Chloe's Adventures

Hi everyone sorry its taken so long but this will be our last post. We have had a great time sailing up the east coast of Australia onboard Chloe and even though we only made it to coffs harbour it was an awesome adventure for both of us we've learnt alot about being paitent excitement, sealife but most importantly we've learnt alot about each other and as I watched Jo spew her guts out over the side I realized one thing. I've never been so proud of anybody in my life. she gives me all the strength I need to keep going in life and I realized that it dosent matter where you are or living your dream sailing up the coast as long as you've got eachother then nothing else matters. So we sent the boat back down to Sydney with a delivery skipper's and their she sits. We don't.know her fate sea sickness is the bum but what we do know is Peter Cole you designed one hell of a good sea boat taking everything in her stride in saftey and comfort .So here we end .Cant.wait To start the next chapter with the woman of my dream. Dan
W

Well we thought it might never happen... but we sailed out of Newcastle and made it safely to our next stop, Port Stephens.

The seas were pretty big, and I got sick - really quite sick. Dan even nicknamed the boat 'the Spu Express'. Great. I discovered that the anti-nausea bands don't work and the tablets I had kept ending up overboard. Oh well, at least it's only a temporary sickness.

We liked having our new rigging and the front furler worked very well. But about 30min or so out of Newcastle, the main halyard fell off the main sail!! The knot which joins onto the clip that holds the main sail came apart. Luckily this did not result in any major damage (i.e. $$$) but meant that we had to go without a main sail. Of course we could have returned to Newcastle but we were glad to be heading somewhere else.

So it was unfortunate (not) that we had to use our motor the whole way... and we got to Port Stephens in about 5 hours, which was pretty quick. We are very pleased with our new motor, which worked faultlessly and pushed us along much more quickly than the old one. We achieved a top speed of 8.6 knots on the GPS whilst surfing some (big) waves coming in to Port Stephens, so we feel like we've achieved a new PB so to speak.

I was too sick to take any photos/videos on this leg of the trip but I am busy still trying to fit together all the pictures and videos from Newcastle - so you'll have to keep checking the previous posts as I get organised. I'm quite frustrated with the LONG time it takes to upload videos to YouTube, so if anyone else has some other suggestions that would be great.

Thanks for all your comments, we really enjoy reading them all, so please keep them coming.

Cheers
Jo and Dan xx

Can you believe that we are still in Newcastle? We've been here for four weeks now, and it is driving us crazy. Although it is nice to be on first name bases with the cafe across the road!

It all started when we decided to get the boat re-rigged here. It's something we needed to do but doing it here is much cheaper than in Sydney. It seemed like good timing, because some bad rain and wild weather came through for a couple of days, so sitting still was no drama.

We also decided to splurge on a furler and an autopilot to make our job easier - hand steering for 15 hours continuously was a hassle, and with the furler we (or, rather, Dan) won't have to rush up the front of the boat in scary weather to let out or reel in the front sail... it can all be done seamlessly in the cockpit.

It took nearly 2 weeks for the rigger to order in all the bits and prepare the new rigging. This meant we (Dan) had access to the mast on the ground, so he painted the mast, and installed a new anchor light and wind indicator on the top. I reckon this was much easier than clambering up 15m and trying to install stuff (and trying not to drop the crucial bits in the sea!).

But first we had to get the old rigging off... which had nearly fused onto the mast, due to some reaction between the steel alloy mast and the stainless steel fittings. Poor Dan lost a fair bit of elbow grease in the process but a super long shifter from the boat yard helped us no end.

To keep myself amused during all this hard work, I took myself down Newcastle's main street and found - uh oh - wedding dress shops... so one of my great friends Julianne came up from Lake Macquarie to have a 'play' with the dresses!

Julianne also took Dan and I up to the beach during the wild weather, which was great. It was so easy to envisage how the Pasha Bulka had ended up on the rocks, with the waves smashing the breakwater.

While we were waiting for the mast to be replaced we also found a place to buy some new perspex for our windows, and the guys from the boatyard cut them to shape and fit them. We now have a clear view on the world, and even better, no drips down the inside of the boat when it rains.

We also found a stainless steel place, that could make us some 'davits' or hooks for our dinghy that hang off the back. This means that we won't have to tow the dinghy behind us, which is safer and faster.

We finally got word that the mast was ready, so we got excited... we started the motor, got pushed off the marina, and tried reverse - nothing...forward - uh oh.... nothing. Anchor! Anchor! I have never seen Dan or the anchor move so fast! Why was Dan putting out the anchor in the middle of the channel, right where everyone would need to go to get into the boatyard?

After a quick check, we thought that the gearbox was broken. Ok, but how do we get out of the middle of the channel? We had left the dinghy back on the marina... After I offered to swim - it wasn't far, but too far to jump... and my swimmers were just right downstairs... a guy from the boatyard came over with the dinghy for us. We then towed the boat back the short distance. Then we thought a 'cup of tea' was a good idea indeed....

The only problem with the 30 yr old motor is that it is hard to get parts, including gearboxes. So basically it was either sell the boat here (depressing thought), or get a new motor (expensive thought).

We decided that getting a new motor would mean that we get a new gearbox and can continue with our holiday...so we have been in the throes of getting it all organised. It doesn't sound like much but all of a sudden it has been complex, with a lot of new parts like new engine mounts, a new fuel tank - with a new fancy gauge like the one in the car - and maybe even a new propeller. So it's proving to be an expensive and time consuming matter, but we both know it will be absolutely awesome when it's done.

We even had to move off the boat for a whole day so the people from the boatyard could cut the old engine mounts off and reinstall new ones to fit the new motor. We came back to a dusty and super stinky boat - they had to cut the old fibreglass (dusty) and redo some fibreglassing (stinky) for it all to be just right.

I am gradually getting less frustrated at the enormous mess our boat is in whilst all this is being done. We have almost no kitchen and living area - well, it was tiny to start with, and now pretty much all the flat space is consumed either with work tools or storing the bunk cushions and stuff that was near the motor.

The only inner sanctum is the bedroom, and a spot for Kaz to lie on! Hence the delay for this blog - I finally found some time to get to the public library for some space!!

We have been really pleased with how all the boating businesses in Newcastle work well together and have coordinated to get our boat renewed and back in running order. Everyone has been really friendly, including the marina manager to have us stay for so long!

On Monday we will be taking the propeller down to the place in Parramatta that will tune the propeller to the new motor, and then we are hoping to get the motor installed soon after... hopefully we will be away from Newcastle by the end of next week...fingers crossed.

Here's hoping to speedier sailing, and a very safe trip. There is not much else that can 'break' on the boat now, it's basically a new boat in disguise!!

Here's a video of the mast coming out and being put in again


And here's a video of the old Bukh engine being lifted out

We finally made it to Newcastle! After much waiting in Pittwater for the right weather and health conditions, we made the run up the coast all the way to Newcastle.

We started out from Newport at lunchtime the day before, with a short sail to The Basin - a lovely sheltered bay in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, about halfway up Pittwater between Newport and Barrenjoey Head.

We found this to be a beautiful spot and wished we had come earlier, although managing toileting the dog and the National Park thing was rather tricky, especially given the large colony of tame wallabies that were feeding on the campground grass.

We got up at 4:30am to get a head start out into the open ocean, expecting a long day of about 12 hours. Once we got ready to go we decided to go back to bed for another half an hour or so as it was too dark to navigate our way out of the minefield of mooring buoys in this lovely spot that is obviously very popular in summer.

We safely navigated the buoys and headed out into Pittwater where we had good south westerly winds. So we hoisted both sails and set out for the open ocean, watching the stream of cars arrive at the beach presumably everyone out for their regular morning swim/surf at 6am. It was pretty freezing, so we both agreed that you'd have to be pretty dedicated to be getting wet at that time of the morning.

The ocean was reasonably calm although the swell was quite large at first. We had good winds so were averaging 4 to 6 knots and getting airborne at times! I started to feel sick again which was frustrating but I downed some extra sea sickness tablets. This seemed to stave off the nausea nicely.

We had a special visit from a whale and calf not far from the boat, and a pod of dolphins escorted us for about 10 minutes or more. It was really special, they were swimming alongside and underneath and all around - and at times were so close that you could almost have touched them. Sorry no pictures or video of these bits as we were too busy enjoying the moment to fetch the camera or try and capture it behind the lens.

The extra sea sick tablets, a warm sun beaming down and a full stomach seemed to catch up with me and make me very drowsy so I left the helm in the capable hands of Captain Dan and had a nap. Meanwhile we had to turn on the motor as we were only averaging 1-2 knots and not really going anywhere. We were around Norah Head at this stage which was only one-third of the way to Newcastle!

The rest of the distance we did by motor-sail i.e. running the engine with the sails up to catch any wind. The engine was pushing us along at about 3 knots which is pretty slow but we kept reminding ourselves that it's faster than walking on water.

We passed heaps of massive ships lined up to go into Newcastle to load or unload. They seemed to be strung out from Gosford all the way up. We wondered how they ever get through all the ships, as more arrive all the time. We also wondered how long each ship has to wait 'in line' before they can get into port to load or unload.

We also passed some yachts coming south - coming back from the recent Sydney to Southport race. We had the pleasure of seeing Wild Oats XI pass us, but the video I took of that is really bad. I had to zoom so far in to find her, and then kept getting bounced around in the boat, so it is like looking through binoculars that won't stay still!

We eventually made it into Newcastle, although it took us about 3 hours from when we were first able to see the lights of Newcastle to when we were turning into the channel. It is tricky navigating at night in an unfamiliar port, and trying to distinguish all the necessary navigational marks from the 'noise' of car headlights, traffic lights and other things, especially when we need to be looking well ahead, and looking for other harbour traffic - particularly those big ships....

We finally docked in the marina at about 10pm and tumbled into bed, after letting poor Kaz off for a toilet stop. We both slept like logs and have had a nice day today wandering around Newcastle. We hope to stay here for a week, as we may use the mast-lifting facility here to save us climbing up the mast for repairs.

Crikey... we're still in Pittwater. After First Mate Jo went up the mast for more essential repairs, we sailed out of Pittwater yesterday, planning to have a night around the western side of West Head, in the Kuring-gai Chase National Park area. However, Captain Dan got nervous about the shallow water in the area and so we stayed a night on a mooring just near the little town of Brooklyn.

When we looked at the weather for the next couple of days it is southerly winds (yay!) but huge strong winds and massive swells to five metres all along the coast. Sigh. Another couple of days just hanging in port. We are starting to wonder if we will actually get out of Sydney....

So, with a bit of time to kill we went into Brooklyn for a cuppa and to walk Kaz. The town was a bit eclectic (if towns can be such), including the Asian-run mixed business store which seemed to be a very mixed business indeed.

We then sailed/motored on the run out tide, achieving a speed of up to 6 knots in places, which was impressive. The water got really lumpy around Palm Beach where we stopped for lunch. The swell was quite large and frequent even on this 'inside' area which made grabbing the mooring buoy and transferring to/from the dinghy very challenging, not to mention the salt spray all over us whilst in the dinghy.

We are now alongside at a marina in Newport, next door to the one we were at before. It is nice to keep the boat still so we can do stuff like write the blog.

Here is a video of us heading out to sea from Pittwater under sail, and you can see Captain Jo in action.

Left Sydney (Middle harbour) at 0900 Wednesday the 25th July rounded Sydney heads shortly after to a light northerly breeze and 3-4 metre following seas 1300 wind was dead on the nose and we were under motor the whole way as the sea was lumpy and confused blowing 15 to 20 knots. Rounded Barrenjoey Head at 16.30 and radioed in with Marine rescue Sydney to check off what should've taken 5 hours took 9 because of the headwind but we decided to go after sitting in Sydney with bad weather for nearly a week.

Jo found out she gets seasick and 'fed the fishies' twice and felt sick most of the way. She liked it when Captain Dan asked her to take the wheel because there was no time for feeling sick when trying to concentrate on steering the boat and trying to stop sliding around the cockpit. She is feeling better now dry, stable land has been reached, and will definitely get stuck into taking the tablets for the next leg - to Newcastle.

See our video... also on you tube...