In The Beginning...

In the early 1990's I had a web space called Whitsunday Wandering on what was then a GEOCITIES community called, appropriately The Tropics.  There I wrote about living and sailing in Australia's Whitsunday Islands aboard my catamaran, Storm Season, and in Leisurely, my Hartley 18 Trailer Sailer.

After some time dedicated to work and other pursuits I returned to sailing purchasing Enya, my Embassy 18 trailer sailer in 2001.  After a serious motorcycle accident in early 2004 almost forced me to give up sailing, I was reprieved in 2005 when I found a Seaway 25 trailer sailer on a mooring locally and decided the huge side decks of the quarter ton racing class yacht would allow me to move about with relative safety.  I was proven wrong several times, but we all learn.

When I lost Volcano in cyclone Ului in March 2010, I was lucky enough to find a fairly decrepit Cavalier 26 keel boat, again found locally, and once more, a quarter tonner.  Shepherd Moons has been my project ever since, and with my health continuing to deteriorate, will probably be the last yacht I own.

I got a lot of support, and made some fun friends in those years before business life and later, a series of injuries changed my life.  I also wrote some guides to cruising in this island paradise of ours.

This blog will be an attempt to share some of the adventure of what is now more than thirty years of sailing among these islands.  It will be a rambling thing.  Parts will be reminiscences, some will be hints and tips and much of it will be devoted to sections of the book I wrote in the 80's called 'A Trailer Sailor's Guide to The Whitsundays'.  Parts of this book are still floating around the Internet in various stages of update.

So where to start this time?

StormSeason at Stonehaven Anchorage, Hook Island in 1982

I got a taste for The Whitsundays when I first came here during an around Australia trip in the 1970's.  I returned again briefly after I moved to Queensland in 1977, but it wasn't until 1981 that I bought a small catamaran and moved here with the intention of some day living on a small yacht and making the islands my home.

Storm Season was a Windrush 16 surfcat, designed in Western Australia and different in many ways from my earlier boats.  Unlike the popular Hobie 16, the Windrush was designed to handle real surf and carry a load.  It is amost impossible to bury a bow in any conditions, and I had photos of my crew and I standing on the very tips of the bows while she was sailing.

Among the modifications for my seventy mile jaunts up and down this stretch of coast were an extra cross beam on the trampoline frame to make an area to lash gear, including forty litres of water and a tent, and another beam fore and aft below the tramp that hinged under the mast.  This was lashed at the rear of the trampoline frame and could be swung out if the boat ever capsized.  There was also a spare pulley at the top of the mast with an endless loop haliard.  If the boat capsized, a spare lifejacket was attached to the halliard and hauled to the top of the mast.  this brought Storm Season up on her side.  From there I could get around on one hull, and walk the frame out.  hand over hand along the frame I would reach the balance point and she would pop back upright, no matter the waves and wind.  The exciting part was when the upper hull came down.  Several times i was hit in the head, or ended up under the boat as she started sailing again.  But with a little deliberate capsizing, not an easy thing to do in with a Windrush by the way, I eventually got it down to an art.

Storm Season was a fancy name for what was a very basic little yacht, but she took me safely through some scary weather up here where a few times a year we have some very stormy weather.  A two man tent that could be erected on the trampoline gave me many comfortable nights either drawn up on a beach somewhere or at anchor.  A few times I sailed into anchorages miles from the nearest alternative island and fifteen miles from the mainland to be asked where on earth I had come from on 'that tiny boat' in 'this weather'.  She always got me there and always got me home.  Aside from forty litres of water, the storage compartments in the hulls always had more drinks, and a supply of canned and dry food.  The space aft of the mast, in addition to the water containers, carried food, the tent and a couple of diver's bags of gear.

I had a ball with that boat, but eventually my wife decided it was time I spent some quality time with her and my son.  Once, when I took my one year old sailing to one of the islands in a storm she had a panic attack and brought him home on a ferry.  I'll never understand women.  He had his little life jacket on - and he was usually tied to the mast....