Airlie Beach to Mackay 05/09/2008

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I arrived in Airlie Beach yesterday, flying into Proserpine and renting a car – it was cheaper than a taxi and I had to provision the boat.

Despite my regular nightmares about Sunny Spells sitting on the mooring unattended, she was just fine! Les Reumer ran me out to her in his dinghy and the engine started on the first try. I motored into the berth at Abel Point Marina where Les took my lines.

My berth was just a couple down from Les’s. After my shopping expedition that evening I took a bottle of his favourite rum over and we shared drinks and laughs for a couple of hours before I went back to stow all the food and stuff.

I left early this morning to make best use of the tide (it floods south in this area so I left the marina about an hour before low tide. By the time I hit the Whitsunday Passage I had almost 2 knots from behind. Just as well, because there was absolutely no wind! It was a full day of motoring, but I was able to sort lots of little things out AND have a hot shower on deck as the solar shower had been baked to a very toasty temperature.

I use a boom brake AND a tradional boom-end preventer.

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A preventer’s principal role is to keep the boom (and mainsail) from flogging when running in moderate conditions, especially when the main is set by the lee. Under these conditions, the rolling of the boat can make the boom swing back far enough to backwind the main and start off an accidental gybe.

A preventer is great and I use mine (read details of Sunny Spells’ preventer in this post) most of the time when going downwind (“gentlemen don’t sail to windward”, so that’s a lot!), but you really don’t want it to be the only thing restraining the boom when the poo hits the proverbial…

Regardless of how you set it up, during a planned gybe the preventer has to be let off and re-set on the lee side. SO, this is NOT a part of the running rigging that you can (or should) rely on when the going gets rough or you need to do things quickly. This was graphically illustrated to me recently when crewing on a fifty footer in the Sydney – Gold Coast race: with wind gusting to 45 knots we had to gybe, and opted for a “granny gybe” (tacking the bow through the wind) to reduce the strain on the rig. The crew responsible for the preventer was a bit slow throwing it off, resulting in a pad-eye ripped off the bow and a broken preventer line which proceeded to wrap itself around the prop… Thank gawd we didn’t attempt a gybe!

Also, if you really get the boat out of shape and the main is backwinded, you need to release the preventer pretty smartly, and if you can’t, it needs to be fail-safe – i.e the line should break at a lowish force rather than a high one (this is where the boom brake comes in). Imagine the 2 tonnes of force in a 1/2in preventer being released instantaneously when it breaks! A recent post on CruisersForum suggested using a velcro strop to attach the preventer to the boom – this sounds very sensible as it would allow the preventer to release in an emergency without breaking anything.

Boom Brake

Before I left Sydney for Hamilton Island in May, I rigged a boom brake (details in an earlier post here) to control the boom during gybing especially when sailing short-janded. The boom on a sail boat can be lethal:

Preventer using a figure 8 rescue descender

The boom brake was initially a bit of an obstacle on the side decks, but I got used to it pretty quickly. I initially thought I might unshackle it from the toe-rails when it’s not in use, but never got to the point where I felt it necessary (we were running most of the time though).

I run my jacklines OVER the boombrake lines, which also keeps the tether hooks off the deck, at least over that area. However, having an intermediate “catch point” in your jacklines (by running them uner the boom brake) is not such a bad thing – if you get washed along the deck by a “green one” you’ll get stopped midway rather than dangling over the transom! It’s just the clipping and unclipping (on a dark and stormy night…) that becomes an issue.

Liferafts, EPIRBs etc

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It’s like paying for insurance, having to buy a lot of (expensive) safety gear, always in the hope that you’ll never need it!

406 MHz EPIRB

The first annoyance was that the two (!) EPIRBS on Sunny Spells are now both obsolete… The newest one was still good ’till 2010, but they’re both 121.5 MHz, so out they go. I’ve decided to replace it with the GME MT403G 406Mhz EPIRB with GPS receiver – I figured that, for the difference in price, you’d prefer 10 meter accuracy (rather than 5 miles) on the day you need it! These GME EPIRB’s have the added advantage that they are non-HAZMAT, so I can take mine on the plane when I fly up to Airlie Beach next month.

Life Raft

Having seen a bit of wild weather on the Australian East Coast recently, and most of it not forecast (a line squall can have really nasty wind associated with it!), I have come to realize that coastal sailing is every bit as dangerous as offshore passages, with the added dangers of lee shores, submerged shipping containers and other floating debris, not to mention the hundreds of migrating whales we saw on our recent passage from Sydney to Hamilton Island.

I’ve sailed without a life raft to date, but I have to admit that I’m not happy about it. Also, I can fool myself most of the time, especially on a nice sunny day, but it really hits home when you do the safety briefing and explain to the crew that, “if we go down, make sure you have a PFD on… if we have time, we’ll inflate the dinghy!”

It’s a big ticket item though. I’ve been scanning EBay since I returned in July, and this month I was lucky enough to find a good second-hand raft for the right price. It’s not hard to find a liferaft, but getting one that’s the right size is harder There seems to be a large number of larger life rafts for sale, but 4 and 6 person rafts suitable for offshore sailing are like hens teeth.

An advert in the AFLOAT magazine prompted me to explore new liferafts. As always, things are not as simple as they seem… A lot of terms get bandied about by the manufacturers like coastal, offshore, ISAF, ISO, SOLAS… Are you still with me?

When human lives are at stake, then someone will try and regulate the industry – that’ll be SOLAS, ISAF and ISO (not to mention ORC…). Trying to wade your way through this lot and work out what the average yachtie needs is not easy. Fortunately, one of my phone calls was to Peter Campbell-Burns at MarineSafe in Queensland. MarineSafe sell Zodiac life rafts but, more importantly, they service them too. Peter generously explained the ins and outs of life rafts to me. The following points were of greatest interest (I wasn’t taking notes – maybe I should have been…):

  • One should not buy too big a life raft. Work out how many people you are likely to be most of the time and buy a raft that’s just big enough. As Peter said, if the life raft is too big, it will ride you rather than the other way round. This was an important point – just because Sunny Spells has eight berths doesn’t mean I need an eight person life raft. In fact a four or six person liferaft is optimum.
  • Life raft certification IS confusing. However, here’s my take on it: SOLAS means it’s certified for commercial shipping; ORC or ISAF means it meets the ISAF or ORC regulations for racing (more about this later); and ISO 9650 is a fairly recent standard that is intended to improve and harmonise design standards for life rafts.
  • The terms “Offshore” and “Coastal” generally refer to their intended use under SOLAS (i.e. commercial shipping) certification. However, SOLAS defines “Coastal” as 200 miles from the coast – that’s a long way in a 33ft sail boat… The difference between “Coastal” and “Offshore” is primarily in the quantity and quality of supplies (water, food, EPIRB) packed into the raft and does not necessarily reflect on the quality or stability of the raft itself. A “Coastal” life raft may be convertible to “Offshore” at the time of servicing by upgrading the contents.
  • The quality of the raft itself is better judged by those who have experience with them. Things to look for include: welded seams (rather than glued), ballasted stabiliser pockets, a usable boarding platform with internal ladder to grab onto when getting in (apparently it is NOT easy to get into a liferaft in a heaving sea…).

This conversation made me realize that I had been unecessarily eliminating life rafts labeled as “coastal” from my search. As it happens, there was a very nice Zodiac 6 person liferaft on EBay, at the right price. By sheer coincidence, the photos showed that, you guessed it, MarineSafe had packed the life raft, and it even had part of the serial number visible. Peter checked his records and, very selflessly, considering it potentially cost him the sale, recommended that I bid on it, even suggesting a maximum price!

I’m now the proud owner of a life raft. Will it ever get used? Hopefully not! But hey, would I sail without insurance? Don’t think so…

Manufacturer's photo of Zodiac MP6 Open Sea Life Raft

I’ll do another post soon re. the requirements for racing, as everything is not always as it seems!

Planning the return passage

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I’ve now turned my thoughts to the return passage. I’d love to have Sunny Spells back in Sydney by the end of September. There’s all that summer twilight racing to do, not to mention lazy summer days just pottering around…

From a weather perspective, the probability of favourable winds improve after August, although we are really looking for windows in the prevailing south-easterlies to avoid having to beat to windward for day on end… Gentlemen don’t sail to windward…

Getting from Airlie Beach to Tin Can Bay will once again be the chilled-out, cruising part of the passage. I don’t think one can do anything other than day sail when you’re amongst the Whitsunday Islands, so we’ll be sailing from one (lovely) anchorage to the next, spending the evenings at anchor. I’d also like to stop at different islands to those visited on the way north and, if the weather is nice, explore a bit. Linne Island is a nice short sail from Airlie Beach, so that could be a first stop, and then Pine Peak Island seems to be another easy day sail away.

It would be great to return to Lady Musgrave Island (weather permitting) for some diving, so I might do an overnight 36 hour sail from Pine Peak Island to Lady Musgrave and then anchor there for a night or two. The diving is great at Lady Musgrave, being the most southern part of the Great Barrier Reef, so if the weather is good and it’s sunny, this would be a great spot for the scuba gear.

Lady Musgrave Island

From Lady Musgrave we might do another overnight sail (about 20 hours) to the marina at Urangan where we can re-provision and, maybe, overnight in the marina. From there we would do the inside passage via the Great Sandy Strait (inside Fraser Island) to get to Tin Can Bay, where one can, apparently, swim with the dolphins.

Getting from Airlie Beach to Southport

Once we leave Tin Can Bay at Double Island Point, the hard work will commence. I think an initial 36 hour leg to Southport (routing outside Cape Morton) is probably the best bet.

If I have a full, experienced crew, I might then continue direct to Sydney from Southport, a passage that should be possible in three to five days, depending on the wind. If I’m shorthanded, however, it might have to be 36 hour legs (Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Port Stephens are all potential overnight stopovers).