Cats don't sail to windward in heavy weather

And when we got back from our camping trip, there was this great email from Rick -

'Just raced to Cygnet regatta from Kettering in 25 to 40 knots all head wind.

'Started last - broke shackle on main sheet, broke rope replacing shackle. All head wind sailing apart for last mile which was a reach. Fifth over (finish) line from 70 or so starters!!!!! Got beaten by a Sydney 38 and some champion etchel racer. How's that for a cruising clunker? Best part was doing 9-10 knots hard on the wind and no wet weather gear. I LOVE MY BOAT. Then they gave me first prize on handicap.

'One amazing thing I did see was on the last short reach. It lasted about 5 minutes and I was humming along at 14.3 knots when a small tri called Rocket Alice went passed me like I was standing still! I think they got wet cause all I could see was spray.They pipped me from fourth place but we had a nice roast cooking.

'Why would anyone want a momo? One of the hot shot racers from town (who got in half an hour after me) asked me the same question. It really p*sses them off when we pass eight blokes on the weather gunnel and we are passing around the coffee plunger. One thing that I found amazing was when punching into a wave train our cat doesn't jolt to a halt. It just punches through sending a shit load of spray over the top. No pounding under bridge deck though the hull did shiver in the severe pounding. She's well balanced and never lifted a hull once. It is a cruising boat after all.

'You did a great job Murray.

'Cheers Rick

'P.S. Next time I will dump the 400 kgs water and beat the racers.'

Well, what can I do but blush?

A Weekend Away

The weekend just gone, Moira and I left the dog in the care of our youngest and went bush in Tasmania's Tarkine.

The area, in the state's north-west corner, is the largest remaining temperate rainforest area in Australia with a wealth of natural and human heritage including over 1,000 aboriginal archaeological sites and remains of European logging and mining. Today it is one of Tasmania's troubled "multi-use" areas attempting to balance preservation of its special ecology, history and pre-history, tourism and (hopefully sustainable) exploitation of its resources.

Our plan was to overnight at Corinna, an 1890s wild-west mining ghost town recently brought back to life as an eco-tourism base, before taking doing the Pieman and Savage Rivers walk then driving north through Arthur River thence looping the state by driving home along the northern coast. We did do the walk outward (moderate but entirely do-able even by an older f**t with knees well past their use-by date) but grabbed a freebie kayak in the Savage and paddled back to the car.

A bit of Corinna history we hadn't expected was the little graving dock (see the picture) built for the huon pine cruise boat "Arcadia II" in the 1980s. Most people know graving docks as 'drydocks' but when I was learning my trade with the Australian Department of Defence about Garden and Cockatoo Islands, both with somewhat bigger graving docks, they were 'graving docks'.

Actually, graving docks are named over the practice of 'graving' a ship's bottom - burning off the weed growth then paying it with tar to inhibit new growth, ship worm and rot. Graving docks usually have walls of concrete (Garden Island) or stone (Cockatoo Island) but you can see that the "Arcadia's" was just eathern embankments with concrete where a steel gate was lowered in by the crane at the far end in the photo. Arms proped from the sides of the dock would brace the boat upright while it sat on keel blocks when the gate was in place and the dock pumped dry.

I'm not quite old enough to have actually graved a vessel, nor to have seen it done, but it sounds like the sort of sailorizing that is nicer to dream of than actually do . . .