The weather here is odd at the moment, super humid, with lots of moisture in the air. Monday was grey, foggy and wet, with a bit of South South Westerly wind to add a bit of chop to the mix. Andrew and Mars only had Monday free, so I got down early and rigged up in the rain. I am getting quicker, and the systems are getting smoother. The new lazy jack cleating arrangement makes life easier. We got on the water, squeaked past the dredger at the mouth of the channel to the harbour, and were well away by 10.
It was a broad reach most of the way along the coast towards Williamstown. I was hooting along but decided I better put a reef in. I did a bit of an average job, as the boat was bouncing round so much, but it was a good move.
We were still getting about 5 knots, and I clocked 7.2 knots maximum surfing down the swell off the breakwater. I was a bit worried about jibing with the swell, so I tacked round onto port tack and we headed into Williamstown, watching suspiciously for any freighters to come looming out of the fog.
Andrew volunteers on the Castlemaine, and said that we would pretty safe berthing for lunch on the commercial jetty as at most only one ferry would be running on a weekday. We moored up for a nice lunch and a bit of shore leave for Oz.
After lunch, as we were heading out I noticed the tugs heading out to escort an incoming freighter. The wind had eased a bit, and to get round the breakwater under sail alone would require tacking back and forwards across the shipping channel, which didn't seem like a great idea with the approaching freighter. I fired up the Torqeedo and we started plugging straight into the wind.
Once round the corner and heading straight into the swell, it was a fairly bumpy ride. So as not to hold Andrew up too much, I motored on till we were past the last south cardinal mark after which the angle was ok for sailing.
I shook out the reef, and we pottered home, mostly between 2 and 3 knots. Thanks to the rather grim weather forecast there were not too many fishing boats out, so retrieval was no hassle. Home by about 2.30 pm.
This, btw, was my 31st day on the water with Anjevi since launching in late February, and I have done just shy of 250 NM. A month of SCAMP sailing, in around 9 months. Definitely more fun than a month of Sundays.
This day, in any of my other boats past and present, I would have been moderately anxious. In the SCAMP I was pretty relaxed. It was a good day! It is a great little boat.
If only I could tell the difference between off and on with my 360 camera!
Today was another camera buoy fiasco, but very pleasant not with standing.
I was a bit anxious about getting out after my last ramp experience but it was windier Today. I suspect wind keeps obnoxious pests - like mosquitoes and dickhead stink boaters - away.
I got down reasonably early, and was on the water 45 minutes later. Would have been faster but I got the dreaded Error 20 message on my Torqeedo and it took repeated cleaning and spraying with wd40 to get it to go away. But I should have been a bit slower and carefully checked the halyard lazy jacks arrangement... there was a snafu when we raised sail.
Chris as usual was early, and we were heading out about 9.45. It was grey and choppy first off, but pretty soon the cloud cleared and we got a sparkling morning with a good breeze eventually, about as good as it gets.
I tried the 360 camera on the spar buoy again. First try, it ran down the side of the boat and hooked itself under the Torqeedo. I rescued it, and launched again over the transom this time, but managed to switch it off as I put it in the water.
So all Chris's well judged buoy overboard manoeuvres went unrecorded. We sailed over to Altona Pier then back to the ramp to collect Roman just on midday. He has just bought wood, plans and parts from John, a builder up in Nowra whose build had run into ill health. There but for the grace of God... the possibility that I would not be able to finish my SCAMP really motivated me to get it done as fast as I could.
Roman is an interesting guy, he has built a big, steel yacht and a dinghy, so I rekon he is a good prospect to finish #653.
Thanks to the wind, retrieving was no hassle, and the boat slid onto the trailer without protest or getting its bunks and skegs crossed. Not feeling pressured helps a lot I think.
All in all, it was a really nice messing about in boats day, the sort of day I had in mind building the boat.
One still from the video illustrates my next SCAMP project btw. You can see the cleat on the mast, that is intended to secure the lazy jacks, is right in the way of the main halyard heading down to the block on the cuddy top. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but in practice it is awkward. I am going to put a block on the mast partner at the rear of the mast, and lead the lazy jack halyard back to a cam cleat on a raised bit on the cuddy, dead amidships.
Forecast light South South Easterlies, and a 0.8m high tide round 11, it seemed like as good a day as any to try getting the SCAMP into Kororoit Creek. The water was nice and clear so we could see the nice formations of potentially bottom gouging rocks that scatter the sand bars leading in.
The SCAMP with centre board and rudder up draws 180 mm, which was enough to squeak over the top of them, though we did scrape on some sand bar with the skegs at one point. There are sticks with helpful signs saying "Keep left" scattered seemingly randomly around, but by following the track on the GPS from my last attempt in the Skerry, we got in ok.
Though I did nearly collect the row of submerged tyres that stretch out from the current spit location. I was talking to Andrew G who came out with me, and stopped following the track and the clearly marked flag on my GPS from the last time I bumped into them.
But we managed to miss and get into the nice stretch of deep water that stretches about a kilometer up the creek. It is a really lovely spot, one of the hidden gems of the Bay.
There were flocks of waders (Godwits maybe?), cormorants popping up next to us, formations of pelicans flying over head, and lots of birdsong from the mangroves on either side. I really like river sailing - there is something very stately about gliding along in totally flat water, while the landscape slips past on either side.
The SCAMP was very steerable downwind and on a reach with centreboard up and just a sliver of rudder in the water. Getting back out into the Bay was not quite so elegant - the centreboard uphaul was under Andrew's legs, and I didn't quite clip it in adequately. It released, we pivoted to starboard, went out of the channel, and I rowed for quite a while not getting very far until I realised what the problem was. When we got to deeper water, I think I hit one of those rocks with the centreboard too, better have a good look at the cb today.
Once we were in deeper water, we had a nice sail over to off Altona Pier and back. A great day, except for getting back into Altona Harbour. A combination of jetski morons and large stink boat morons put a bit of a dampner on the end of the day. I will have to develop some alternative strategies for boat retrieval in Snapper season ... seems like the mornings are fairly mellow and you can pick your time, but the afternoons, with impatient dickheads wanting to get their boats out, and impatient dickheads wanting to get their boats in, is a fraught time.
I suspect too that I am primarily a solo and solitary sailor - I really like pottering at my own pace. Having company on the boat, however congenial, takes energy, and by golly I was completely stuffed last night!
Whatever, it was a good day, and sailing into the creek was something I have wanted to do for a long time. It means that I could overnight up there if I got the tides right.
While I was building I promised Frank from round the corner a sail on the SCAMP. He came round yesterday looking sadly and longingly at the boat - he would really like one - and having a reasonable forecast and a free day,I arranged to meet him down at the ramp at 10 today. It's Snapper season and busy, but it actually wasn't so bad getting out or back in. The wind died right off. I launched the spar buoy with the 360 camera on it, and checked on my phone that it actually was turned on. Unlike the last fiasco where I managed to turn it off as I put it in the water. There was so little wind i had to row us backto pick the buoy up, which didn't make for particularly inspiring footage.
It was good to get out, it might have gone some way to ameliorate my Snapper season ramp phobia.
Today was the 27th day I have been on the water in the SCAMP since launching in February, and I have covered well over 200 nautical miles in her. Which is not too bad. I bet lots of boats out there are getting used a whole lot less.
One discovery from the recent Gippsland lakes trip was how useful Navionics on a tablet can be, especially navigating waters you are not super familiar with. I have an old tablet with a cracked screen so I thought I'd give it a try, and it worked well. Except in the energetic tacking up Bunga Arm, the tablet, along with everything else not secured firmly, tended to slide from side to side with a hearty crunch each tack.
I am sure there are sophisticated off the shelf holders but thanks to a few bits of scrap ply - of which I have no shortage - and a few screws and I have a holder that can be held securely on the hook on the Port side bulkhead #4. I hope this will work OK for fine weather, and it should be sheltered there from spray and even light drizzle. If it really starts raining I cut the backing piece to size so it fits between the hatches on Bulkhead #3.
At the top, the holder hooks onto the bungey that runs across the cuddy, (which is also useful for hanging other things you don’t want wandering around). At the bottom there is a toggle piece that rotates in the mast box cutout and locks the bottom so it won't want to swing round.
Note also the net shelf within the hatch itself, which makes much better use of the available storage space towards the top of the enclosed cuddy space.
These additions are yet to be given any sea trials, but I am hopeful they will work. One of the nice things about small boats, the little evolutions and enhancements make the boat more adapted to how you actually use it.
Meanwhile, looks like Snapper season is upon us. The Altona ramp was chockers today, a nice day on a weekend. I will have to track how it goes midweek.
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.
The highlight of an otherwise rather dud end to the month has been Ozzie's achievement of the Practical Boat Owner "Seadog of the month" award. Richly deserved, well done Ozzie. Paul Davison, a UK SCAMP builder, kindly sent me the page.
The weather has been mighty unsettled and we have been lucky to get one good sailing day a week, and life has organised itself so that something has come along to stop me sailing on that good day.
I did get out from Black Rock for a bumpy sail with Gavan as crew and Peter in Pitthirrit for company. Black Rock ramp is exposed to Westerlies and was horribly weedy - I managed to put a dent in the bow of Anjevi, coat the trailer in sticky weed that took hours to wash off, and make a hash of retrieving the boat. I won't be hurrying back to Black Rock. But Peter made a nice video of the sail.
I got out for a solo sail a few days later, to test a new arrangement for the third reef. The reefing worked fine, but somewhere along the line the boom must have hit the pole I had just replaced that I used to fly my WBA burgee from the rudder. Both pole and burgee vanished somewhere into Altona Bay, another sacrifice to Neptune. Hey ho. I have been using the down time to do some work on the SCAMP. I took the rudder out and tried some re-faring after long consultations on fluid dynamics with my brother Mike. Fingers crossed I have fixed the vibration. And I patched up the ding in the bow from the encounter with the concrete pylon at Black Rock jetty, and added a new hatch rear starboard side cockpit seat so I can keep anchor rode there.
I am laid low at the moment with some truly nasty bug, not Covid if I am doing the test right, but it feels like it. Hopefully I can bounce back, the weather will improve, and I can get some sailing in over October.
