Through the Facebook group “Sydney Sailing Crew Finder” I found Dave, who needed some crew to help him get his 40ft Fountaine Pajot catamaran “Pourpre” from Pittwater to Coomera. As he put ‘no previous experience required’ in the ad he got about a hundred responses in the first day, so the ad was taken down quickly. After a few quick conversations I somehow made the shortlist of candidates. I had never sailed on a large cat before so I was quite keen on gaining that experience and see what the differences were to a monohull. I’m also adding to my ‘sea miles’ in preparation for a Yachtmaster certification which is on the plans.
The total crew of four was on standby for about a week and a half waiting for a suitable weather window, and then we had 4 days of solid Southerly wind from Monday to Thursday forecast, so we met on Sunday night, had a dinner in Palm Beach and then went to bed on the boat for an early morning departure.
First 24 hours
After a most lovely daytime sail from Pittwater and up to about an hour from Port Stephens, we managed to avoid the rain squalls and had mostly sunny with fairly light winds, motor sailing.
Then the Southerly buster hit us with a vengeance, and although we had been looking for it intensely and prepared with only a headsail out, we were still surprised by how quickly it hit us and with the strength of the wind, being well over 40kn in the gusts. We furled away the headsail, but managed to damage the clew quite a bit as it was flogging during that procedure. Then we continued under engines, bare poled.
We decided to err on the side of caution and rather than continue through the night, we took shelter in Shoal Bay over night sharing a bottle of red with a lovely pasta. In the morning the wind had subsided a bit and was in between 20-30kn and we continued north without any mishaps.
Some learnings along the way
For me, the key takeouts from sailing on this boat were:
- when doing any form of sail change manoeuvre the first thing we did was turn the engines on. For any mainsail reefing we had to be head to wind, and that requires the engines on to keep the steering working as the boat stops immediately going head to wind.
- the boat was very comfortable and stable, even in a big swell, with the wind from behind at least. I don’t get seasick myself, but it was easy to move around inside the boat without losing balance
- i found the slab reefing system being pretty difficult to operate. All the halyards and reefing lines were at the mast, so required crew to move forward and work it from there. Also, the reefing lines tended to get caught and sometimes required a crew member to crawl into the boom bag and sort out the lines. Although the boat was quite stable it felt unsafe to me in the sea state we had.
- Flying a symmetrical spinnaker was quite easy as it could be sheeted to the two hulls and not needing a spinnaker pole to get the separation of clews. This spinnaker also had a sock, which worked quite well.
- i loved having an autopilot (which we don’t yet have on RaRa), as it made in particular the night watches quite relaxing
- we used an overlapping watch system where you were on active watch 2 hours, passive/standby watch next 2 hours and then off watch for 4 hours. This system worked really well I think, and allowed us to get a lot of rest.
Arriving in Southport
We had a great spinnaker run in 15-20kn for most of Thursday in beautiful sunshine, before arriving at Southport in the late afternoon. Strangely enough we almost didn’t see any other marine traffic, only a few whales.
Crossing the bar was a little bit exciting, and we managed to find a period between breaking waves to enter. Once inside the bar we were met by a fleet of yachts doing a twilight race in the very narrow waters there.
I was then surprised by how long it took to get from Southport to the Marina in Coomera, and we motored for two hours at 6kn speed through the narrow, and partly quite shallow, channels. All along the way there were luxury houses, all with their own private jetties where one could park ones superyacht.
The Boatworks, Coomera
What an amazing place to have boat maintenance done, with facilities from ‘normal’ size boats up to mega super yachts. They also offer an area for live-aboard hardstand, where you’re allowed to work on your boat yourself – not something you find in the Sydney area for sure.
It turned out good friends of mine, Julie and Pete, actually temporarily worked there as “Caretakers” making sure everything ran smoothly at the marina. We had a short catch-up on the Thursday night, but unfortunately I had to fly back to Sydney on the Friday morning.
A surprise on the hard
Once Pourpre was up on the hard and the work to replace the rudder bearing started, it was discovered that the rudder stock was quite badly rusted, and could easily have broken during our delivery. Luckily, on a cat there are two rudders and the second one was in a much better shape!
/Niclas S/V RaRa
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