Decks Awash!

More men with plans

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Mike

The title of this post is, of course, a reference to my previous post, another bearded mumble on the topic of employment and cruising.

First of all, it looks like I have landed a job. This is great news, because it means a much needed cash injection is coming soon.

Ironically, the job is in Hobart, about 300m from where we were berthed in Kings Pier Marina, back in August last year, so…

…we are going to sail back to Hobart.

There, I’ve said it, and I feel better. I have had some conflict about sailing back, as it feels like going um… backwards. I have been sternly telling myself not to be silly. A job was always the aim at this point, and I was always going to have to travel to get to it. Cash will also mean being able to give ERIK a haulout, and kit her up with some gear to make our next cruising venture a bit easier.

Things like self-steering that works in a seaway. Refrigeration that keeps food from spoiling for more than a week. A lighter, tougher dinghy that will double duty as a life raft. A toilet that’s legal outside Tasmania is also on the list, and a chart plotter is also under consideration.

The cruising kitty needs to be topped up, so we can cruise again without having to rely on Centrelink and all the square-peg-into-round hole drama it brings with it.

…and yes, you read that right. We will cruise again. This has been too much fun to do once!

So, the plan goes something like this:

1. Haulout at Tamar Yacht Club as soon as possible. Get some soft wood around the exhaust outlets fixed, new anodes and a paint job.

2. Get the refrigeration leak fixed and the system re-gassed.

3. Get the boat surveyed so we can renew our insurance.

4. Get a berth in Kings Pier Marina sorted out… This one is already underway, as it looks like we can take over Sorcerer’s old berth.

5. Get ourselves out to the head of the river for the last time, and I think we have earned the right to carve our vessel name amongst the others on the sandstone cliffs.

6. Arrange to have the kids picked up… They don’t want to do the non-stop journey south with Lis and I. My dad has kindly agreed to look after them while we sail south.

7. Wait for a weather window and set off. It should take 2 or 3 days to get down to Dunalley. We’ll take the canal through, and pick up the kids from their dear Grandpa on the way.

Then it’s off across Storm Bay and up the Derwent to Hobart for at least the winter. We plan to be back before the end of Match, and I must admit, I’ll be glad to spend winter plugged into shore power!

Categories: Bearded Mutterings | Tags: Cruising, employment | 1 Comment

We aren’t the only ones that run aground around here

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Mike

Early this week, after our weekly shopping trip to Georgetown, we went to the Watch-house Museum in Macquarie St.

There, while there we watched a sobering documentary on convict period infant mortality and a project to recognize the plight of the inmates at the Female Factories, both in Georgetown and Hobart. Imagine our surprise when we saw South Hobart Primary School uniforms on the kids being interviewed, making bonnets for the recognition project. The boys were most excited to recognize their school friends!

They have a fantastic model of the township from its colonial times, and the guide gives a very interesting talk on the towns history. You can read a lot of it here.

Here’s a photo of a house from the model:

…and here’s the same house today, 200 years later:

From there, we went to the Bass & Flinders Museum, and it was awesome!

They have the NORFOLK in there, whole, and fully rigged. A 34ft, 25 tonne gaff sloop!

We enjoyed reading some excerpts from the log of Bass and Flinders, as they explored the Tamar, like this passage:

“After advancing three miles, we approached a low, green
island, lying nearly in mid-channel; and being uncertain which was the deepest side, I took the most direct, which lay to the west. From 8
fathoms, the next cast of the lead was 31/2, and immediately the sloop was
aground.”

See! Other people run aground here! Even famous mariners!

Categories: Our Travels | Tags: Bass, Flinders, Georgetown | Comments Off

The long walk

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Mike

Late last week, after a few days of being weather bound on board, we decided it might be nice to row ashore at the sandstone cliffs in West Arm and walk down to the historic community of Yorktown.

Replica soldiers cottage at Yorktown

I would like the record to reflect that I suggested sailing our dinghy up with the tide. Admittedly we would have been a bit late catching it, but surely the gusty 15kt northerly would keep us moving! A spirited sail, I reasoned. None of my would-be crew agreed.

So we set of to explore the delights of Yorktown…. Just to kill any sense of suspense here, let me let you in on secret: there aren’t any delights in Yorktown.

What it used to look like…

If you happen to be driving through and want to stretch your legs for 15 minutes, by all means stop and have a look. If, like us, you think walking 6km (one way) along a back country road in the hot son with two kids is worth it to see Yorktown, it isn’t.

Having said that, we did have some fun on the walk in. We saw a recently dead mum tiger snake on the road, with a dozen babies flattened nearby. Incited much gory interest in two boys, that did!

We also stopped and had a great chat with some people that lived by the road, and they were very kind to give us some of their surplus tomatoes. They left them by the gate for us to pick on our return walk.

They made a delicious warm bean, tomato and basil salad for dinner!

It was great to finally return to ERIK after the long walk at the end of the day, and yes, I didn’t do much at all the next day!

Categories: Our Travels | Tags: Yorktown | Comments Off

Beaconsfield Mining Museum

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Mike

Last week we caught the 9:20am bus up from Beauty Pt to Beaconsfield, and went to the Beaconsfield Mining Museum, and if you haven’t been, it’s definitely worth a visit.

You walk into the gift/souvenir shop, it’s the entrance, and pay your entry fee. They have an arrangement with Platypus World and Seahorse World in Beauty Point do that you can buy entry to all three at a reduced cost, which worth it.

The gift shop is new and it leads into the new section of the museum. First up is the housing of a collection of marvelous restored old bits of machinery that give you a real feel for the effort is must have taken to settle the area and clear it.

Nearby is a marvelous telephony exhibit. Having been involved in phone systems on and off during my IT career, I really got a kick out of seeing the development from old patch exchange to a switch exchange, through to an automated rotary switched exchange, with built in metering.

From there, you go into an exhibit that gives you a good idea of what day to day life is like for the miners, over a kilometer under your feet.

There’s also a good exhibit of the drama that surrounded the finding and freeing of the trapped miners in the April 2006 rockfall. Of the seventeen people who were in the mine at the time, fourteen escaped immediately following the collapse, one was killed and the remaining two were found alive using a remote-controlled device. These two miners were rescued on 9 May 2006, two weeks after being trapped nearly a kilometre below the surface. They even have a replica of the partially crushed cage, measuring only 1m by 1.5m, where the two miners lay waiting for rescue for two weeks.

The rest of the museum is split into three sections.

There is a wonderful section on what life was like in the area during early settlement and later development, up until around the war period.

Another section is the old museum complex. It’s got a fantastic working paddle wheel rock crusher, a great scale model of the mine workings, and a model of the old iron ore refinery that used to be on Redbill Pt, just to name a few highlights.

I was particularly impressed with how they keep the kids engaged. They issue the kids with an animals list and a pencil, and the kids run around the museum trying to find all the listed animals, hidden in the various exhibits. My boys loved it! At the end, if they return the pencil, they get a little memento of “museum gold” to take home.

All in all, a great days outing, and we nearly missed our 2pm bus back!

Categories: Our Travels | Tags: Beconsfield, museums | Comments Off

Not loving that alarm sound

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Mike

We waited till midday today, the high tide, before raising anchor in West Arm to set off for Georgetown.

We had books to return, groceries to buy, per-ordered cryovacced and frozen meat to pickup from the butcher… You know, things to do!

Less than 10 minutes later, the dreaded water alarm cut in…

I must admit I thought we had seen the back of that problem when we sorted the thermostat issues… But apparently not.

We hurriedly dropped 10m of chain in 4m of water, and killed the engine. The engine temperature gauge wasn’t registering anything, despite earlier attempts to fix it, so no information there. There was little water coming out with the exhaust, and the impeller housing was hot. Expecting a stuffed impeller, Lis whipped the cover off to find… A perfectly okay, new looking impeller!

As it looked like the problem was going to be a bit more tricky to solve, we ran out some more chain, and advised people expecting us in Georgetown that we may not show. We had until 4pm to get out of our spot before we wouldn’t make it over the shallow bit in the falling tide.

Lis started a methodical check of the engine’s water circuit. First off was the forward zinc housing. That revealed a stuffed zinc and a gallery full of calcified crap completely covering the engine temperature sensor (that explains why that wasn’t working!). I spent 15 minutes of chipping it out with a screwdriver and installing a new zinc, while Lis dropped the alternator off to get at the second zinc. That checked out fine, and she re-tensioned the alternator and put the newly cleaned panel with its clean sensors and zinc back in place with a fresh gasket. Then she checked the thermostat housing. Nope, all good there.

Then came the tough one… The panel at the back of the engine. Lis spent a few minutes limbering up and completing a stretching routine to prepare her body for the contortions required to get around the side of the engine in the engine bay…. Okay maybe she didn’t, but she was none too confident about being able to get in there, so we enlisted the help of one of smaller children to assist. Damn handy things, kids, they can get into all sorts of tight places!

With Lis in, Alex all keen and already in there unbolting the required panel, I was relegated to passing tools in on request. The back zinc, which wasn’t been changed in years was less than half gone and the water gallery was fine… So that wasn’t the problem, either.

Hoping that the completely choked first panel was responsible for the blockage, she did everything up. We made sure the engine was good to go and there were no spare tools or such lying about to get caught in the engine, and fired her up.

Exactly 8 minutes later, she went into alarm. It was 3:30pm. Shit.

Time to phone a friend…. Our good mate Kerry Williams is the Cummins rep for southern Tassie and has forgotten more about diesel engines that we’ll ever know….

Lis got him on the phone…explained engine overheating.”It’s the impeller”, he said.

“Nope, checked that, it seemed good but the housing was hot”, we said.

“It’s the impeller, check that it’s not slipping on the keyway”, he said.

So we checked, and knock me down with a feather, the metallic bush on the impeller freely spun inside the rubber impeller wheel. The little bastard!

New impeller in, we gave it a start, and shazaam! It worked… No alarm anymore, and hey it’s 3:55pm!

We quickly raised anchor and set off, and guess what? The engine temperature gauge is now working again. Yay!

Here’s a photo of the offending part:

Categories: about ERIK, Maintenence | Tags: Engine, impeller, overheating | 3 Comments

Low Head Maritime Museum

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Mike

Yesterday we set sail to Pilot Bay, Low Head. We were off to visit the Maritime Museum there, at the old Pilot Station, and walk to the lighthouse.

Our trip was uneventful, but making the entrance at near low tide was a bit nerve wracking, only 2 meters with lots of nasty rocks around. We came straight in from last green marker off North West Bank from the south. I have been told that it might be better to continue down river until the red marker immediately west of the entrance behind the sea wall is to starboard, and then turn across the current and head in, giving the red marker a wide berth because of shallow rocks at its base.

My advice? Arrive there at half or three-quarter tide, then there’s plenty of water for the approach. I wouldn’t want to try it if a strong NW has been blowing for a while either. The entrance is narrow and being slapped up the side by wind against tide, on a falling tide would be ask for trouble.

We tied up on an empty floating pontoon, apparently reserved for a tour boat that hasn’t been there in years. As you can see, we tied up on the south side. The north side has a submerged concrete block or rock under it, reducing the depth there to 1.5m at low tide… We had 2.0m on the south side.

We meandered over to the old boat shed, positioned near the top of an old concrete ramp leading into the water. They used to launch pilot boats from it, using an man powered capstan salvaged from a wreck to haul the back out.

In the boat shed we had a good long chat with a couple of volunteers for the museum, who told us all about the boats they had in the shed, and the chequered history of the museum and it’s buildings. Apparently the there where great plans for the site, and $3M in government funding, that didn’t amount to much at all.

We got introduced to the guy that runs the museum, and he and Lis got seriously stuck into museum talk. Lis has been heavily involved with the Hobart Maritime Museum, and the two had plenty to talk about.

I got left alone in their photo archives while the kids amused themselves with the fog horn in other room. Found heaps of amazing photos, like this aerial shot of the construction of Batman Bridge:

There are many amazing and interesting stories there, but on that captured my imagination was the tale of the bronze mast spider from the wreck of the EDEN HOLME.

You can read all about the wreck at their website here.

The mast spider is a hoop that holds belaying pins fitted low on the mast for various halyards. You can see in place in the photo below:

The tale of the mast spider goes something like this… After the EDEN broke up on Hebe Reef, her main mast washed up on shore. A man and his 10 year old son we’re walking the beach that day, and the main saw the good straight timber in the mast and took it back to saw it up as roof beams for their homestead. The mast spider was removed and used as reinforcement in the adjacent concrete water tank.

After many years passed, the son returned to the property with his daughter. They saw the tank had fallen into disrepair and the mast spider was exposed in the broken concrete. He took it back to his farm. It stayed there for many years, leaning against the fence.

Many more years passed and the daughter grew up, got married and lived on a farm on the mainland. Years after her fathers death, she travelled back to the old farm, long since with different owners. She told the old farmer on the property the tale, and he took her to the fence, and there was the mast spider, still leaning there.

The old farmer gave her the spider and she took with her back to her farm. When her brother became ill, they agreed to donate the spider to the Low Head Museum on his death, in memory of their Dad and Grandfather.

…and here it is, more than 100 years later:

We then walked up to the Low Head lighthouse. A brisk NW’ly was blowing, and the air was salty with the smell of the sea. The old light house keepers cottage has a commanding view over the tempestuous Bass Strait.

We got to the lighthouse and admired the enormous fog horn. It’s apparently Tasmania’s only foghorn. It’s a Type G diaphone that was installed in 1929 at Low Head Lighthouse. The original device consisted of two Gardner kerosene engines driving two air compressors, supplying air to two bloody great riveted iron compressed air receivers (each with a capacity of 7.5 cubic metres) to an operating pressure of 240 kPa. An air-operated timing mechanism controlled the valves which produced the sound, which could be heard at distances of up to 20NM!

The foghorn was electrified in 1940, along with the rest of the equipment at the lightstation. At that time, one of the kerosene engines was removed and replaced with a 20HP electric motor.

I was told that the Low Head unit is one of the largest diaphones ever constructed… But the foghorn was decommissioned in 1973 because of advances in marine navigational equipment. Unsurprisingly, The device fell into disrepair over the next few decades.

Early in 2000, the crowd with the $3M in funding mentioned earlier, in conjunction with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service (the present owners of the equipment) began a project to restore the foghorn. The device became operational again in 2001.

You can read more about the restoration here.

Did you know that the foghorn at Low Head Lighthouse is one of only two functioning Type G diaphones in the world? (the other one is in Birmingham, UK).

UPDATE: Someone sent me this link to a video of the Low Head foghorn going off…

Categories: Our Travels | Tags: Low Head, museums | 4 Comments

The man with the plan

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Mike

The man with the plan was always named Dan, and he lived in a tan van. Those of you who watched Sesame Street know this. However, there isn’t a man with a plan in my life at the moment.

Today was our 17th wedding anniversary, and the family took advantage of the extra day in Launceston to walk up to the Gorge and back.

Lis and I also took the walk to reflect on things, and I thought some of what we discussed might be of interest.

We both talked about how much we like our “Tamar gypsy” lifestyle. We wander up to Launceston when required, but mostly meander about down at West Arm, with weekly shopping trips over to Georgetown.

The kids are enjoying the camp cooking on the beach, the swimming off the boat on hot days, and (I think) the time they get to spend with their parents.

Homeschooling is finally gathering steam, and the kids are doing well. We have registered with the homeschooling people called THEAC, and adopted a classical curriculum to teach the boys. We drew up a timetable and have allowances for travel days and times when we need to concentrate on what they are having the most trouble with… There’s quite a lot of work Lis has put into it, so I’ll go into it in a bit more detail in another blog post.

The financial situation isn’t quite as rosy. We need cash to do some things before we head over Bass Strait, and while the weather window to do that generally lasts until April, the job front hasn’t been terribly forthcoming either.

For those that are considering giving it a go, living a mobile lifestyle on Centrelink unemployment benefits doesn’t work. The fundamental problem is that you have rules you must comply with to continue being eligible for a payment, one of which is face-to-face meetings, once a month, with your employment agency. Your agency is local to your registered address and Centrelink don’t like you changing agencies too often. They take a very dim view of changing addresses, particularly if it’s to a place that has less employment than the one you left. If you miss any appointments, or reschedule your appointments too often, it also counts against you.

Of course, schedules and cruising don’t mix, and most coastal towns have appalling unemployment, and the job agencies are in the larger population centers, meaning you need a car… You get the idea.

There’s a job opportunity that may come to pass in Hobart. It’s a good job, albeit maybe only part-time at first. Going back to Hobart sorta feels like going backwards, and I’m sorta having trouble with seeing my current lifestyle come to an end, but it’s a job.

Lis is also not overly keen to go back to an inner city lifestyle, but both of us recognize the need for an income.

There’s also opportunities in Aukland, NZ, in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne. All of these are 6 to 12 month contracts, and they all have said positive things about employing me, but have yet to commit to doing so.

We have a haul out due on ERIK, and we need to replace BONNIE with something we can use as a life raft. We also need to replace our toilet before we go over to the mainland, our current unit won’t be legal. The credit card has copped a bit of use, what with our regulator dramas, the thermostat replacement, and BONNIE’s repair. The refrigeration unit needs some work now too… These are all problems solved with money, but it’s money we don’t have at the moment.

So we may end up coming back down to Hobart. We may go and spend some time in NZ or on the mainland…

Who knows what the future will bring, but the next few months will be interesting times.

For those wanting a trip down memory lane, check this out:

Categories: About Us, Bearded Mutterings | Tags: Cruising, employment, homeschooling, Plans | Comments Off

Repairing the dinghy

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Mike

As regular readers will know, BONNIE, our dinghy, was horribly damaged during our grounding up at Georgetown recently.

Sam Hughes is the bosun at the Tamar Yacht Club, upon hearing about our membership with the CYCT, very kindly offered us the use of their shed. Yesterday, at high tide, I rowed BONNIE around with Alex and a bunch of tools.

The first job was to get the icky sticky Sikaflex 291 off. Turns out that was pretty easy with a heat gun… At least until I had to get it out of the split itself. That took a while!

The next job was sand back the paint inside and out. Without a belt sander handy, I used a disc fitting with 60 grit paper on our big drill, and that worked a treat.

Then I drilled holes either side of the split, and used zip ties to pull the plywood back together.

Today, after a trip to Tamar Marine and $100 later (ouch!), I cut the some 150mm tape down the middle (it’s cheaper to buy wide tape and cut it down than use twice as much narrow tape) and used it to tape the split together.

Now I have to wait until the epoxy cures and take the zip ties out…

…and I came back after lunch when the epoxy was “leather hard” and trimmed off the hairy bits and saggy runs with a sharp knife. I removed the zip ties, then ran over the lot with some sandpaper to score up the surface.

Then I applied two overlapping half tape widths across the damaged area. Working quickly (the pot was getting warm with the chemical reaction as the epoxy went off) I then put a full width layer over the lot.

Here is the outside all glassed up:

I’ll be tomorrow to sand and fair it off prior to painting, and do the interior glass work….

…back again this morning and started sanding. Disappointingly, there were a few air bubbles that needed to be ground out, and the tape didn’t set ripple free either. I think three layers laid up wet is probably the limit.

So I got stuck into sanding and it all cleaned up okay. I mixed up some fairing filler and faired off the ripples and depressions. I also applied some to the planking chine so I can it up to be a fair line with the rest of the plank. I had to round it off quite a bit to make a fair curve for the fiberglass to go over.

I got underneath and put the last bit of fairing mix into the crack in an effort to make (after sanding) a fair curve for the glass that needs to inside. I’m hoping to avoid the depressions and further fairing.

Here she is with the bog applied:

Now I need for the stuff to set so I can come back this afternoon and sand…

…and I’m back. The fairing compound went off nicely. It’s a ultralight WEST SYSTEM product. You seriously have to wear lung protection when using it, it billows up at the faintest disturbance.

Sanding down the outside reveled a persistent if slight hollow in a couple of locations, but I’ll be buggered if i’n repeating the fairing another few times and long-boarding it off.

I cut the tape to size for the interior, using a half-width across the split covered by a full width. I mixed up another 100g of epoxy and wet it all out in-situ.

I have just cleaned up and I’m off for a shower to get all this bloody itchy fiberglass dust off me, then it’s home to cook dinner.

Back again this morning, day 4. Sanded off the interior and I’m pretty happy with the finish. Not mirror smooth by any stretch, but good enough for the interior of a tender.

I applied some silver primer to the interior and exterior.

This stuff is WATTYL SeaPro TC90, and it looks like a liquid plastic. It seems to me like painting the hull in liquid duct tape! It dries quickly (its dried to the touch in the time its taken me to type this) and is excellent for sealing wood; we use it on the underwater parts of ERIK.

Now it’s time for a thinned top coat, as I don’t have any undercoat…

…and here she is, looking a lot better with a thin white on. I’ve always liked a girl with a thin white on!

I’ll wait now for this to dry, then put another coat on. Hopefully that’ll dry enough that I can get in the water and get her (and tools) back to ERIK to make the 5pm tide tonight…

…Well, as you can see, we got her in ok, but we had visitors bring beer, so that was that for catching the tide.

The paint didn’t really dry very well. She’ll need a few more coats, which I’ll apply on a Barack somewhere… Later.

Anyway, I’ll take a beer over a hurried departure any day, so we decided to spend one more night here in the marina and go for walk up in the Gorge tomorrow. Then we’ll catch the 6pm tide and depart for the a northern Tamar.

Categories: about ERIK, Maintenence | Tags: Bonnie, fiberglass, plywood, repair | 5 Comments

Apparently you aren’t trying hard enough if you don’t run aground

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Mike

The morning started innocently enough. We awoke early to an absolutely fantastic sunrise:

We started schoolwork with the boys, but had guests motor over and give us an “Ahoy!”. It was Dick and Brenda from the motorboat ANNIE, a 34ft Diesel Duck design. Dick and Brenda are “mudskippers”; that is, they prefer to cruise coastal, in close. Their idea of a good thing is to motor up the coast about 1nm offshore at most. They say they like to see the countryside.

After a few cups of tea in the cockpit, discussing everything from Eskine Childers to the old iron mine that used to be on Redbill Pt. in West Arm, we felt the boat swing a little with the change to the ebb tide. A few more cups of tea later and the tide was seriously running out. Time to go to Georgetown and pick up the twenty-odd library books on hold for us there, before we missed the tide altogether.

Georgetown has four jetties. There’s the marina on the southern side of the bay, the yacht club facility on the northern side closest to Low Head, and further in, the two public jetties, close together.

There’s plenty of water alongside the public jetties, but apparently not a lot nearby…

My approach to the public jetty was largely dictated from our previous docking there… we had a strong southerly then and the outgoing tide; we tied up on the southwest facing jetty, bow into the wind. It worked well and made getting off easy, but the approach had been a bastard. We had to come in at right angles to the jetty, being blown sideways toward the shore only a few boat lengths away, and back and fill using the prop wash to turn us and tie up before the current swept us away. It was a tough manoeuvre and the bob stay rode up on the low jetty during the turn.

This time, I thought, I’d could approach at shallower angle with the northerly keeping me off the shore. I slowed our speed on approach, and noted the the outbound current was killing our speed a bit faster than usual, so I had to keep engaging and disengaging forward gear at idle to keep us going. Keeping an eye on our approach angle, skewing with the current, and having to drop my head and hand down to the gearbox controls at my feet meant I didn’t keep a eye on the depth sounder. Lis said “Mike, Look! The ground!” and the sounder went into alarm at 2 meters (we draw 1.5). I put the helm hard over for deeper water, but could feel her dragging, slowing down. A burst of throttle in forward didn’t help. Going hard in reverse didn’t clear us. Locked the helm over and leaving the engine revving hard in forward, we rushed to the starboard side and used our weight to heel us over… Did she move a little? Getting the boys on the side deck too, Lis and I coordinated our swing out, standing outboard of the shrouds. She heeled towards us and turned maybe a bit in the current, but then… nothing.

Time to do our “emergency launch” of the dinghy and get the second anchor out into deeper water to pull us off.

The “emergency launch” of the dinghy is something we’d practiced a few times for exactly this sort of occasion. Usually, we use the main boom and main sheet as a sort of boom crane to lower our expoxy/plywood 9’6″ Nutshell Pram into the water. It takes about 5 to 10 minutes. Instead, we lift her up inverted, Lis on the bow and me on the stern. On the count of three, we heave and flip her over the side and into the water with a splash. It takes about 30 seconds.

When we tossed her in this time, imagine our horror as a bloody horrible great split opened up on a planking seam, with one of her plywood planks torn across the breadth down through the fibreglass reinforcement too. I could clearly see daylight through the crack! With the falling tide, there was no time to dwell on this. I volunteered Lachie as bailer, got him into a life jacket and we got into the dinghy to row around to the bow to take the 35kg CQR anchor we use as a kedge, as it has rope rode.

Little aside here; If you have never tried to row an all chain rode anchor out to set in some distance from the mother ship, don’t bother. We have 3/8″ chain on our main anchor, and I can’t row more than 15ft away from the bow before the weight of chain leading back to the boat has me dead in the water. The only anchor you can take any distance away from your vessel is the one attached to floating rope rode.

So, off I rowed at a furious pace, Lachie bailing bucketful after bucketful out of the dinghy. To his credit, he was keeping up with the inflow, but we were ankle deep. 50m off in deeper water, I let the anchor go, and Lis immediately started hauling it in on the anchor whinch to set it and pull us off. I got back to the boat and rushed to the bow to help, but it was no use. By now we were starting to feel a bit bow down. The stern was hard aground and the water was running out from underneath us with the tide. The anchor rode was bar tight, and we weren’t going anywhere.

Lis noticed we were still heeled over to starboard, toward the deeper water. The heeling was getting more pronounced as the tide ran out. Quickly, I got a 100m reel of 10mm line out and made it fast to the main halyard while Lis (with Lachie on bailing duty again) rowed the dinghy around to the shore side (port) and took the reel ashore to a tree. Once she got the slack out and made it fast, I got the sheet onto the winch and started cranking on it to heel us over towards shore.

The danger we were in was this: When the water ran out, ERIK would heel over and careen on her bilges. If she heeled towards deep water, she would effectively be heeling over “downhill” and the final angle of rest would be much higher than it would be on flat ground. It might be so high that she would flood down hatch and vent before she refloated on the incoming tide… In which case she float free at all. That would be bad.

With the main halyard distantly tied to a tree pulling us over “uphill”, Lis came back for a mini-conference on what else, if anything, we could do. I decided to drag the uphill side of the bottom with a weight to see if there were any rocks we’d need to clear out before she settled over onto them. Lis went below and stoppered our portside vents and hatches. There was nothing more to do except wait for the tide, and by my estimate we had nearly four hours.

Lis and Lachie went ashore to the library. That left me and Alex aboard explaining to every passer-by how we’d ended up in this situation. After the first few times Alex got into the spirit of it, and I was happy to leave him to it. The local Georgetownians don’t get a lot of waterfront entertainment, I gather. We started collected quite a crowd ashore, with more arriving in one’s and two’s by car all the time. Running aground outside the pub probably had a lot to do with it… We even got a tour bus! I was less amused with the yobbo’s coming around in their speedboats to have a look at us, their wakes bounced us on the sand at one point, and they seemed to think my frantic arm waving was part of the show.

With all ashore things done, Lis came back and retrieved the masthead line, now we were resting on our side, we didn’t need it anymore. We loaded the dinghy onboard. Up close the split in her side was quite depressing. Not giving myself time to dwell on it, I left her do dry in the sun while I mentally went through how to repair her. We waited. And waited. The water level on various rocks ashore took on new meaning. Much looking at the time and tide tables. More waiting.

Eventually, the water returned. We slowly came upright, the bow slowly lifted. The kedge anchor rode was still bar tight, so as we lifted we kept a mark on shore, waiting for the bow to swing to the rode, free of the sand. When she did, we waited some more until the stern started dragging clear. Now was the time to move, we didn’t want to stay here long, bumping against the bottom. Gunning the engine we moved forward smartly,we were free!

Pulling the kedge anchor in is always a trial. Unlike chain, rope rode doesn’t flake itself into a nice tangle-free pile in the anchor locker. With Lis hauling in on the powered winch, I tailed the line and flaked it along the length of the side deck. We pulled up short on the rode and the bow dipped hard. The kedge was seriously stuck! We motored forward onto it, and the boat would push against the rode for a bit before spinning around it. Lis let out some slack and we drifted on the current, then, with the run up, we surged forward and tried to jerk the anchor out. It didn’t budge. Knowing in what direction it was set, we went around behind it, careful to keep the floating rode from fouling the propeller( wouldn’t that put the icing on the cake!). We swung around, reversed some slack into the rode, then gunned her forward again. This time we used the anchor winch as well, Lis taking in the slack as fast as she could. Again the bow dipped hard, but this time she bounced up with a jerk. Yay! The anchor was out!

I helmed as we motored back to West Arm, Lis down below flaking the rode back into its special part of the anchor locker. I spotted a boat ahead, making for the gap between the north end of Shag Rock and the shore. It would be a great little short cut to know, I thought, as I watched the yacht go through. The charts says there’s plenty of water in the narrow gap…. But no. Not today… Enough excitement had been had today. Later that evening we got the Sikaflex out and gunged up the split in the dinghies side. It’s ugly but it’s watertight, for the time being. I’m going to have to get to a 240v power outlet to do a proper stick-and-glue fix… But that’ll be a another blog post.

The split before repair.

The split after liberal application of black icky sticky SikaFlex 291. Going to love sanding that crap out…

Categories: Our Travels | Tags: anchor, Georgetwon, Running aground | 3 Comments

Cruisers and Deliveries

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Mike

Do cruisers make good boat deliverers?

How I came by my answer to that question started yesterday, when we came down the river from the Launceston Wooden Boat Rally and picked up a mooring at Gravelly Beach.

We had met an old school friend at the Rally, and she had kindly invited us to her home for dinner Monday night. After an excellent evening in fine company (with a reasonable approximation of WW3 as fought with nerf guns provided by the kids) they very kindly brought us back to the boat and we rowed out on the still water with starlight to guide us.

The plan was to go shopping at Exeter on Tuesday morning so I could be available to picked up for this delivery trip, while Lis and family took ERIK down to West Arm until my return.

This delivery trip has been on the cards for a while. The boat is a friend of a friend’s. He’s had it for a while but it’s been based in Kettering while he lives in Launceston. Understandably he’d like to avoid transversing the State to spend a day on the boat, so he organized getting the boat up with some cruising friends as crew.

The first trip was marred by strong weather coming in sooner than forecast and an engine problem in Wineglass Bay, so the boat went to mooring in Triabunna. The second trip also had bad weather and some green crew in more ways than one, and they were turned back to Triabunna again.

With work schedules pressing, the owner was getting very keen to get the boat up into the Tamar. This trip with my involvement represented the last opportunity before various commitments kept opportunities away until May, and the prospect of a winter delivery wasn’t very exciting at all.

So the plan called for getting a life-raft from Devonport, getting food for three for the trip, picking me up and going down to Triabunna. There we leave at midnight on Tuesday, make the 100nm to Banks Strait in 24hrs, catch the tide through at midnight on Wednesday, make the next 100nm along the north coast in 24hrs to make the midnight tide on Thursday into the Tamar.

The weather looked okay on the forecast, in that if it all went to plan and we were at the right spots at the right time, the forecasted weather at this locations should be favorable.

But we didn’t go.

Why not? Well, a strong northerly had been blowing for a while on the east coast, and there was a 3 meter swell that would abate but not subside completely by the time we would be there. That combined with the forecast southerly change would mean pretty sloppy conditions in the shallow Mercury Passage area, and some bouncy going from Wineglass Bay northwards as the southerly swung east.

The weather just before the planned trip and immediately after was not favorable, with various wind models forecasting 20 to 30kts, depending on which one you looked at. The forecasts for the NE tip were pretty diverse but it seemed only okay plus or minus 3 hours of our ETA there.

With a 3 to 6 hour window at Banks Strait, the importance of making the tide there, limited shelter options to anchor in, and a pretty crappy forecast likely to make things unpleasant if we were 12hrs later aiming for the next tide, the trip had more than few concerns for me. Plan B options were looking pretty limited if anything went wrong….

Like the forecast, or the boat, both of which had thrown a spanner in the plans before.

So we didn’t do it. Was the right decision? I don’t know… I’m going to monitor the weather off Eddystone Pt. and Swan Island to find out, but it got me thinking about cruisers and deliveries.

Cruisers usually know their boats intimately. They travel from place to place without any schedule beyond that which the weather decides. Above all, cruising is a lifestyle choice, so it has to be self rewarding, otherwise you wouldn’t do it.

It struck me that these three attributes of cruising don’t make for a good delivery skipper/crew. You want someone who doesn’t care that much about the boat beyond making sure it’ll survive the trip, someone who doesn’t care about how uncomfortable life is between A and B, so long as its not life threatening. You want someone who can make a schedule.

I know some cruisers that do deliveries to supplement their cruising income and I realized that all of these people I know have a quite a bit of ocean racing experience. It struck me how much in common ocean racing has with a delivery trip…

Do you believe in karma? I don’t, but while walking back with the shopping from Exeter I fell and strained the muscles in my lower back. Lis had to row us back to the boat and I spent the rest of the day resting, unable to do much physical activity at all…

Still, it gave me time to reflect on what might have been, and why not.

Categories: Bearded Mutterings | Tags: Delivery trips, other peoples boats, schedules | 1 Comment

More men with plans

We aren’t the only ones that run aground around here

The long walk

Beaconsfield Mining Museum

Not loving that alarm sound

Low Head Maritime Museum

The man with the plan

Repairing the dinghy

Apparently you aren’t trying hard enough if you don’t run aground

Cruisers and Deliveries

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