I managed to arrange 4 days away mid October. Anne very kindly agreed to mind Ozzie and Maggie. Chris and I arranged to meet at the King Street ramp in Paynesville on the 15th. It was a bit of a circus preparing to get out the door, but I was on the road by 7 and actually got down to Paynesville fairly easily.
Paynesville is a very boaty place. I think everyone clocks which boat is where and who is doing what. A video of us sailing down McMillans Strait popped up on Facebook that night. And a chap from a nearby boat yard came over, knew what a SCAMP was, and asked lots of shrewd questions. He kindly offered to keep an eye on our trailers if we parked near his yard... don't know if he did or not, but the trailers were still there when we returned a few days later.
There was quite a stiff breeze, blowing into that jetty area more from the left hand side of the picture. what I should have done was use a stern spring line to move the bow away from the jetty, and get revs at a steady level for heading out before letting the line slip. Instead, I cast off stern, had a forward spring line, which with the wind pushed the nose sharply to starboard. The helm was not enough to counteract that, I gave the engine some revs in the hope I would get some steerage way, but we hurtled towards that jetty on the right of the pic. I hit reverse hard, which stopped us before we hit, but suddenly we were heading sternwards towards the other side of the jetty we had just left. I hit forward again, and we just squeaked by and out, without actually contacting anything. Talk about bone head boaters! I hope no one was videoing that one. Well, I was, but that footage will be kept a well guarded secret.
But, once out in the strait, with the sail up, life got a whole lot better. We had a sporty sail over to Duck Arm, and picked up a couple of public moorings tucked away round behind the spit. I was seriously tired by the time we tied up though. Here's Part 1 of my video of the trip that covers the first day, and includes Peter Medling's footage of us.
Despite being tired, I didn't sleep super well. There was a fair bit of hooting and shrieking from the school camps on the other side of the bay but eventually I passed out. Next day was glorious, we were up at first light and ghosting out at 0730. The sail over to the Aurora Channel was memorably pleasant, the motoring up the channel less so. By the time we got to the top of Bunga Arm, the wind had kicked up a bit, and some energetic tacking was required to get up the Arm to land at a lovely little cove in front of Pelican Camping area. After some shore leave, and setting up camp on the boats, I had an afternoon nap, which made up for the lack of sleep the night before. While I was asleep, the weather changed, and a cold front was starting to move over. It rained overnight, and we packed up and set off in steady rain. Living the dinghy cruising dream indeed. It was good fun. The wind was light but in the right direction for us to sail through all the convolutions of the channel, and we got back to Paynesville easily. The wind had just about died, but what wind there was was coming directly down the strait, and it felt like a current was running against us, so after a half hearted attempt to tack back to the ramp, we downed sail, fired up the torqeedos and cruised back to the ramp. Here's Part 2 which covers the second and third days:
Back at the ramp we were greeted by Scotty Wells, a local who was very interested in building a SCAMP. He saw us sailing back past Montague Point, figured we were heading back to the ramp, and came over specially to have a look at Anjevi and have a chat. I was a bit distracted, and had only an old worn out pair of crocs to wear on my feet. The tread had long since worn off them, and, while trying to balance on the trailer to pull the nose of the boat on, my feet slipped out from beneath me and I went into the water butt first. No harm done except to my pride. The chest high waterproof trousers I was wearing kept my butt dry which was a bonus.
Chris made a really nice video of the trip as well.
All in all it was a fantastic trip, genuinely living the dream of dinghy cruising. I hope I can get back down there again soon.
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