October 2023, Vol #43, no #9. Editor: Kelly Clark & Evan Hodge
Next Meeting: Monday 16th October 7.30 p.m BYO BBQ 6:30 p.m.
Oct Speaker: Lee Condell Two Handed Sailing - Sydney to Hobart
The Whales are heading South!
Accompanying the Pittwater CD cruisers back home.
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Captain's column
Hello fellow Cruisers,
The Cruising season 23/24 has now begun. We started with a lovely evening at our September monthly meeting and followed this up with the first cruise together of the season. The Long weekend cruise to Pittwater which saw 7 boats come along for the weekend and we met another crew and some land-based family members at lunch on Sunday.
I wish to welcome our latest members to the Cruising family:
Gerald and Jenni on Serenite, a Benetau Oceanis who is berthed at MHYC.
The Make-a-Wish sail is on the 15th of October. Our charity sail with kids and their families who are doing it tough due illness. If you would like to come along and help on the day with the Barbeque or organisation, please let the committee know.
The Long Lunch is on – 22 October at Foys Kirribilli – If you have not yet signed up, remember to do this on the Cruising events website.
We are also getting ready for the Tapas Tie Up – our annual raft up in Sugarloaf, the theme for this year is South Pacific – so get your boat and crew ready for a fun weekend. Sign up as soon as possible and come and join us.
MHYC is putting on a new event every second Friday starting from the 20th of October – a bi-weekly Friday night twilight – with BYO BBQ on the beach afterwards. Come along, with or without your boat and help make these Fridays a great start to a summer weekend.
See you soon at one of our events, be it on land or water,
October winner: Morning Bay from Bairne Lookout - Evan Hodge Can you spot the five MHYC vessels?
Send your photos to Mike McEvoy to enter into the 2023 Cruising Division Competition. Each Month the best photo received will be published and, in the running, to win a new Mystery Prize at the end of 2023.
Send your best photos (as a JPG / JPEG) - Remember … to be in the running to win the prize you must be in it.
Hint …. Give your favourite photo a Title and Place taken. Submit your photos to mmcevoy@bigpond.net.au
Most of the photos submitted are by Committee members, surely there are other photographers out there on the water?
Good Shooting …!! Mike.
The Cruising Quiz, by Phil Darling
This Month – for a change – a real life problem (the quizmaster promises to return to quizes in the near future)
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Our skipper has promised to meet some friends at the town wharf in a Queensland coastal town. He will need to get eXpresso up river in time to meet them for Sundowners at 5pm.
However:
To get up river he has to negotiate a low bridge (15.2m above MHWS on the chart
Plus get over a nearby sandbank (1.3m depth on the chart)
eXpresso has a mast height above water of 16.9m and a keel depth of 2.2m
The skipper says “no worries – see you there”.
Is he right? If so – when should he come up river?
Other information: Low tide today is 0.20m at 7am, and high tide is 3.8m at 1pm. MHWS is at 4.8m above chart datum.
Past Events
MHYC Cruisers Long Weekend cruise to Pittwater - Sept 30 - Oct 2nd 2023
The cruising group at MHYC had a fantastic three-day weekend sailing up to Pittwater. What a way to start this year’s sailing season.
We had a good turn out with 7 yachts ready to depart from Hunters bay at 10am Saturday morning. Including our newest member David on his Folkboat ‘Gana’. Dallas on Eternity did a great job on the radio making sure everyone was all set and ready to go.
We had a crackin sail north with a lovely North-Easterly, each taking their own time and path with Refuge Bay as the goal.
On the trip up Sanctum had a close encounter with a whale near Whale Beach. Evan noticed a whale right in front of us as it dived down. It was about a boat length off our bow, Evan turned Sanctum left, the whale rose up next to us and had a good look at Evan before gently diving down and disappearing. I really wonder what was going through his/her mind? So glad Evan was on the ball and noticed!
Kai Rani, Viking III, Flemingo, Rara and Sanctum made it to Refuge Bay and enjoyed sundowners together while Eternity and Gana stayed the night at the Basin. Dallas and Selina on Eternity stayed back and kept a watchful eye on Gana to make sure David made it to Pittwater safely. He did a great job single handed sailing.
Sunday morning, we all made our way to Morning Bay. The aim was to be there by 11:30 whereby we would all make our way to Sanctum. John on Flemingo would come alongside and pick us all up and ferry us to lunch at RMYC.
In reality, I think we finally made it onto Flemingo by 1:00pm and on to RMYC by 2pm-ish. It was like trying to heard cats LOL. We were met by Cam and Aileen of Hunky Dory and Jeremy and Kristin on Kai Rani who helped us berth Flemingo near the fuel wharf.
A big thank you to Cam and Aileen for helping with organising the lunch at the RMYC. The RMYC is a fantastic venue both location wise, which enabled a few people to meet us by land, and quality of food. A really great time had by all.
After lunch most of us headed back to Morning Bay with John’s help on Flemingo. We enjoyed Sundowners on Flemingo and returned to our boats before a big Southerly front came through at about 9:30pm. Everyone was safely tucked away from the worst of the wind and by morning it was calm and beautiful again.
Monday morning and time to think about heading back to Sydney. Flemingo, Rara and Viking III were first to leave Morning Bay. Evan and Kelly took a hike up to Bairne lookout, after finding a long-lost trail not used by humans for some time and got some great photos. (picked up a few ticks along the way too, but that’s another story!). Sanctum left for Sydney about 2pm while Eternity and Gana, deciding to wait for more favourable wind and seas, returned on Tuesday.
The weather made for good sailing back on Monday with an easterly turning to north easterly in the afternoon. The seas were a little bit lumpy with a swell coming from the south after the southerly that hit the night before, but it was manageable and Sanctum was able to get a spinnaker run in.
The whales were up and playing and some had the privilege of dolphin playing in their bow wake.
Overall, a brilliant long weekend! Can’t wait for the next adventure.
Kelly Clark
SV Sanctum
Feature article
Our August Sailing Adventure in Sardinia and Corsica, 2023
Having heard many stories about the beauty of Sardinia and her coastline Jeremy and I decided that our first European adventure after Covid would have to include a yacht charter in Sardinia.
We chose Noah, a newly built 43ft Dufour. Noah has 4 cabins, a fixed 3 blade propeller, and was very comfortable. We were joined for the week by my Dutch cousin, Sonja and her partner Jos. Neither had any yachting experience so we thought picking a yacht that was only slightly longer than our Kai Rani, (42ft) was a good idea. Sonja and Jos’s enthusiasm to learn made up for their lack of experience, this was going to be a bucket list experience for them. Jos was so excited that he spent a few weeks prior practicing his swimming.
We planned to sail up to the Maddalena Archipelago. This National Park, located between Sardinia and Corsica, covers over 20,000 hectares of land and sea, embraces 180 kilometers of coastline and includes over 60 islands. We wanted to avoid more popular coastal areas, like the incredibly touristy Porto Cervo and Costa Smelda. This meant we needed to provision the boat for a full week for 4 people as most of this Archipelago has no towns or services. It was very handy to access an online grocery store that delivered to the boat, so all we needed to do was pick up a few extra items before we set sail. The Dutchies brought plenty of hard cheese from the Netherlands.
After a couple of days sailing around some incredibly picturesque coastlines and visiting a few of the Maddalena islands, Santa Maria, Isola Spargi, Caprera we headed further north up to the French island of Corsica, only around 11 nautical miles away. We started up the east coast and stopped at the spectacular beach of Rondinara, in a shell shaped, sheltered bay with fine white sand and crystal clear turquoise water.
Here were yachts displaying flags from many different parts of Europe, including Greenland, Latvia, Switzerland, Germany. This was the perfect spot for paddle boarding. The local bar on the beach was popular for sun-downers and also surprised us with a couple of wandering cows. One of them became tired of the beach goers and started to push the tourists around to our amusement.
One of the highlights of our sailing week was visiting Bonifacio (founded 830AD). This medieval town is right at the southern tip of Corsica. The approach to Bonifacio has very high limestone cliffs, dotted with sea caves and a 187step staircase carved into the limestone. The Bonifacio marina is located in a deep inlet and is sheltered from all winds. It must have been a formidable fortress in centuries past with the old town sitting up high on the clifftop.
We had one calamity corner on our way back to Sardinia. Hugging the coastline a little too close we managed to touch and got stuck. Luckily it didn’t take too long to free the boat with a little help from a passing speed boat which pulled us out backwards. No damage just a little antifoul missing on bottom of the keel. We were very lucky not to cause any real damage. Continuing on to Cala Corsara Bay on the island of Spargi we joined about 20 other yachts and cats for the night. After an early yoga practise on the beach we were joined by a warthog and her piglet fossicking for food. Then hoards of day trippers were dropped off by ferries so we made our escape.
The last full day saw the best sailing conditions with winds up to 25knots. By now the cousins had a little sailing experience and were thrilled to be sailing along at 8.5knots. We had a really fun week together.
Having chartered a yacht in both Sardinia and Croatia (2016) we can pass on a few observations that may help others. Firstly, always do a thorough inspection before you take possession of the boat. We encountered a broken and mismatched dinghy oar, wrong fin for one of the paddle boards, one virtually empty gas bottle, and no bucket! A few safety items were overlooked. On our return we were told that we could have requested wine glasses as these are not automatically included. In Croatia we discovered that the speakers for the sound system had dried out and had to be replaced during our charter together with the house batteries. With predominantly light winds for much of the week we were pleased that we added a furling code zero to the standard sails that come with the boat.
Kristin and Jeremy
SV Kai Rani
Alexandra Comino - Marine Biologist working to save the Agnasi oyster from extinction
My daughter Alexandra is a marine biologist currently working on a project on Kangaroo island to save the local native kangaroo island oyster the Agnasi oyster from extinction. This is her on the front page, of the current edition of the National maritime museum’s magazine “signals”
She, as the team's marine biologist, has led a pioneering team which has discovered that as the local razor fish (a 60cm long shellfish) population seriously declined, so did the native oyster as the spat of the oyster had no where to attach itself. The team made artificial razor fish shells using ceramics and deployed them in seabed areas where the razorfish habitat was known to exist. The experiment has been very successful with the spat latching onto the artificial razorfish ceramic . This discovery has been acclaimed worldwide as this is the first-time ceramics have been used to mimic a specific shellfish and proven to be successful.
The Federal government has extended the funding for her work as it now will be possible to save the oyster from extinction and to cultivate this oyster into a commercial enterprise ,thus bringing the oyster out of the danger of extinction. This scientific study may be used to save other species of marine life
I have also attached the article and an ABC you tube video link which tells you more
Thanks
Alex Comino.
SV Bloodhound.
Driftwood
How many sea miles have you done?
We have a wealth of experience amongst the members of our cruising division.
I for one, love getting taking a boat offshore. Each time I do, there is a new learning and a new adventure.
I particularly love the overnight experience, and have sailed under a full moon, and also when the night sky was black. Getting close to commercial fisherman and bulk carriers always comes with its excitement.
Up until now, I haven’t logged my offshore miles, and I wonder how many of you do know how many sea miles you have done?
So I sat down with my diary to discover I have completed 3400 nm in my cruising career.
Only last month I delivered one boat to Mackay, and brought another one back from SW Rocks.
I would like to collate everyone’s sea miles to really find out who the “old salts of the sea” really are.
I will raise this at future meetings as a discussion point.
Dallas sv Eternity
The Cruising Quiz answers
OK. Looks difficult.
But lets look at the data.
MHWS is 4.8m above chart datum (which is LAT) – so clearance above chart datum is actually 15.2+4.8 = 20.0m. May be possible.
Lets look at the tidal range. Low tide is 0.2m; high tide is 3.8m, so the tidal range is 3.60m. If we split it onto twelfths for the “rule of twelfths” then each twelfth is 0.3m.
We need at least 0.9m of tide to get over the sandbar, but any more than 3.1m will mean we hit the mast on the bridge.
Using the rule of twelfths (pretty rough, but it usually works):
At 7am the tide height is 0.2m. Not able not get over the sandbar.
At 8am the tide height is 0.2m plus 1/12 so 0.2+0.3=0.5m. Still not able to get over the sandbar.
At 9am the tide is 0.5 plus another 2/12, so 0.5+0.6=1.1m. Yes we can get over the sand bar (just) and under the bridge!
At 10am we have another 3/12 of tide height so 1.1+0.9=2.0m. Yes still all OK.
At 11am we have another 3/12 of tide height, so 2.0+0.9=2.9m still ok but getting close with mast height. This is probably the end of the window as at 12 midday we will hit the bridge.
So – yes we can get under – between about 9am and 11am. I would probably go for a passage at about 10am to be safe.
Opinions expressed in the Compass Rose are those of the contributors, and do not necessarily reflect opinions of either Middle Harbour Yacht Club or the Cruising Division
