Winter sailing days: cool & invigorating

Living as we do in Melbourne with water restrictions courtesy of a 10+ year drought, this year's winter, as have many over the past decades, has been cold, but essentially dry. Of course there has been some occasional rain. It isn't good for living with ongoing water restrictions, but the plus side has been there's no reason to stop sailing.

In fact, some of the best sailing I've experienced in recent months, has been on the coldest, calmest days. On lakes, such as Lysterfield Lake in the Dandenongs, and on Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay.

There's something invigorating about rugging up for a day of cold winds. Finding zephyrs of breeze is so much easier when the air temperature on land is many degrees lower on water. Only streaming eyes and a snotty nose complicates detecting changes in wind direction and intensity on your cheeks and ears.

Our most recent winter sailing day had Max and I on a friend's Hartley 18 on Port Phillip. The wind and waves were calm; we were occasionally becalmed. We occasionally took a break from staring out over the sun glinting on the water through the winter haze to thaw out with drinks of hot chocolate and a slab or two of fruit cake.

No divesting of layers of warm clothing. There was no effort involved in sailing with a 10 to 15 knot breeze. While keeping the boat balanced, we had to take turns getting out from under the mainsail's shade to thaw out under the weak sun. We returned to the boat ramp at the end of the day with as many layers on as when we left.

All in all, with the calm and cool weather, Max has continued to enjoy a series of nautical excursions. Turning 4 soon, his growing interest and innate ability for nautical sojourns, and sailing in particular, warms my heart.




Here's my Flickr page of photos from the Port Phillip sailing day.

I'll catch you at Rye: off the beach sailing is the best

Take a quiet bayside suburb in Melbourne that has an expanse of sandy beach, a boat ramp, and a fish and chippery on the foreshore, add a bevy of trailerable, home-built wooden craft propelled by either sail, oar, or single-cylinder engines, and their enthusiastic multi-aged from-all-walks-of-life captains and crew, gathered together on a sunny and breezy Sunday in late February…and you have the menu for a perfect day.

The Wooden Boat Association of Victoria had its annual day at Rye on the last day in February. The mid-morning sun broke through leaden clouds, and the breeze was up. The wind was onshore, and gusty. Most of the sailors prudently put in at least one reef on the main. One of our skippers – who shall remain nameless – didn’t bother with reefing his main, but didn’t set sail at all, and was last seen punting his dory-skiff around the channel markers with the throttle of his trusty Seagull outboard opened right up.

After a break for a light lunch, the M-boy and I arrived with Begonia in tow, but very little prospect of launching her, as she’s quite a craft to handle solo. Lyndsay Symons, the club’s Oughtred 'Puffin' boat, was free for a little while, so we took her out under oars alone. The M-boy sat between my legs and helped with the rowing. He’s getting a taste for this boat thing, as every time we go out now he either wants to row or steer. We didn’t stray too far from shore, as with the wind on my back, and even though Lyndsay slides through the water effortlessly, I was providing a bit of windage, and I didn’t want to knacker myself trying to get back to shore.

A quick and dirty race around the channel markers was being organised as we beached. We hitched a ride on one of the larger putt-putts that took line honours. While we were beetling up and back between the channel markers/race buoys we had a perfect waterside seat to see Penny & Jim’s Ness boat Talisman battle it out with Lyndsay: and what a beautiful sight it was too.

To top off a perfect day Penny & Jim offered to take the M-boy and me out in Talisman. Lounging in the bottom of the boat, with the chuckle of water coming from beneath, I asked the M-boy if he like sailing better than boats with engines, to which he replied: “I like sailing.”

Correct answer…and a good end to a perfect day.

More photos of the day here on my Flickr page

The 2010 Melbourne Wooden Boat Festival: a good beginning

Over a hot and windy weekend, Melbourne held it’s first wooden boat festival over 20-21 February 2010. When there have been similar festivals running in Adelaide, Geelong, and Hobart for a number of years, and in a city that boasts one of Australia’s oldest continuously running boatyards, Blunt’s Boats in Williamstown, this festival was a long time coming! But better late than never!

Located in Melbourne’s swish and swanky, downtown but upmarket Docklands precinct, there was an upbeat vibe in the air, that belied the quiet presence of an older tradition, with 100+ year-old gaff-rigged classic yachts and tall ships bobbing on the water.

Melbourne’s own tall ship, the topsail schooner Enterprize was there, doing a brisk trade, taking out full loads of Festival visitors for 1 to 2 hour sails on the nearby Port Phillip Bay. Watching her ply her way up and down the harbour with all sails set, full and by, I was taken back to my time on her , when it was all hands sticky with Stockholm tar, and knuckles raw from handling her traditional flax sails. She’s a good ‘small’ tall ship. Long may she sail the waters of south-eastern Australia!

And her ‘sister’ tall ship from Adelaide, the brigantine STV One & All, was there too.

She’s a different – and bigger – kettle of fish, and a magnificent sight, with all her pendants flying.

My own club, the Wooden Boat Association of Victoria, had an extensive display on the hardstand. We had a good cross-section of our boats on show: putt-putts, Oughtred boats, skiffs, dories, dory-skiffs, and our ‘flagship’, Begonia – a clinker-planked, copper-nailed, 15’ gaff-rigged trailerable dinghy. But I think pride of place went to our pedal-powered kayak, owned by our boat manager Graham Signorini, who is a mad-keen cyclist as well – funny about that! It certainly got the most interest from the public!

Of the various ancillary displays on show, it was good to see Paulownia Paradise was there. If you didn’t know it already, paulownia is the ‘new’ timber in boatbuilding that’s been gaining a bit of a following in recent years. It’s a very light, straight-grained, easily worked softwood, and it’s grown here in Australia. It’s a viable alternative to WRC, especially for strip planking. David Evans, the manger of Paulownia Paradise, told me that he’s been supplying Frecheville-Heaney Boatbuilders over in East Gippsland for a number of years, so Paulownia isn’t anything new to professional boatbuilders.

David said that from the keen amateur boatbuilders at the show there was a great deal of ‘potential’ interest at his stand about his products, with people looking for a small project to get them on the water. It seems a lot of people were particularly fascinated with the strip planking possibilities of the timber. David’s in the process of expanding his business to do small job lots, turning paulownia boards into ready-to-go bead and cove strip planks. I guess it also helped to have the craft of Capeboatworks on display right next door, especially one of their strip-planked kayaks!

And if you were from Melbourne, and had your appetite whetted enough to think a career in boatbuilding might be for you, the Victoria University boatbuilding school was on display, with their beautiful whitehall skiff Victoria attracting a lot of attention.

I was tickled to see Rob Ayliffe of nisboats.com out on the water, cutting up and down the harbour in his own NIS 23 Charlie Fisher, in company with Oyster Catcher, an NIS 29. Rob’s been doing the wooden boat festival circuit in Australia for a number of years, also finding time to take groups of Aussie wooden boat enthusiasts on tours through North America. When I asked him what he thought of Melbourne’s first festival, he frankly admitted that the attendance numbers were a bit low, and a bit more water-based activity would have got people’s heads turning. But you have to start somewhere with these niche-type events, so he acknowledged that Melbourne’s (first) Wooden Boat Festival was “a good beginning”.

Bring on the next one I say! (Which the rumour-mill says will be in a couple of years.)

More photos here of the 2010 Melbourne Wooden Boat Festival.