Hi All,
Am planning to drive with my partner from mount isa to airlie beach/shure
harbour on 22nd december for about 10 days. We will be taking our cobra
cat
16 with us and hoping to island hop around for a bit, maybe stay a couple
of
nights somewhere. Ive fixed this boat up a bit and should be failry
sound,
Ive fitted an outboard bracket to it and will be taking a small outboard.
Will be fitting a roller furler to the jib and thinking to fit slugs to
the
main? Will be taking a GPS and hoping to use phones for communications.
Very basic stuff also taken; hammock, few clothes, small camp cooker,
water.
Most of this stuff will stay in waterproof bags. There is no storage
space
on this cat unlike the cobra cat I had before.
Any advice out there from anyone re: sailing a small beach cat in this
area?
Some random questions include; is this boat undersized for this area?
What
are the winds typically like at this time of year? Will we find places on
any of the islands to camp? permits required? good cell phone signal
everywhere (will we need a radio?) any reasonably priced places to stay?
random sailing/safety advice?
I have 'cruising the coral coast' and will be bringing it along. This is
more a holiday trip than a sailing trip, we plan to sail an hour a two a
day, or maybe not at all with the rest of the time spent trying to stay
out
of the sun, listening to a bit of music or reading a book. Neither of us
have ever visited this area before so we dont really know what to expect.
Following is a bit of a half re****t on my trip down to sydney a couple of
months ago which some of you may remember;
Basically, I had a great time! i was down for 9 days but only
went sailing for 3. The rest of the time was taken up with riding,
catching
up with friends, and a wedding. The one bad thing that happened was i
went
to have a look at the beach cat that i still had down there and someone
has
stripped it! Some of you may remember last year that someone stole my
trailer. This would have taken a fair bit of trouble as the boat was on
the
trailer at the time, with the mast up and everything... they have taken
the
boat of and left it there but pinched the trailer. Sadly it is most
likely
another cat sailor too. I went down to have a look at the boat to decide
whether i would try to organise some way of getting it up to mount isa,
only
to find that someone has stripped most anything of value off the boat.
Roller furler and jib both taken. This required lowering the mast, and
quite a few tools so it was probably premeditated. They would have had to
bring a drill
because a lot of the stuff was riveted to the boat. Most of the hardware
which was all new last year is pinched too; cleats, blocks etc all taken.
A
real shame to see something like this happen (and an even bigger shame it
happedned to me!)
Other than that the trip was all great. We chartered a compass 29 from
church point charter which i have chartered before, The boat had a new jib
and they had recut the main. The boat itself was in fairly good condition
for its age, but had a few small problems that wouldnt have taken much
money
to make them right. There were no line holders for ropes, rope was used
instead of sail ties etc... just little things like this. One of the
winches seemed to be missing one tooth on the ratchet as it wouldnt 'lock'
in every position. On top of that there was only one winch handle, glad
we
didnt drop it!
The first day was straight forward, picked up the boat at about 9am, and
headed out. We had a strong wind warning with 30-35 knots expected which
was a big improvement over the previous year when i went out for 8 days
and
got about one hour of sailable wind in all that time! It was a steady 15
knots on the way out but i was pretty cautions and had reefed down. I
shook
out the reefs and enjoyed the motion, but by the afternoon it was starting
to come on a bit. By the time we came up to round the head and go across
to
patonga, I had the jib completely furled (furling only), and was
motorsailing with the main fully reefed. The reefed main didnt really
provide any forward motion, but it kept the boat nicely heeled over and
stable, gave us more freeboard on the windward side which kept us a bit
drier. But i still got totally soaked! There was a bit of a bushfire
going
on, but we got upwind of it. I've forgotten the name of every little
bay/harbour etc so I cant name stuff, but we spent the first night on a
mooring just around the corner in the cove there from patonga beach. The
next 2 days were good sailing, steady winds and had a great time.
Returned
the boat Friday morning and headed back home.
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