and took Rod and Andrea for a run up to the end of the inlet to look at the Cave Paintings. Casually mooched around and came back to Mary on the big boat after a couple of hours, relaxed a bit and AAAAGH! Dragged anchor! Very luckily fending off from another catamaran which was parked 100 metres away from our original spot. So, with my tail between my legs we skulked up further into the inlet, set the anchor carefully and let out LOTS of chain. And sat on deck for awhile until I was satisfied we weren't going anywhere unplanned.
By sunset, there were over 90 yachts hiding out in the inlet....it looked like the New York skyline.

The wind had backed off a bit on the next day and it was actually a glassy motor-driven trip across to the Cid Harbour anchorage...Quarry Bay... that we'd been with Hodg the previous week. Beautiful weather, and a great opportunity for some bushwalking along the beach and up the hill to the butterfly grotto. Thousands of Blue Monarch butterflies, which were once a memorable logo for the resort of Dunk Island.

And Mrs. Brooks.

After a pleasant few days with the Brookses, again coming up fish-less despite our best efforts, (but we did have a whale encounter or two) it was once again back into the marina at Abell Point, time to take delivery of the new dinghy, and time to deal with our hull damage professionally at the only place in town capable of hauling our big ship out of the water. The slipway at Shute Harbour was once the hub of the charter boat business for the Whitsundays.

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Meet ya at Mackas.

2/1/2016

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Just in case my temporary fix job on the hull wasn't up to scratch, I thought it prudent to sail the 60-odd miles into Mackay, and the safety of a marina, rather than hanging around out at Middle Percy for too long.
And, besides, we were due to pick up the first of our Guest Crew, in the form of the Rip Curl Tide Watch King, Peter Hodgart, who'd just flown into Mackay.
Peter's a mad keen fisherman, so we were looking forward to him quickly setting up the lines and hauling in loads of fish.
After docking in the marina, it became pretty obvious that the repairs had been holding well, so once we'd replenished the larder and the fuel tanks, we were out to sea again.
The sail started out a little rough and calmed down later on, but our next problem emerged when we doused the mainsail and one side of our lazyjack line broke. (The lazy jacks are the arrangement of light rope that hold the sail bag on the boom, and control the sail as it drops to guide it into the bag neatly.)
A minor problem compared with the crack in the hull, just inconvenient in that it made using the mainsail a pain in the bum. I decided that I didn't want to fix it myself, (which would've involved a trip up the mast) and that I'd wait until I found a rigger in Airlie Beach.
Anyway, Hodgy had the trolling lines out the back and we were all just waiting for the first big Spanish Mackerel to flop onto the deck....

Hodg and the Catch of the Day. Or should that be Catch Of The Week? The legendary remora.

First stop on the trip was the beautiful Thomas Island, and a favourite little anchorage in the fabulously named Naked Lady Bay, where I paddled my longboard ashore while Hodg took over the dinghy in search of fish. We circumnavigated that little island so many times, I was getting dizzy.

Naked Lady Bay on Thomas Island. South of The Whitsundays and out of range of the tourists.

A great place, Thomas Island, but unfortunately a scarcity of fish. So, onwards to the Whitsunday Island group, and an anchorage at Sawmill Bay....another beautiful little spot.

El Gato in Sawmill Bay

Sawmill Bay is one of the classic Whitsunday hideaways that the region is famous for, the weather was superb and the clear water was just so inviting for a paddle. Beautiful. But despite trolling around in the dinghy, the fish situation was still pretty grim.
In one respect, I was pleased....if the mighty Hodg couldn't catch a fish, I didn't feel so bad about not having caught one myself since leaving the Gold Coast.
But fortune smiled on us when somehow a remora (or
sucker fish) managed to tangle itself and Hodg's fishing line up in our anchor chain. So the drought was broken at last.
Onwards again to another famous Whitsundays spot,
the spectacular Nara Inlet. Our little hidey-hole there was previously named "Shark Bay" but the tourism people thought that was a bit off-putting and renamed it something innocuous so as not to scare the horses.
Persevering with the dinghy trolling, Hodg scored a couple of tiddlers.

Nara Inlet. From the steps leading to centuries-old aboriginal cave paintings.

Our next expedition was to circumnavigate Whitsunday Island itself, and check out the famous Whitehaven Beach, which features in much of the advertising for the Islands. Unfortunately, we had strong winds, and the masses of boats and people on the beach meant that we were a little underwhelmed and I didn't even drag out the camera, but at least we'd sailed past it.
I'd made a few phone calls back to the not-far-away Airlie Beach and we had an appointment set for the rigger to visit the boat and repair my lazy jacks. The rigger won't go up the mast if the boat's on the anchor or even on the solid ground....has to be in a marina. So, in we went, to Airlie Beach's "other" marina. It's up-market and situated in what used to be called Muddy Bay. (Another name the Tourist Bureau would like to bury.)
The old rigger wasn't silly though, and happily sat on deck issuing orders, sending his lithe young mountain climber assistant up the mast, and she fixed our lazy jacks in no time.

All riggers should look this good.

Hodg's week or so was drawing to a close, and we'd enjoyed the company. Despite the lack of fish, he'd kept us entertained over beers every night and regaled us with wonderful stories of his life in Japan. And, he helped unravel all of the knots that I'd developed in my own fishing reels....

The boat is so roomy that it's easy to have visitors on board, and every cabin has its own ensuite bathroom and shower. Once Peter had made his way to the airport, we readied the boat for our next visitors, old Torquay friends Rod and Andrea Brooks, who were driving up from their home on the Gold Coast.

Once they'd parked their car safely we started loading on the mountains of food, alcohol and "stuff" they'd brought (ain't life easy when you're not travelling on Jetstar).

I then set about having the dinghy valued and ordering a new one to be kitted up to our specs, and delivered after our next trip out to the islands.

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Crunchola at breakfast time.

1/1/2016

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Keen to get further North and into consistent warmer weather, and with the ease of cruising on "El Gato", our daily plans are getting more ambitious. Where, a couple of years ago, we split the run from Pancake Creek to Rosslyn Bay into three smaller bites, we are now confident to tackle 70 mile runs. So we could avoid the industrial mayhem of Gladstone and the rolly anchorage of Cape Capricorn by getting underway at dawn from Pancake Creek.
So it was a pleasant day out on the water as we bypassed those two spots, pulling into Rosslyn Bay (just South of Yeppoon) late in the afternoon but still in daylight. A cracking sail, too, from memory.
We fronted up to the very nice restaurant for dinner, pretty weary indeed, and then wandered back to bed and ready for a day off.

To Pearl Bay and beyond.

A day's rest and it was off to Pearl Bay. This beautiful little spot is to the north of Port Clinton in the Shoalwater area. This is often used for military exercises, and two years previously, we had been forced to give it a wide berth as a massive joint exercise, with Australian, US and Spanish warships, was in full swing. Operation Talisman Sabre I believe.
So with nice weather and the region being open to the public, it was a great opportunity. No phone signal, no townships, no facilities and maybe just an unexploded bomb or two.
So we cruised into the anchorage, cruised around in the dinghy for a bit, and invited the crew of the only other yacht in the anchorage over for sundowners. And slept well!

The impact point looking like a Nurofen ad.

We were up early again in the morning, keen to now get away from the coast and begin our island-hopping journey. But just a few minutes after pulling the anchor, CRUNCH, and we were perched atop a rock that was uncharted, and lurking about a metre or so under the water. And our draft is about a metre and a half. So we were stuck. Fortunately, we were able to manoeuvre our way off using the motor, but we'd put a crack in the hull. Also fortunately, we had some underwater epoxy putty on board, which I mixed up and applied from inside the hull, stopping any leakage, if only temporarily.
The screen shot at right, from our up-until-now perfect Navionics plotting software, shows our anchor marks, planned course, and the red spot's our impact point.
Yes, we should've kept a better watch at the bow. And yes, we should've picked our way out of the bay at a slower speed.
And no, we shouldn't have trusted the chart so faithfully.
And there endeth the lesson.

The idyllic and seemingly innocent anchorage at Pearl Bay on the afternoon of our arrival.

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Pointing towards Percy

1/1/2016

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Running aground with a sudden jolt is a scary experience. The potential complications are serious, in a location miles from the nearest help. At Pearl Bay, there's no roads, no phone signal, and no help. So we were fortunate that the boat wasn't leaking significantly and everything was functioning as it should. And what leakage we were getting was taken care of by the bilge pump kicking in every few hours for half a minute or so. Besides, catamarans have two hulls so they can't sink....can they?
Anyway, we felt confident enough to head East out towards Middle Percy Island, the traditional stopover for cruising yachts to socialise a bit and start island-hopping north.
_http://percyisland.com.au

And its also the home of the A-Frame hut where people leave their boat names amongst the thousands of others that have been collecting for years.
We hunted around and found the "Endurance" piece we'd left a couple of years back and dropped off the new one. Which, in testament to just how stable a cruiser "El Gato" really is, I'd painted while we were underway with a 1.5 metre following sea.

We had more serious stuff to deal with though, and as soon as we'd anchored it was on with the goggles and flippers and overboard to check out the damage. Which looked pretty ugly, to say the least. I only checked the starboard keel, thinking that was the only place we'd hit. This later proved incorrect actually.

I started to relax once we were ashore and having Sundowners with the dozen or more other sailors we met. They'd had a whale swim through and around the anchorage the day before, so we missed some of the fun, but enjoyed the opportunity to tell lies about our adventures along with everyone else.

The Old and the New at Middle Percy. Different style boats, different style signs.

Dinghy doubts

When we bought our boat, she came equipped with a rather worn aluminium hulled RIB dinghy that sported a massive 25HP four-stroke engine, and centre-console wheel steering. This was terrific for zooming around back at the Gold Coast where we could tie up at convenient wharves whenever we wanted to go ashore. But back at Pearl Bay, it meant we couldn't actually go ashore onto the sandy beach, because we were worried that we wouldn't be able to drag her in or out of the water by ourselves.
And here at Middle Percy, where all the action is ashore, we knew we were going to have trouble.....it took a team of four people to help us relaunch the thing. I started thinking seriously about saving some weight on the boat and trading her in.

Middle Percy Island sunset from the A-Frame, with dinghies lined up on the beach.

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Dinghy doubts

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