7 Feb to 15 Feb

Brisbane

Sat. Saturday was a social night with Sundowners on board with two of our neighbours; Steve living on a converted fishing boat and Richie who is the Bosun of the Royal Queensland yacht Squadron and lives on his yacht. Drinking and eating nibbles we watched the world go by, and generally sorted the world out.

Sun. Paul went racing on B52. This is a full on 41 foot monohull race boat, now in charter. She had originally sailed in the Sydney to Hobart, and had pitchpoled (that is the bow dives into the water and the stern goes over the top – and end to end flip). Apparently she was capsized for 4 minutes and, unsurprisingly was an insurance write off. She was then repaired (!) and now sails out of our Marina. The skipper is even looking to do more ocean racing. This race was around the Bay on a surprisingly simple loop course. Still the racing, part of a series hosted by Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron but including all the local clubs, was very competitive. The wind conditions changed thorough the day, the forecast 10 knots proving true for a few moments as the wind increased from 10 to 20 knots. We had a large crew of 7, but were still very busy at times with sail changes and the Genneker/Asymmetrical Spinnaker. We had a high handicap so despite being 4th over line finished 7 out of 8 in Div 1.

Tues. We went to Brisbane to talk to an employment agency about jobs. It is always good to meet face to face, so they can see what I look like and I can ‘sell’ myself. That said, we are only now coming to grips with the Queensland jobs market. On the Defence side, a prime target, we continually hit the issue of security clearance. One needs to be an Australian citizen to get a clearance! We are using our NZ contacts to try to work around that. Otherwise, the state is very, very conservative. I am used to the UK and NZ where the competencies count, and these are eminently transferrable. However, here it is very much having done that (exact) job before; failing that a very similar job. This is particularly true for government jobs. No wonder inefficiencies continue; perhaps the politicians’ calls for overhaul are justified, but then they are politicians’ calls so probably not!
We continued the day with a look around Brisbane. We managed to get up the clocktower at City Hall. This is a free trip, but limited ticket numbers are available. This was our 4th attempt, and we got on this time. When the City Hall was built (1920 to 1930), it was the tallest building in Brisbane. The 1970’s saw planning restrictions eased and now the centre of Brisbane has several high rise buildings dwarfing the City Hall. The tour is short, only 15 minutes, but the view from the clocktower is interesting. The clock mechanism was decidedly advanced in 1930; synchronized electric clocks. Still, a small electric motor, stepping every 30 seconds is not quite the same as big clockwork.
We then went through the botanic gardens to the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Art Museum. The gardens are primarily recreational now (originally they were used for research; to determine which crops best grew in this strange land etc). Still they are a great green space right in the heart of the city. The Art Museum was completely taken over with, an exhibition on ‘Performance’. It was all very modern being completely audio-visual and not really our cup of tea. Still it was free, we had seen it, ticked it off, and won’t bother again!
Next was a stroll over the river on the Goodwill Bridge, a pedestrian and cyclist bridge opened in 2001. 100m or so long, it provides a good shortcut from the North side of the river to the South side. It also has nice seating areas along its length, providing great views up and down the river. Interestingly, it is the bridge close by downstream (the Captain Cook Bridge) at a height of just over 12m that stops yachts going further up the river!
And on the South shore we found the Maritime Museum. And what a treasure! The entry was A$14 each; we bantered at the entrance! The Museum had outside and interior exhibits. The best outside was the old River Class Frigate, HMAS Diamantina. She was built in 1945 and served as an Anti-Submarine Frigate for only one year. In that time she saw action at Bouganville and took the Japanese surrender at Nauru and Ocean Island, so quite distinguished. She then served as an Oceanographic Research Vessel from 1959 to 1980. And visitors are free to roam around most of the ship in dry dock; great! There was also Jessica Watson’s yacht. She circumnavigated non-stop at the age of 16. On her first attempt she hit a bulk carrier off the Queensland coast, and on her successful attempt was knocked down (i.e. wind and waves force the mast right down to the water) numerous times. We suspect that is why the boat is in the museum (!). Still, it gives a good idea of what a small sailing yacht is like. Having said that, they also had a smaller yacht, a self-built aluminium boat just over 2 metres long. Apparently the skipper sailed it from the Pacific Islands to Australia – mad! And the rest of the museum had some great exhibits; it was well worth a visit.

Wed. Paul went racing on B52 again. This was part of the Wednesday afternoon series, and so had a simple short course. The start was a Mark Foy, that is handicapped with the slowest starting first, aiming for all boats to arrive at the finish line together. This was just as well as there must have been over 30 boats racing. As one of the fastest we started near the back, giving away some 40 minutes on the slowest. The racing was again very competitive and great to be trimming a race boat to get the extra fraction of a knot speed. The last leg in particular was exciting with boats within a few feet of each other powering along across the wind at up to 9 knots, maneuvering for advantage and to overtake the slower boats. Paul was glad he was on someone else’s boat!

Sat. Saturday was Valentine’s Day and so the need to be romantic (!). After exchanging cards (carefully bought so we did not see each other’s early!) we went off to Capalba cinema to watch ‘The Imitation Game’. The cinema was getting a little tired, probably some 20 years old. Still, it was pretty clean with standard, reclined cinema seat and airconditioning. An advantage of the afternoon performance was that there were only a couple of dozen people watching so minimal distractions and interruptions. The film itself was pretty good; the story of Alan Turing and his team breaking the Enigma Code.

Sun. Paul went out racing again, this time on a smaller boat with the Wynnum Manly Sailing Club. Cyrene was a 30 foot steel sloop skippered and owned by Des. Des explained that we had a large handicap so started near the front of the fleet and tended to be overtaken a lot. My response was that we would try to change that! And we did! The course was a fairly simple one of some 7 to 8 miles essentially around Green Island. The wind started with a promising 10-12 knots allowing us to power Cyrene along nicely. It then dropped so the last broad reach in was a bit more of a tip toe sail. Nevertheless we overtook a few boats, held off a few more and crossed the line in 7th or 8th place, out of a fleet of 19 boats. Suffice to say there was some talk in the bar afterwards.

The photo. Helen looking at the yacht Happy 2. We were not sure what the owner was drinking/smoking at the time … we would not be happy to sail in her.