Blue Moon goes to The Whitsundays

[Shaun]

G'day Troppo,
The section between Pancake Creek and The Keppels took me about 7 days, there were afternoon sea breeze s every afternoon, so I decided to go through the Narrows to make some North, and I'm very glad I did, it is an amazing area in lots of ways from major industry at Gladstone to the remoteness of the Narrows.
I anchored amongst the islands off Gladstone which are fascinating, very quiet and smooth, yet you watch huge ships go past. I anchored in Tangine ck which was nice, after the Narrows I anchored in Badger Creek, again very sheltered and beautiful, the sand flies were bearable in those places. But at Pacific Ck (that I know you have spent some time at) they were ferocious after 1 night there I decided to motor the 25nm ish to the Keppels to get away from them.
It sure has been a fantastic journey so far, certainly easily within the capabilities of the mighty Top Hat!

Currently at Carlo Ck(what an awesome and sheltered anchorage this is!, Lucas doesn't even mention it?? It's near Tin Can Bay. Got into the Great Sandy last Wednesday, so there's been a big weather delay here.......which included being at anchor just Nth of Smooger Pt, when last Thursday we had 60-70kts through the anchorage!!!!
Cheers

[Troppo]

Shaun, a coupla questions:

(1) How has your junk rig performed with doing the trip up and down the coast?

(2) How did you go about surviving the 60-70 knts through the anchorage? Any tips?

troppo

[Shaun]

We left the Camden Haven early in the morning....I only removed the mainsail cover an hour before that!, I hadn't sailed for months previously , everything looked fine and it has been great since, I have got to the point now where I'm not breaking battens(have broken two previously), I can almost say "I can't fault it", there has been a lot of light wind, the rig doesn't like light winds on the nose with a sea over 1.5m, the boat gets stopped and takes a while to get going again. And having a permanent Bimini over the cockpit wouldn't work, I have to wear long sleeves etc, although a Bimini that you put up once the mainsail is up might work???.
I put the mainsail up before leaving anchor, and it's the last thing that goes down just before anchoring again, if the wind is light or your motoring, you just sheet it in hard and is doesn't slat and flap around. Of course the best part about it, is there is no anxiety at all about having too much sail up, you can reef it in seconds on all points of sail.
We didn't know we were going to get 60-70 kt winds, but were expecting some hail and maybe 40 to 50 kts, they were having tornado warnings on the fm radio stations and vhf, as I knew we were going to be there for a long weather delay, I tucked right up against some mangroves and in a small hole, it's on the chart, with 3 other boats, you can only get in on high tide, i dug the anchor in properly, tilted my solar panel down(but this did increase the wind age), put pads etc over the front hatch, and got in anything off the sides decks that might fly away. It was pretty exciting, sitting in the companion way just holding on, it was a nearly a complete white out. I put a video up on Sailing Australia on Facebook.
I thought it was 60-70 kts, some one else thought over 70, and a nearby boats wind instruments stopped working at 63kts.
Cheers

[Notlongjohn]

Shaun that's an epic achievement...in awe of your calm management with things like that laser business...who would of thought at sea! .... Now I saw you and Phil on your first day passing bonny hills well out to sea. Rob was in much closer . It was very strong almost Gail I'd say even then .
Question 1 is your storm gib much smaller than no.3
2. How's the Tohatsu holding up?
Happy sailing ...captn.

[Shaun]

G"day John, yes the laser thing was quite bizarre, it shook me up for a day or two when I thought it might of damaged my eyes, but in the end just another memory and story to tell.
I actually thought we were fairly close inshore going past Bonnys and Tacking Point, and remember seeing a larger yacht further out to sea (that we didn't know was Rob until the next day) I could be wrong though....wasn't feeling the best that day! , my storm jib which I haven't used is smaller than a No. 3, I'd say my normal jib is about a No.3 or maybe a small No.2, its a high Yankee cut, & gives me an extra knot plus an additional knot if I put a Barber-hauler on the jib sheet in the lighter conditions.
The little Tohatsu 9.8hp 2 stroke is a fantastic engine, it never missed a beat, after the first couple of days (where it started second or third pull), it started first pull every time(no choke), it even started once when i just pulled the cord out 6 inches or so, to engage the cogs!!, which is my usual starting procedure.
I've flushed it out with fresh water, and coated it with Inox, since being home and it looks just the same as before I left.
I kept a log of how many litres of petrol I used on the trip, I'll post that up when I grab my log book off the boat.
cheers

[Shaun]

I got my notes off the boat today,
From Camden Haven to the Top of Hook Is in the Whitsundays and return I sailed &/or motored 1961nm.
on the rhumb line is more or less 800nm each way, so going in & out of anchorages and around shoals etc etc added around 180nm each way.

The time taken to do the 1961nm was 471hrs, that was from lifting anchor to dropping anchor, a few times I forgot to turn off the tracking on the iPad for a few hours sometimes and for others 20 or 30 minutes, so the average speed would be better than the calculated 4.16kts on these figures.

I used 445lts of 2 stroke petrol, which is a surprising amount after adding it up!, considering the engine uses about 1.5lts per hour when im not pushing it, and about 2 or more lph if I have it running hard (about 3/4 throttle), I knew I had run the engine quite a lot but didn't think I had run the engine about 50% of the time as the figures indicate.

cheers

[Troppo]

Thanks for posting that up Shaun. Your average speed is great I reckon even if you did have to use the motor more than you expected. It is easy to get a nice high average speed on a good day but over a trip like you did it is much harder to keep the average up since not every day is good sailing. Even in Queensland! Considering how fickle the winds can be in my part of the world (Capricorn Coast) if you didn't use your motor you would still be up here somewhere waiting for the right winds.

troppo

[Phillip]

On my last trip north to Bowen and back from the Camden Haven Inlet NSW over 5.5 months I did 2,394 nm with an average speed of 4.6 knots.

While I averaged 0.9 litres of diesel per hour I can't find my total litres used.

As I was away longer I probably had a better choice of weather resulting in a slightly higher average speed than Shaun.

[Troppo]

Phillip, your average of 4.6 knts is certainly impressive. That is very capable sailing. I think it also shows that Top Hats are solid performers despite how old their design is getting.

Troppo

[Miker]

Shaun,

I think you might have your sums wrong. If you did a total of 471 hours and used 445 litres that's almost motoring the whole way?