Equinoctial gales

The equinoctial gales have been on full blast last couple of weeks. Every day has been blue arrows on the weather app, and we've had gusts up to 120 km per hour here, good for the fence repairers' businesses. The nature strips are full of sawn up blown down fences and tree boughs broken off. Must be tough if you live in trees. We found two baby ring tail possums over the last week, one alive which we took to the vets. The nice receptionist said ours was the fourth for the day. The other ring tail, poor little thing, was dead. Definitely not a good season to be a tree dweller.

We seized the opportunity to get out on the one ok day in between maelsroms. Chris in "Ysolde", Peter in "Pitthirrit", Ian in "Westy" and me in "Anjevi" with Oz. It was a splendid sail over to Point Cook for lunch, complete was a dolphin visit, and a good sail back. The wind eased off but the sun came out as compensation.  Peter made a lovely video of the day. The SCAMP looks good, and indeed it is fun to sail.

I seem to have lost my video making mojo. I tried my spar buoy camera arrangement out, and made everyone sail round it, but when I got home I discovered  I had turned it off just as I was putting it in the water. I have a couple of seconds of me saying "alright" and the buoy going over the side, and that's all. My other video camera, for long shots, had a flat battery. And I left the gopro running and used up its battery taking a very long video of clouds and not much else. I will have to try harder. 

 Ian in "Westy" is an experienced catamaran sailor but hasn't done a lot of dinghy cruising. He relies on outboard engine to get into and out of the safe harbour in his Cal 14. His latest petrol outboard (his third in recent times) refused to start. I persuaded him to sail out under jib alone and promised to give him a tow back in.  Tow back in went OK, but on the basis that no good deed should go unpunished, in the excitement of organising the towline my handy dandy wind indicator jumped overboard and sank. And then I stood on my WBA pennant staff and broke it ... but it was getting on time to replace it as I have been progressively breaking bits off it and it's been getting shorter and shorter. Despite minor casualties, it was a thoroughly enjoyable sail. It looks like the weather might be improving a bit for next week too.