GHOST

A blog account of the activities of yacht GHOST.

Vessel Name: GHOST
Vessel Make/Model: Hanse 470e
Hailing Port: Southampton
Crew: Brad and Kat McMaster
06 May 2011 | Melbourne
01 February 2011 | Melbourne
05 December 2010 | Sydney Harbour, Australia
28 November 2010 | Pittwater, NSW, Australia
28 November 2010 | Sydney Harbour, Australia
28 November 2010 | Pittwater, NSW, Australia
23 November 2010 | Pittwater, NSW, Australia
17 November 2010 | Coffs Harbour
12 November 2010 | 100nm NE of Coffs Harbour
10 November 2010 | closing on Australian coast east of Brisbane
08 November 2010 | On route to Oz
07 November 2010 | Baie de Prony, New Caledonia
06 November 2010 | Vanuatu & New Caledonia
03 November 2010 | Noumea, New Caledonia
25 October 2010 | Santo, Vanuatu
14 October 2010 | Aore Island, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu
13 October 2010 | Aore Island, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu
12 October 2010 | Aore Island, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu
05 October 2010 | Aore Island, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu
16 September 2010 | On route to Vanuatu
Recent Blog Posts
06 May 2011 | Melbourne

It's Official

It's a sad but good thing, we no longer own GHOST. She is now owned by an architect in Sydney who has plans of sailing the South Pacific once again.

01 February 2011 | Melbourne

Reality bites!!

It's been a while since we updated the blog. Apologies for that but we've been busy fighting off the onslaught of reality, not really wanting to admit it's over! After arriving it was the welcome party in Sydney, followed by a hectic week of moving ALL our personal stuff off GHOST. On a side note, it [...]

05 December 2010 | Sydney Harbour, Australia

Pictures from the party & sailing around Sydney harbour

See pics:

28 November 2010 | Pittwater, NSW, Australia

GHOST for sale!

Well it's sad news but GHOST is now officially up for sale!

28 November 2010 | Sydney Harbour, Australia

Welcome to Sydney GHOST

Well it was a brilliantly sunny day as we set off from Pittwater in GHOST, entering the Sydney heads about lunchtime. It was a pretty emotional sail through this iconic harbour which Brad has envisaged sailing into as long as he's dreamt of sailing home to Australia. Soon we were pulling up to the [...]

The (not perfect) Storm

02 June 2010 | One day north of Manihi, Tuamotus
Kat
We were only 1 day's sail north of the Tuamotus and then the storm hit...it came up so quickly we ended up dropping the main (luckily it was already on 3 reefs as it's been pretty much the whole way due to the issue with the rigging) in winds gusting over 35kn which wasn't fun. The wind backed almost 180 degrees very quickly so instead of the usual NE/E trades we had the winds from the south which soon built to gusting over 50 knots so we had no choice but to run with it down wind and head north for a day instead of south. We had only about 2 feet of headsail out because we wanted to look after the rigging and weren't keen to go fast in the opposite direction from where we were headed but we were still averaging 8 knots over the ground! Luckily the sea state was bad but not as bad as it could have been, I think because the storm built quite quickly.

The storm was heading east and we pinched our way west when we could between big waves so I think managed to get out of it more quickly. Good news was that it hit in daytime and had died a bit by night so at least we could see the big waves. It was probably a good lesson for us, the worst weather we've had on the entire trip and Jay's worst storm.

The most annoying part was that there is only one window to enter the Manihi atoll (as you have to wait for slack tide as the currents through the narrow entry passage are crazy and for Manihi it needs to be high tide given the entry depths) so we had to spend a night sailing along at 2 knots waiting for the next day, luckily we all appreciated the calm after the storm and a quiet night was just what we wanted.
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