Well today dawned cool near 20C and rain. Lots of rain. More boat prep, replaced broken bits, sorted the ditch bag, replaced the top instrument display on the mast, tuned the rig from top to bottom (these Aussie’s know their stuff) then went for a tune-up sail with Joe, me, Casey and the yard manager David, his daughter-in-law (who stripped and organized the boat and delivered it from Newcastle), and the riggers. Sydney Harbour is a series of interconnected waterways and hugely busy with traffic control zones and a ton of ferries, tugs, ships, navy and pleasure boats. A couple of 100ft sleds were out practicing too and boy, not so much fun in cool air (you could see your breath) and driving rain. But it was successful and the rig will be further tuned tomorrow by shortening the forestay a bit. All good.
Perhaps the most fun of the day was starting out with our fearless leader Giuseppe at his press conference. As you all know Joe you can only imagine the performance. He was onstage with the other away teams from Korea, Sweden and Hong Kong. Lots of laughs as Joe explained some of the origin of the TL name but not quite the full story. It was a blast… Click here for some of it…
From a poster at the YC. Rounding the Heads on the way out of harbour.
What heavy weather really looks like, from the 2013 race.
TL In lower right of graving dock. Beau Geste visible further away…
Goofing off at the interview with the famous Captain America
Rain lets up briefly as we drive by the iconic opera house.
Scallywag, the old Ragamuffin practicing. Still looks good to me…
Lindy is finally looking like a boat again. More melting in the extreme and little relief in the shade or below. We took Lindy out to have her southern compass swung and the fluxgate compass calibrated and all was good. The container is finally looking a little more empty and we have been going through all we need for the race. All the docs are close to being complete as well which is huge. And small jobs are getting completed although the ones we attempt later in the day take f o r e v e r !
Today (Day 5) is huge as Joe gets interviewed so check out the website and all international sites for his appearance. He is actually going to shave and ay very well change his now-gray coloured Lindy shirt for a white one. He is part of a panel all about the race and will answer all sorts of questions about prep, planning, motivation, etc. It is a huge honour actually as he is basically representing North America. Stay tuned on that one. 10AM on 15 December from Cruising Yacht Club of Australia!
And the weather finally broke. It has been raining since last night and the air temps finally dropped to 20C or so. A really decent night’s sleep was finally possible.
TTFN.
Yesterday was a remake of the Wizard of Oz… the part where the witch melts, declaring, “melting”… “melting”. And yes, we did look like flying monkeys. We tried to get the sails on the boat before high-noon and the heat wave hit but we failed miserably. It was brutal. We finally moved the boat closer to the ramp and a dockie helped me load while Joe watched. I am now 5’ 2”. And we are sure you folks still dwelling amongst the snow and ice think we are nuts but we would have traded by late afternoon. We managed to get the AC working but kept tripping the power way back up at the dock office. After 4 tries we gave up and simply drank tons of water. By end of day the cruising sails were back on (we will use these for the MOB practice and similar) and all is starting to look like a real sailboat once again.
The biggest take-away from the day was to know that we can cook the 3 Christmas turkeys and ham by putting them in the Lindy container for 20 minutes, perfect!
For tomorrow we hope to sail, at least get the southern compass swung. It hangs upside down for some reason.
Melting monkey! Partly due to still wearing a sweater under my Lindy shirt.
Lindy in the gorge, sails on, almost ready to go.
Beau Geste back from practice racing…she came in 2 hours after Wild Oats XI
Coolest power yacht ever… 90ft., tri-maran does 60 knots on foils that immediately and automatically account for the seastate independent of one another…
Wild Oats all XI wrapped up
Santa driver…
Still fighting jet lag but not cold weather so that is a win. We are wide awake raring to go at 0500 and by 1500 we are done. Oh well, hit mid 20s yesterday, very nice, except in the Lindy container which was like Barbie’s Easy Bake Oven. The dockyard where we are moored is a long fjord dug out by the Brits way back when… correction, the Brits had it organized to be dug out by some no doubt underpaid minions or other colonials. Strangely though the wind does come through occasionally. Our dock mates are few but good for us, Wild Oats XI, Beau Geste, etc. These big boys are actually racing today in a one shot race. The pics on TV this morning were awesome. But yesterday was all about seeing where we were in terms of race preps and what needs doing. Our host dockyard manager Dave (Google David Kellett sailor) had all organized in terms of safety and most of the measurement. Thanks to Jay the Lindy systems are working well although we lose satellite coverage in the bottom of our gorge. The boat had been stripped and all neatly placed in our container. In less than 2 hours, Joe and I managed to destroy this organization and the Lindy returned to the state most of us know her to be in prior to racing, good God!
By 1500 we had managed to slow our work pace to useless but not before we dropped a pack of battens in to the drink. A diver was called but he looked at the plan, the lack of visibility and didn’t even attempt it. But, it looks like they may just be spares or spares of spares. You know the Lindy inventory. Then we managed to almost finish the leeboard re-arrangement in the princess cabin and started loading stuff to the boat.
Then off for a beer run then a few groceries a swim, a cleanse and then test prep for the radio exam.
So, here we are at the start of Wednesday and there are heat wave warnings. It will hit an easy 35C today so our plans to load sails may have to wait unless we can find the same labour that built the dockyard and doesn’t mind frying in the sun. So, off to our exam then dodging the sun will be the plan.
And lastly but not leastly, we have had several discussions with sailors about the SH Race. Our rigger told us about his $50K half hour adventure. The short version is that the navigator told the driver (never his fault) that a buster was coming and at the first inkling of a spin collapse that they should change gears to windward. The first inkling was when the spin inverted back through the rig then spun them out. As they tried to get the #4 up, a 3DL, it split into two pieces. Meanwhile they lost control of the kite and it launched out of the boat and tore out the sheets leaving a very expensive flag flying at the top of the rig. 20 minutes later they cut it free and waved goodbye but not before they wiped out a few more times, over-stressed the steering cable and lost control of that too. This boat was one of the 30% or so that didn’t make it past day 1 of the race.
These ‘southerly busters’ come fast and almost always and are full-on Novi spectaculars. They talk about dropping the kite and going bare-headed for sail changes in survival mode. We have all been through line squalls but these ones seem above and beyond the usual. Plus there is the cold water L The advice we are hearing says that ‘you need to stay in the race, job #1’ and ‘change gears early, don’t wait until the pointy-enders start whining cause nobody needs to hear that’.
All for now, already have boob smiles forming… melting, melting…..
View from our deck…
Wild Oats XI… Look them up on YouTube. They needed to move the mast aft because when they hit 30 knots boat speed the nose would dive so they CUT the stern off by several feet and tacked it on the bow… Goes quicker now L They headed out today for a race and had 24 crew. Good God!
Hi all, as Joe said, for day 1 we had low expectations for productivity and on that account we delivered. Everything took longer than expected from arrivals to driving through traffic to signing off for the day with a final cleanse. Driving in heavy traffic from the airport was fun but we haven’t hit anything and no one has hit us. Our rent-a-car is a Jucy (see pic) and green and purple in colour. It screams out, “Don’t hit me, I am homeless, living under a bridge and I have no insurance”.
But the boat looks great, the weather is lovely and here on Monday morning we are getting geared up to start the grunt work.
Excellent update Jay and from what I read before and after arriving I think the SH will be quite similar to a cool Marblehead to Halifax but with bigger breeze, squally near shore and big seas (long swell with long periods) once we hit Bass Strait. It is likely to be wet so keeping the water away from your inner shell is key. I have some layers starting with tec undershirt, a lindy shirt on that then a fleecy shirt then a fleece vest then my Musto top. I have the heavier Gill gloves and a Svalbard toque from my Arctic adventures. I will pick up sea boots likely today or tomorrow. I fully expect to be living in most of this gear most of the time J
From experience we are all looking at 3 days to burn off the jet lag. If you have the chance to start shifting forward a few hours a day for the final days before you leave it may help.
All else is bloody right! G’day, Seanski
Raw bar at Harris Farm, great food and wine!
Whining about wine… Finally some decent advice from a well-seasoned lady who knew what was what…
Rent-a-car and Escort Service…