Josh and Adrian's Blog

After the past 4 days we have managed to clock up over 100 nautical miles in distance and also over 16 hours on the water.

 

On Saturday we set out from Ulverstone with our destination as the Table Cape classic off Wynyard at approximately 10am with a 2pm start. With only about 8 knots we headed north to gain the right angle for the journey along the coast. Stocked up on food and energy bars to try out we were set for our second trial run along the coast.

 

12 noon came flying by as we were cruising past Round hill wondering if we were ever going to make the start of the race as the breeze slowly but surely picked up as we approached Burnie a bit before 1pm. Finally we both got on the wing and really started making some serious progress towards the race course.

 

2pm and we were about 10 minutes short of making the start in a fading breeze as we made our way back towards the Tasmanian coast off Wynyard, the unfortunate side of the story was that despite an effort by mentor and sponsor of Strait4devils Steve Walker to delay the start, the message wasn't heard and the race started minutes before we made it to the line.

Despite our best efforts to slot into the race we decided that our efforts were in vain and decided after completing the first leg of the race that we weren't going fast enough and headed back out to sea to reset the Spinnaker and continue along the strait to get some more distance under our belt. Once we cleared Table Cape we had a visit from a local dolphin who surfed our bow wake for a while as we made our way past a big fishing boat on the way to Rocky Cape.

Stanley and the Nut were fast approaching and getting bigger by the minute, but a fading and shifting wind again made it impossible to get all the way and we decided to head our 10 nautical miles to shore to our destination of Boat Harbour Beach to end the day. Just on 6pm we made it to shore in fading light and surfed the Northeast waves into the beach.

 

A lot was achieved on Saturday and the distance and pure time on the water will undoubtedly help us to complete the challenge that awaits us.

 

Sunday 15^th and it was off to the Sail loft in Wynyard for some boat upgrades, with the assistance of Nick Richardson senior sail maker at the Steve Walker Sails Loft we prepared our boat to run its new reefing system in case of stronger conditions during the crossing. Afterwards we were off to Stanley to get a first hand look at the surrounds and identify some of the key local information that we may well need to know before our departure in March.

 

Keep an eye out for this weeks updates as the quiz night fast approaches!!

 

Adrian.

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