Table of Contents
Brisbane River
We went for another couple of sails on the Brisbane river from the Colmslie recreation reserve.
2024-01-14 Mum and Dad
We've managed to avoid any serious sailing mishaps, growing our confidence in our boat and our abilities. I invited my parents to come out with us on a day with some gentle wind. At the ramp I talked my Dad through helping me raise the mast. With him, Alex and Sam onboard we headed upriver a short way and checked out Eat Street from the perspective of the river. We crossed paths with a CityCat, who gave us a friendly toot, then headed back to the dock to swap in my Mum. We had very light, intermittent winds; perfect for leisurely sightseeing. We pootled downriver to the Colmslie Beach reserve for lunch. The tide was 2.8m, of an absolute 2.9m max, so the beach was entirely underwater.
I picked a spot relatively free of swimming kids and cruised up onto shore. I did run straight over someone's fishing line but they didn't seem to mind. I think they were preoccupied with the novelty of a sailboat crashing into the shore. I bush-bashed through some long grass towards a tree to tie off the boat. Something in the brush spiked through my reef shoes into my foot. I'm not sure what it was, but I got a tetanus shot the next day just in case.
Meanwhile Dad had driven from the boat ramp to the beach, going via maccas to pick up some lunch. We managed to beat him there on account of some drive-through misunderstandings. We'd just finished up lunch, including the customary zooper dooper dessert, when an ice cream van drove into the carpark blasting greensleeves. It took a few seconds for them to drown in a tidal wave of kids.
We hopped back on the boat, paddled out out of the shoreline wind shadow and made a straight run back to the dock to disembark. A great time was had by all, except for Sam who said it was “too boring”. I remembered to start a path recording on my phone, but forgot to turn it back on after lunch.
2024-01-27 Windy
We'd planned to head out to Wivenhoe Dam on this public holiday, but we had a bit of a sleepy start to the day and didn't get out the door until about 11:00. Wivenhoe's a little over an hour's drive away, so we opted for another day on the river. The wind forecast was about 10 knots, gusting to 15.
There was a good drizzle coming down at the boat ramp, something Michelle felt compelled to note regularly. There was lots of traffic at the boat ramp, many people were putting in jetskis and silently tutting at the softies doing the opposite to get out of the rain. The dock was covered with jetskis and dinghies so we put our boat in and guided it over to a little patch of beach nearby to get the jib rigged. I spent a good while trying to get the top of the jib taut, but our halyards (sail raising ropes) have too much spring in them to get things as tight as I'd like.
Rod, the resident boat ramp bogan, stopped by to compliment us on the tension of our forestay. Had had a mate with us who was very happy to see a caper cat. He reckoned it might date from the 80s. Rod also mentioned that we should have a “boom vang” on our boat for proper sail tension. A few hours after we got home that afternoon I realised why the boom and mast had fixing points spaced about half a meter from where the boom meets the mast (the gooseneck), and why we had an extra jumble of ropes and pulleys (blocks) laying around. I'd thought it was a spare main sheet but it's actually supposed to be used to pull the boom down to give the sail a better aerofoil shape. We'll give that a shot next time.
We headed downriver at a good pace. The wind regularly dipped entirely, but we got a few good zooms in on the way out under the Gateway motorway bridges. They're pretty spectacular constructions. We need to buy a rugged waterproof camera of some form so we can take photos while on the boat. I'm tempted to pick up a second hand gopro or similar. We had a look at a massive superyacht called “Helios”, possibly this one?. Recently sold for AUD$61 million. A cool AUD$380 000 to rent for a week, plus expenses (naturally). Jesus fucking christ.
We headed north across the river to check out a big green crane barge. It was big and green. The wind got pretty spicy around this point, with some solid gusts that launched us through the water. The recording of our path shows we peaked at 9 knots, or 16.6 km/h. There was about half a meter of chop, enough to break over the nose of the boat and soak us all. Sam was beside himself with joy.
We headed back upriver to the boat ramp. The dock was full as we approached, so we landed on the beach to take the sails down while the kids inexplicably filled their jocks with sand and rocks. Getting the boat from the beach to the ramp was a massive pain in the arse. I eventually worked out a system to keep the boat angled into the wind in a way that kept it from bashing into the side of the ramp while gradually working it down to where we could get it onto the trailer. Next time we'll wait for a spot on the dock.
I hung up and hosed down the sails when we got home. They were pretty grotty and covered in salt water spray.
Moreton Bay
We live in Brisbane, which is right next to Moreton Bay, on the eastern-most part of Australia. It's a part of the Pacific Ocean, or the Coral Sea if you're a tiresome pedant stickler for accuracy. The bay is protected by islands and is known to sailing dorks as a good place to sail. It's where Michelle and I did our keelboat lessons, out of the Manly Boat Harbour.
Here.
After a few leisurely river sails we thought we'd go out onto the bay for some more excitement. Our long-term goals are day trips over to islands in the bay. But first: paperwork.
Marine Assist
Volunteer Marine Rescue is an amazing institution. People who donate their time, effort and money to help make our waterways a safer place. If you get into a pickle they can send out a team to fish you out of the water and maybe tow your boat back to shore. They accept donations, but I figured it would be best to formalise the relationship by signing up for a marine assist service. This provides them a stream of income, $80 annually in our case, for our peace of mind. This also gives us access to their “Tripwatch” system where you can lodge a trip in their online system, with departure time and location, crew count, and expected duration without having to use the radio or ring them up. Seems worthwhile to me. They have a 24-hour cooling-off period between signing up and being able to use their system. This caveat paints a picture of someone hurriedly signing up on their smartphone as their yacht slips below the waterline.
I don't really have a feel for what constitutes a call-worthy mishap. I expect we'll know it when we see it. You don't need a policy for VMR to respond to your emergency, but relying on them for our safety without giving something in return feels… inconsiderate. Hopefully we'll never have to call them up.
Insurance
Our boat cost AUD$1600. Insuring it would be silly. We'd be sad if it sank, but we wouldn't be in dire financial straits. Things would be more serious if we somehow managed to sink a boat in a marina worth three orders of magnitude more. Given that we wanted to sail out of the Manly Boat Harbour I organised some third party property insurance. Worse case – we somehow completely destroy another boat – we're covered up to ten million AUD. This costs us AUD$297 annually. Their system didn't seem set up to work with boats that don't have registration. Eventually we decided on using the sail markings to fill in that field in their database.
2024-01-10 Moreton Bay
The wind forecast was bumping around 10 knots, the boat was ready with our new mast step, and the family was keen to go out on the bay. When the ocean came into view we found it forested with sails. Looks like we picked a good day.
Our goals were to familiarise ourselves with the boat ramp, practice manoeuvring through the marina, and spend some time in the bay. A few days prior we'd been to look at the boat ramp just north of Pandanus Beach while the kids were at the splash park. It had a very steep ramp, and a narrow, treacherous-looking channel to get out to deeper water. We opted to launch from Manly Boat Harbour instead, as Michelle and I had sailed out of it before.
The wind was blowing directly into the mouth of the marina. Given the limited room to maneuver I figured it would be too difficult to sail upwind into the bay. I decided we'd paddle out of the marina before raising the sails. I rigged but didn't raise the mainsail and left the jib folded on the tramp. This turned out to be a dumb idea. Similarly there was bloke parked right at the top of the boat ramp waiting for a passenger before he launched. This was annoying, but we worked around him. This ramp was steeper than our usual, so we backed the trailer down with our Corolla and launched.
We pushed off and started paddling. We did comically poorly. We made about three meters of headway thanks to the push-off, then canted sideways and drifted gracelessly back towards the dock. There were some VMR crew working on one of their boats next to the ramp who kept admirably straight faces and offered advice like “At least you're blowing back to the dock!”. We tried another paddle-launch but it quickly became apparent that the boat had too much windage for us to overcome with paddles. My second dumb decision for the day was to just raise the mainsail, and leave the jib down until we were out of the marina. This worked well enough to get us on our way, but there was very heavy weather helm that made for slow-going and poor manoeuvrability. Eventually we struggled out of the marina and out into the channel.
Artist's impression.
The wind had picked up to 12-15 knots while we'd been faffing about in the marina. There were the hints of whitecaps. I was trying to think of how I'd get the front bit (tack) of the jib tied off to the front of the boat while we were bucking around. Poor planning came to our rescue as we ran aground on a sandbar just north of the channel. We'd been warned about this sandbar during our keelboat lessons, but I was less concerned in the case of our beachable cat. I jumped in to the half-meter of water and rigged up the jib. Easy peasy! With all the sails up the boat became much more manageable. We did a few good runs back and forth between the sandbar and the channel, getting a feel for the stronger wind and choppier water.
We were having a hard time tacking. In retrospect I think this was down to my hurried jib rigging. Even with the jib-raising-rope (jib halyard) cleated as tight as possible, the leading edge (luff) of the jib was still floppy. We worked around this by doing some downwind gybe turns, which involve the boat and the boom travelling a greater distance during the turn. It was fun and a little bit scary. Scarier still was the prospect of getting back into the marina. I was eyeing a stream of expensive-looking yachts filling the channel as the day-sailors headed home. I was not looking forward to navigating into the channel and getting back to the marina.
Before too long Michelle lost her hat again. Fortunately we'd just had another encounter with the sandbar so I was able to wade over and pick it up. Michelle also hopped off the boat. Losing the weight of two adults was enough to float the boat again and start it merilly sailing itself back towards the channel with Alex and Sam onboard. There was some focussed panic as I splashed back to the boat. Luckily it was slowed by Michelle being dragged along behind. We got back onboard and I steered us back around onto the sandbar for a breather and to answer the call of nature.
During these events I became aware of a buzz in the air. I initially thought it was the wind through our rigging, but soon the kids were shouting “Look! A drone! A drone!”. I was engaged in another task at the time. After that concluded I gave the quadcopter a wave and we launched back towards the channel. I'm not sure who sent the drone out, but I would *dearly* love a copy of that footage. I'm sure it's hilarious. It would make a lot of sense for the coast guard/VMR to use drones to check on things close to shore before launching to help out.
It was around this point we noticed our mainsail had a problem. It has a boltrope sewn into the bottom edge (foot), and this is supposed to tuck into a slot in the boom. About half the foot of the mainsail had pulled out of this slot and the trailing corner (clew) was flapping in the breeze, only held on by the rope that pulls the foot of the mainsail tight (the outhaul). It seems there had been enough force on the sail at one point, probably during a gybe, to pop it out. I suspect this was caused by inexpert rigging. I had re-done the outhaul at some point to make it tighter, but neglected to loop it around the boom to tie the clew securely down to the boom. We'd been on the water for a couple hours by this point so we decided to call it a day.
We pointed back towards the channel and I searched the traffic for a spot to slip in. A sailboat downwind of another sailboat has right of way, and a sailboat has right of way over a motorboat, but you can never be certain of other boaters' knowledge of such things. It turned out to be straightforward. Everyone gave us a wide berth and we made it downwind all the way to the dock with only one gybe to keep us in the channel. We coasted up to the dock and got the boat back home without incident.
Our main lessons learned today: Never try to sail without both sails, make sure the clew of the mainsail is tied to the boom properly, and scan the skies before doing a wee in the ocean.
Boat work philosophy
My initial work on the boat was fixing things that prevented us sailing. The exclusive goal was to enable sailing. An unintended side effect of this is that the work doesn't look very nice. It's functional, but it's obviously not the work of a professional. Initially this didn't bother me too much but then I made a classic error: I started thinking about it.
We're the current owner of this boat. At some point we'll sell the boat. I would like the next owner to have a good time with the boat and feel good about owning it. I fix a lot of things around our house and I often discover cut corners, or poor material choices, or temporary fixes that were never revisited, and I think the person who did the work was a dufus. This is perhaps unfair, but I'd prefer that nobody looks at something I did and thinks I'm a dufus. We're only the custodian of this boat/house/planet, and it reflects well on us to do a good job of looking after it.
Hinged mast step
You may remember the other caper cat we saw at the boat ramp. It had a different way of holding the mast onto the boat at the base. Instead of the pin and socket system our boat has, it has an open hinge and a kind of loose ball joint. This means the mast can be hooked into the hinge when laying flat and then tilted upright into the socket, rather than having to lift the mast straight up and into the socket. Still nursing some cracked ribs from earlier mast-based adventures I started looking for where I might buy one of these.
One of the tragedies of the modern era is that internet forums have died. Their users absorbed into a variety of centralised services owned by one of the four big companies. There are exceptions though, and two of those are catsailor.net and Trailer Sailer Place. These seem to be mostly populated by crusty boat-owning men with questionable politics. It was in one of these forums I learned something interesting about Calypso, the company that made our boat. When they shut down they passed the torch to LR Sails. LR Sails now provides bits and pieces for caper cats, including the hinged mast step kit. AUD$230 later my spending spreadsheet had another row and I had two chunks of cast aluminium to somehow attach to the boat.
I learned from forums and youtube that there should be something inside the joint to ensure the mast can rotate freely. The aforementioned crusty men recommended a two cent coin. Nipping back to 1996 to pick up a handful of change was out of the question thanks to a broken time machine, so I cut a disc of PTFE off the end of a rod I had leftover from another project. That should do nicely.
The kit didn't come with any instructions, so I had to intuit how it needed to go onto the boat. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of the underside of the socket piece before I installed it. This would've shown a substantial divot in the concave curved surface that will face down when it's installed on the boat. This divot was positioned exactly under the socket on the other side. More on that later.
The curve perfectly matched the extrusion on which the mast sits. Unfortunately this would place the socket itself on a substantial forward-leaning angle. The mast couldn't stand upright and rotate as is needed without interference from the hinge mechanism. I went back and watched the video I took of the other caper cat, zooming and enhancing as required.
Their step isn't sitting flush on the extrusion. Hmm. Regardless, I needed to remove the old mast step. This took quite a lot of violence. A few days prior, just after I ordered the new kit, I doused the old step in WD40 to give myself a fighting chance of taking it off when the time came. Actually getting the mongrel off involved an impact driver, a socket set, a pair of multigrips, a pair of vice grips and a blowtorch.
Careful Application of Violence
I tackled the bottom phillips head stainless bolt ③ first. It wasn't moving even slightly after heavy application of an impact driver. I didn't want to shear it off, so I heated up the aluminium round bar ② with the blow torch to relax the joint. It eventually came loose after many ugga duggas. I cracked away the plastic socket ⑤ with the multigrips to expose the head of the top bolt ④ and got a socket onto it. It was also stuck, and required even more heating, but it eventually relented. This let me remove the round bar ② and clean out the threaded holes in either end.
The purpose of this bar is to transmit the downward force of the mast into tension in the aluminium flat bar ⑥ straps that extend diagonally out to the ends of the main extrusion ①. This adds strength and rigidity, helping to prevent the main extrusion folding downwards in the middle and causing a bad day. The extrusion also has two other stainless bolts ⑦ either side of the mast step. As far as I can tell they are just there for moral support. They might pass through another cast piece inside the extrusion? I can't tell, and I didn't need to play with them.
After significant thought, motivated by wanting to go sailing the next day, I decided the best course of action would be to use the old mast step bolt as a locating guide and mechanical support for the new casting. I assumed the divot in the underside of the casting was there for this purpose. The top bolt ④ previously had 2-3mm of plastic socket ⑤ between it and the extrusion ①, so the bolt would need to be trimmed down to clamp the extrusion snugly against the round bar ②. This would serve to keep the bar upright and true. I reinstalled the bar and bolts. Using the divot as a guide I traced, drilled and riveted the step down to the extrusion over the top of the trimmed top bolt. Due to the mismatch in angles there is a gap between the step and the extrusion, but I'm pretty sure it is now where it should be, mechanically and geometrically.
Further Violence
Now it was time to work on the base of the mast. Getting the old casting off was an absolute turbo-mongrel of a job. I'd hoped I could just drill out the single rivet holding it on and tap it out with a sacrificial chisel on an edge of the casting. Absolutely not. It would not move even a micron. I heated up the mast with the blowtorch to try to loosen the joint – not a sausage. It was stuck in there solidly.
I drilled some holes in it to loosen it up. I broke one drill bit and dulled another on some hidden stainless before giving up. I resorted to a cutoff blade in an angle grinder to mangle the end, being careful not to nick the mast itself. This was cathartic but didn't get me any closer to taking it off. The breakthrough was using a metal blade in a jigsaw to cut through the casting up to the extrusion. This broke the circumference of the casting and gave me a fighting chance of releasing it from the mast.
Once I got the old one out it was a simple matter of tidying up the cruft inside the mast, tapping in the new one and riveting it in place. Job done! The initial fit wasn't as snug as I'd hoped, but it was rigidly in place after 3 5mm pop rivets. This joint is only ever in compression, so it's not going anywhere.
I had hoped this new step would let me raise the mast solo. After a few hazardous attempts, the creation of a very long steel fork apparatus, and much muttering about triangles I deferred that goal to another day and enlisted Michelle's help. Together we easily raised the mast in one smooth controlled operation. A definite improvement over the old system.
Tomorrow: Moreton Bay!
Picnic time
We've sailed past the Colmslie Beach Reserve a few times now, and our boat is specifically designed to be sailed up onto a beach, so we decided our next trip would involve a beach picnic. We packed an esky with some vegemite and peanut butter sandwiches, apples, a thermos of ice coffee, a blender bottle of local soylent analogue, and museli bars then buried it all in zooper doopers.
2024-01-05 Brisbane River to Colmslie Beach Reserve
We have our process pretty well nailed down now, so we were in the water in under 20 minutes. Just before our previous sail we met a nice bloke at the boat ramp named Rod. He lives aboard one of the boats moored just off the ramp. He seemed dead pleased by our pool scoop we brought along for fishing floating rubbish out of the river. Whenever we see anything floating by we attempt to drag it up. We did find an entire Monobloc chair floating down the river but we didn't have space on the boat.
Alex's tacking performance continued to improve and we made good speed upwind, downriver. We did get stuck drifting towards an anchored boat after a failed tack, prompting us to man the oars as a contingency. Fortunately we were able to pick up the wind again before we ran out of room. We had stronger and gustier wind today than ever before, producing some sporty sailing. Michelle had to move about the boat to help with balance. Alex became uncertain he possessed the mettle for sailing as the sails snapped full of wind on a gust and we surged forward. Sam was cackling like a madman. Good times
As we turned in towards the beach Michelle lost her hat again. She was wearing Sam's favourite yellow wide brim school hat. Sam was being performatively sad while we circled around a few times and managed to retrieve it before it sank, to much merriment. We then lined up a course that would drive us straight into the beach. There was another family playing in the water as we approached. They appeared nonplussed as we coasted up onto the sand. I jumped off the front and found the boat easy to drag it further up, so the rising tide didn't rob us of our boat during lunch.
Sam tried to go straight for dessert.
Just to the right of the big white boat you can see the paddleboat on which Michelle and I got married, the Kookaburra River Queen.
It was pretty great to be able to reach into the boat and pull out goodies. There's loads of storage space in there. I can't want to go camping somewhere on Wivenhoe.
Michelle having some quiet time in the shade.
Alex with a coveted purple zooper dooper. Sam kept “accidentally” dropping the crusts of his sandwich in the river, to the delight of some plump toadfish in the shallows.
I got stuck with the less desirable pineapple zooper dooper.
The return run was smooth until we got to the dock next to the boat ramp. We'd never made an approach in these conditions so it was pretty hairy and we had to make a few runs at it. Rod was keeping an eye on us from his tender as he ferried some folk over to his boat. We made contact with the dock on the third try. I tasked Alex with tying us off to the dock. He leapt over and then realised he didn't bring the mooring line with him. I jumped off too and tied us off.
I developed an innovation for making it easier to get the boat back onto the trailer: The mooring line is tied around the base of the mast. I tied the free end to an aluminium bit near the rear of the boat. This meant I could stand on the dock and control the position and orientation of the boat to guide it onto the trailer. It made this process trivial, even with wind and current. We got up into the carpark, removed the bungs, tilted the boat up and discovered the hulls were 🎉 completely dry 🎉. The leak was actually now properly fixed, happy days.
Getting the hang of this thing
In addition to fixing¹ the leak in the left pontoon there were some other things I wanted to sort out before going sailing again. The leading edge (luff) of the jib was loose. Loose sails make you sail bad so I added a couple of ties to the top and bottom to hold it taut along the stainless wire. The mast has a float at the top to prevent the boat flipping completely upside down when you capsize. It got bonked on the ground when we dropped the mast earlier, so I pulled it apart and re-joined it with copious quantities of glue and silicone. I was now more confident in it keeping water out while we scurry about trying to work out how to un-capsize a boat.
The jib kept getting stuck on a saddle on the front of the mast during tacks, so I drilled that off and riveted the holes shut. It's a bit of a mystery as to why it was there, but it's gone now. There were a few other little problems to sort out, but the only remaining big thing required me to travel backwards in time to fix it before going on our first sail. I won't bore you with the details of the time travel but I will bore you with details on fixing the trampoline during a rainstorm.
Very ergonomic!
The tramp is the square fabric floor of the boat, strung between four aluminium extrusions just aft of the mast. On the back and sides it's held on with a rope sewn into the edge of the tramp and threaded into a slot in the extrusion. This edge rope had pulled out of the slot in one spot, so there was a gap between the tramp and the extrusion. Not a huge deal, but it could get worse with time. Fixing it required drilling out the rivets holding on one of the lengthways aluminium side bits to release tension on the tramp. This let me drag the tramp edge out of a flared portion of the slot, and then pull it back in properly. This job sucked, but I was happy to have it done. I did have to cut one of the hiking straps to release tension enough to move the tramp, but I patched it up with a length of seatbelt material.
2024-01-03 Brisbane River
Preparations
This time we were on the road by 10:15 and ready to sail by 11:00. Still room for improvement. This included a distraction: At the boat ramp we spotted a sibling: another caper cat!
It looked a little more weathered than ours. It had the same corrosion on the rudders. It also had an improved mast step and base arrangement
It looks like it has an open hinge that would let you raise the mast by pivoting it upright, pulling on the forestay, rather than lifting the mast straight up into place. Colour me interested. This would make raising the mast significantly less perilous.
On the water
Conditions were even more perfect than on our first sail. A gentle, steady breeze and an overcast sky. We cast off with the goal of sailing around the pillars of the gateway bridges. Alex and I had sat down the previous night with some books about sailing and I talked him through the basics of tacking and gybing. The goal was being able to leave him in charge of the jib. He did really well! These catamarans don't have a keel, so we can't point as far into the wind as we could in a keelboat like the Elliot 6, so tacking from one side of the wind to the other takes a little while. Power from the jib is pretty important to pull the boat out of the tack, so on a few occasions we had to abort a tack, let the current carry us downstream a little way, then give it another shot. After about five tries goes our success rate was above 80%.
At some point Michelle's hat flew off into the water. We performed a shonky man overboard maneuver to swing around and pick it up. Unfortunately we went straight over the top of it and it sank forever. This marks the start of a trend.
We were able to cruise straight upriver along the north bank for a while, watching out for stray drives from the Royal Queensland Golf Club. We sailed under the bridge, waving to the people fishing around the piers. On the east side we spotted a citycat moored next to a building with a yamaha logo on it. Do citycats have yamaha engines?
The trip back was straightforward and uneventful We did a few practice gybes for excitement, as long straight downwind runs can get a bit boring. Getting the boat back onto the trailer was a struggle – we must've fluked it the first time. Eventually we got it up and out of the water. When we pulled the bungs out I was hoping the left pontoon would be dry thanks to my repair work. ¹ Mais non! Even more water than last time poured out. This sail was a longer one, so I suspected a linear volume-to-sailing-time relationship. The hunt for the elusive leak would continue.
A very approximate map of our trip.
Back home
Once we got home and I'd hosed things down, I re-pressurised the hull and went on another thorough leak search. Again: nothing. Out of desperation I put the hose in the bunghole and squirted a heap of fresh water in, then put the bungs in. Lo and behold! A leak! The bastard bung itself was leaking! I'd replaced the old crumbly o-rings with roughly-correct ones from a big kit'o'rings, so my initial assumption was that I'd sized it wrong. But then…
The bloody bung has a hole in it. Putting aside elaborate soap opera theories of sabotage I decided the most likely explanation was that these bungs are the same size as those used to hold the lids on the pontoons. At some point this might've had a string threaded through it in its duty as a lid-holder-downer rather than a water-keeper-outer. I mixed up a batch of the world's fastest epoxy and glorbed it into the bung.
Definitely really completely fixed now. For good.
