tophatyachts.com

Nice stiff NE breeze predicted for this evening and a window of opportunity to spend some time at sea under a lovely full moon. One of my motley crew needs to clock up 4 hrs ocean sailing at night to get his final approval to man the local rescue craft so we will be heading out to sea from Broken Bay about 8pm and back late. Any of the Pittwater crew interested in joining us for a moonlight sail this evening?

Mark

Mark, it would have to be perfect sailing conditions up here at the moment....NE 15-18kts steady, should be similar off Broken Bay I'd imagine, have a good one.

A perfect night, beautiful full moon, 15-25 knot NE-NNE and a small swell. We left the mooring about 7.30pm. We watched the Moon rise on our first windward leg which took us a few miles East of Broken Head. The wind strength increased as we went further from the coast. It got up to about 22-25 knots, with stronger gusts. We were beating into a small wind chop with double reefed main and genoa furled to working jib size but still managing 5.5-6 knots and heeled to the gunwales. When we started to get too wet from the spray the crew voted to run for a bit so we set a course back into Broken Bay and down the Hawkesbury to Patonga. Nice run with tide and swell that enabled us to hit 7 knots (over ground) a few times. The run gave me an opportunity to issue the jovial crew with a hot cup of tea and some Anzac biscuits. The wind had eased to about 18-20 knots by the time we approached Patonga so we jibed and worked our way back out past Lion Island and the entrance to Pitwater until we were about a mile East of Barranjoey (11.15pm) before turning our head for home. We negotiated the entrance to Brisbane waters comfortably and were back on the mooring and getting into the dinghy before 1am. The phosphorescence from the bow wave as we passed Lobster beach was stunning. Motley crew member voted it a great night and my wife who took the opportunity to join us also had a wonderful time.

The only casualty was my Wild Oats peaked cap, but hopefully it will be recycled by someone when it washes up somewhere.

Interestingly, my crew had raced on a 47ft Beneteau on Lake Macquarie on Wednesday and while they consistently hit 10 knots he said it was not nearly as much fun as night sailing the Top Hat and given a 47ft Beneteau costs $600k, he thought the Top Hat was pretty good value too.

Mark with that wind direction and the full moon sounds like a great night to sail down to Sydney.
Only trouble is with the current on your side you would be down there before you know it, it is a wondrrful trip down at night and Sydney looks very nice at night.
Thanks for the posting great read.

G'day Bill, good to hear from you. I would have liked to have taken a run down to Sydney but the crew had to be back by the following morning. I really enjoyed sailing by moonlight and I will keep an eye out for another opportunity in the near future to make a night run to or from Sydney, I would imagine the lights on the way down would be pretty spectacular.

Cheers,
Mark

Sounds magic if you ever need a crew member let me know!