March | 2017 | Phil Yeomans

2000 here, 2000 there

March 28, 2017 Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I headed south again, down through the Snowy Mountains and out to the coast to Wallagoot Lake. This road is quicker than going via the coast road. It’s all pretty good road until you have to come down Browns Mountain with all of its hairpin bends and slow corners.

Wallagoot Lake Boat Club is situated in a National Park and as such there’s no power. Dinner on Saturday night at the club is under candle light and torches, but a typical country club where everyone jumps in and helps including myself on the end of a tea towel drying up! It was good to see 4 of the Jindabyne guys come down from the mountain too, having been there only two weeks earlier.

Out on the water I learnt something new with their local weather conditions. When a sea breeze is forecast, wait as in hurry up and wait. I tried to get some racing in on the last of the overnight land breeze, nope, too hard. Once the Nor Easter kicked in it was great, settling in at a nice 10-12knots and reasonably steady. The locals here have GPS marked courses for the typical conditions, so setting courses was easy. NorEast course please. We had the usual mixed fleet from Sabres and Lasers with NS14s being the larger, through a mix of trailer yachts. Unfortunately the Multi’s were non-existent this time around with only Tim bringing his Hobie17 down from Jindabyne.

The host club had arranged for me to stay with one of their members for the couple of nights at Pambula Beach just south of Merimbula and this was greatly appreciated, especially waking up in the morning and looking out over the river mouth and towards the open ocean. One thing that you have to look out for there is the locals standing in the middle of the road seemingly without a care in the world or of a car coming towards them. They just take over the road and the verges and slowly hop out of the way as you come down the road.

2017-03-11 07.29.26-1

The next trip was up to Queensland, going in the other direction for a change. This time I made sure that I saw a few out of the way DeckHardware customers. It’s always good to catch up with these and they always take the time to make sure that they are fully up to date with all of our product range, it’s nothing to spend an hour or more with them. I thank them for their time, showing the new products as well as many of the others available.

For the first time in my driving life I had to drive through a section of a flooded highway. Northern NSW had coped the states maximum rainfall for the previous couple of days and the section at New Italy just south of Woodburn was in trouble. We all take it for granted that we’ll get somewhere at a certain time, no problems. At my second attempt, I followed a four wheel drive and got through the knee deep water over the road. Those heading south weren’t so lucky, there would have been 30-40 cars stuck in the deep water. When the authorities say don’t drive through flooded roads, don’t. Larger vehicles like the van and four wheel drives had no issues, but some of those stuck heading south, just shouldn’t have tried. On the return south there was little sign of what had happened days before.

I dropped into the Boat Show at Coomera on Saturday. On Sunday, I spent some time at a couple of the local sailing clubs, seeing how they do things and there is always someone there that I know!

I usually stay with my Aunt and Uncle on the Goldie and Geoff especially likes it when I come as the Sunday night takeaway variety increases, I always have a chuckle with this one. Monday morning however I woke up feeling quite ill, it wasn’t the food as the other two were fine. The pain didn’t decrease and after talking with Robyn and seeing a local GP, I headed south having only seen a few on Monday morning. Hopefully my next trip will be less eventful.

AP up

Here it comes!

At the end of the day

Some of the mixed fleet at Wallagoot at Wallagoot

Filed under Assorted, Boat Show, Inter State Trips, Race Official, Yacht Race

Out on the water

March 10, 2017 Leave a comment

It’s been a couple of full on weeks. A fortnight ago I was in Jindabyne running the annual Snowy Mountains regatta on a freshwater man made dam built for the Snowy Mountains Scheme after World War 2. The dam is huge with more than enough area to run a decent size course. There is only one obstacle however when laying marks, the flooded original township below! Luckily there’s an area that’s marked as a no go zone for anchoring.

Saturdays racing was marred by the distinct lack of wind, something that does happen from time to time at any event.

After waiting ashore for most of the day, the start team went out and had a look when there was the makings of something on the lake. I came up with the idea of a short fun race. Amazingly it was a course that they hadn’t thought of in the past in Jindabyne. An all-in start, out around both islands and the ‘no go markers’ and back to the start /finish line. Easy eh? Except that you could go either way, clockwise or anti. Certainly made a few think, course length was the same either way, so which option? Most went anti, however it was the ones who went clockwise who made the most of the breeze. Everyone finished quite tight and all enjoyed the change.

Sunday was a little different, we had wind! So two quick races were held and what was to be a longer third was shortened back to the same as the others as the wind dropped. So we had results, everyone had a good time and once again the country hospitality shone, not to mention the benefits of sailing in freshwater.

Last weekend was the annual Middle Harbour Yacht Club’s Sydney Harbour Regatta over two days. Usually I run the Adams10s and another One Design class, this time however we hosted the Sydney38 Championships with three overseas crews and several more from both north and south of the border. We then added the Farr40 class for the weekend as well. Racing was planned for Offshore on the Manly Circle. Friday we went out and in some very challenging conditions ran 3 races for the 38s. The breeze swung all over the place depending on the clouds coming through, over 100 degrees during the day making things quite difficult.

Saturday was totally different. Due to an East Coast Low pressure system, both seas and wind were up. I took the start boat out to the heads and it was far too dangerous to send any one offshore. There was also no way that I could anchor the boat, or course marks, let alone see them! Seas through the heads were as big as I’ve seen in a while. So inshore with all the other courses, somehow managing to get a 1nm beat. More races completed. I would have loved to have a photographer on board as some of the finishes were spectacular, let alone some of the broaches. The Farr40 Estate Master came through the line surfing at nearly 20knots, the major issue of course was dropping it in time on a lee shore.

Sunday, things had calmed down somewhat due to the overnight westerly which knocked the head off the seas. So back out to the Manly Circle and a nice south wester averaging 16-18knots, perfect. I made the one bad call that I haven’t done in a while, I thought the breeze would swing left which is the norm. Instead it stayed in the south west and went even further right. My mistake was not giving the mark boat room to lay a course as I had laid the bottom mark too close in. Unfortunately the second race became a bit of a one way track, lesson learnt. I had to apologise to the competitors over the VHF.

It was probably the hardest three days on the water as a race official, the East Coast Low really put paid to that. Previous years have been just nice NorEasters and one can only hope for that next year.

Now it’s off to Wallagoot Lake Boat Club for their annual regatta. Wallagoot is another lovely little country club, situated just north of Merimbula on the far south coast of NSW. A small volunteer run club with 2 or 3 of each class using the yardstick for handicaps. At Jindabyne we use a common wing mark on the triangle, at Wallagoot the multihulls like their reaches so there’s a wider gybe mark for them. More mark laying but the monos and multihulls are separated making it easier on them. One of the things that does happen at these country events, is showing off the new products from our suppliers. These guys don’t have a chance to touch and feel much of the products now available, this is their chance to ‘tart up’ their boats with new lines from LIROS and boat and sail repair kits from DrSails.

Next week it’s back on the road in the van, north to Queensland for 10 days or so. Plenty of new products in the DeckHardware range to show around. Forespar have a range of new lubrication products and Allen Brothers also have some new fittings. It’ll be pretty busy.