Overnight Sail to Pitwater
December 28th & 29th 2007.
Andrew phoned around 10am. Would I be interested in sailing with him on Akvavit (S80) up to Pitwater leaving tomorrow? I got the distinct feeling that Andrew was very keen to get away for a couple of days. “Sure” I said. I suggested however that we leave on that afternoon. “Let’s go”.
As Akvavit is a lean, mean racing machine; Andrew does not keep anything unnecessary on the boat. We had to load on all the camping equipment, large battery, extra fuel, booze, food and so on. This is in stark contrast to Vogelsang. I often say that there is more food on-board Vogelsang than there is in my kitchen. I also try and keep a couple of bottles of some form of spiritual sustenance on-board as well.
It was not until around 3pm that we cast off the mooring. We motored to camp cove and put up the sails and headed out the heads around 4pm. The sail up the coast, on the beat into the north-easterly was very pleasant. A good breeze was blowing. Andrew and I amused ourselves arguing about which beach was which as we sailed past the northern beaches on our way to Palm Beach.
The transom hung rudder on Akvavit (S80). I like a transom hung rudder.
After having to make repairs to the rudder and skeg on Vogelsang twice in three years,
the simplicity of transom hung rudders humours me.
It was twilight when we approached Barrenjoey Head. Coming out of Broken Bay and turning South towards us was a fleet of yachts. They passed us with their spinnakers flying; crews all decked out in their off-shore gear. Andrew speculated that it was an overnight race. Later, I googled and found out that it was a 50 nautical mile overnight race out of the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club. This was the first race in the Pitwater to Coffs Harbour race series.
As we turned south into Pitwater, Andrew went below and messed about with the battery. As dusk came the wind quickly died. We slowly sailed into Coasters Retreat (the Basin). By crickey, I’ve never seen a more crowded anchorage. We picked up a courtesy mooring, cracked the top of a couple of bears and got stuck into some roast chook.
In the morning Andrew and I reported to each other how much we each had snored overnight. We compared each others snoring style; pitch, rhythm, tempo.
We vegged out for the morning. Had a swim and went ashore to admire the high density tent city in the camping area. Boats were constantly coming to and going from the shore. Kids played in the water. People were carrying bags of ice back from the store.
Not long after we got back to the boat a motor cruiser approached us. The mooring we had picked up is a club mooring belonging to a fishing cooperative (?), so we moved off the mooring and quickly found another public mooring to tie up to.
Lunch and a few glasses of wine and before we set off. The wind is quite fresh this afternoon. Andrew and I consider whether to put up the number two or three headsail. We put up the number two. As we head over towards the Eastern side of Pitwater, behind Palm Beach, Andrew decided he had better change over to the number three head sail.
Good idea. The wind was gusting up quite strong. We got onto a beautiful reach and the boat was constantly sailing at over seven knots. Later on the wind dropped down and we dropped down to around five to six knots. Another beautiful sail. We got back to Greenwich before dusk.
Andrew keeps a clean cockpit. Yours truly at the helm (caressing the “Battlestick”).
Suffice it to say, we were hooning on the reach.
Short video of sailing back from Pitwater. (2MB wmv)
