KatieKat 2002 Cruise Chapter Five

This is the fifth webpage of our cruise covering the year 2002. This is one long continuous page, and clicking on any of the underlined dates above should jump your screen to the appropriate section on this page (or you can use the scrollbar on the right to navigate up and down this page). Joe Siudzinski

9 July, 2002 -- Departing Hobart, Episode One

I'm reserving this spot on the webpage for a writeup of our anchoring fiasco in gale-force winds and driving rain the first night of our departure from Hobart. We managed to extricate ourselves without running aground and returned to Lindisfarne, having gone only five miles.

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10 July, 2002 -- Departing Hobart, Episode Two

I'm reserving this spot on the webpage for a brief writeup of a battery problem which developed the second time we attempted to leave Hobart - we did better this time and went thirty miles before returning to Lindisfarne.

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14 July, 2002 -- Departing Hobart, Episode Three

It was with mixed emotions and a very favorable weather forecast that we departed Lindisfarne for the third time, motorsailing in very light airs - it was so calm and peaceful that I changed our course and decided to sail around the southeast corner of Tasmania in order to show Kathy the magnificent rock formations outside Port Arthur. In fact, it was so calm that I even took the shortcut between Tasman Island and Cape Pillar. The writeup and photos will be forthcoming if I can recover the corrupted photo files.

Undamaged photos showing the dramatic rock columns of Port Arthur Head. Note also, on the boat in the left photo, the new HF antenna installation. The white dome thingy on the targa bar next to the solar panel is a newfangled Tri-Lens radar reflector which supplements another reflector on the mast.

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16 July, 2002 -- Skeleton Bay Anchoring Success

I'm reserving this spot on the webpage for a writeup of our successful (or I wouldn't be writing this) pitch-black-night and howling-wind anchoring experience in a tiny unknown cove, fully exposed to the wind and waves with a rocky lee shore 200' behind us - a great character-building exercise, especially on the heels of our previous anchoring fiasco a few days earlier. The radar failure which occurred (thankfully just AFTER we departed the cove in the middle of the following night) we don't even want to think about. Radar's ok, my wiring screwup.

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18 July, 2002 -- Bass Strait Crossing

I'm reserving this spot on the webpage for a writeup of our wild and wooly and bouncy screaming beam reach across the swells and confused seas of Bass Strait. No, Kathy wasn't quite screaming, but her monkey got a lot of hugging. My brand-new HF radio installation is working superbly and the boat is doing great.

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20 July, 2002 -- Bermagui - Status Update

As you may have gathered from the paucity of website updates, we've been busy! I'm typing this as we sit out an alleged 30-knot northerly (haven't seen it yet) in Bermagui and try to catch up on some sleep. Everything is fine, but there are many boat maintenance and computer and digital camera tasks to be performed - a strange computer file corruption has occurred, and all the recently-downloaded (from the camera) photo files are unreadable. Furthermore, the files of the photos sitting on the camera chip are partially corrupted and can't be found for downloading (but they ARE sitting there as the camera can see them). Basically, with the exception of the few photos I've taken on a second memory card, all the photo files of our last-minute preparations for departing Hobart, our crazy anchoring experiences, and our sail up the coast and across Bass Strait are presently unreadable.

We are hurrying up the coast in order to meet some good friends who are coming for a few-week visit at the end of the month.

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25 July, 2002 -- Sydney - Status Update

Extract from our cellphone status update file:

Sunday, 21 July 2002, 9:00pm
Left Bermagui last night about midnight, and spent the entire day sailing under spinnaker in beautiful warm weather. Presently about 60nm south of Sydney. It's a lovely moonlit night. What a change from Tasmanian waters!

Monday, 22 July 2002, 0600
Approaching Sydney Heads after a fantastic light-airs moonlight downwind sail.

Monday, 22 July 2002, 2100
Anchored in Sydney's Blackwattle Bay in the bright lights of the Anzac Bridge. G'night!

Wednesday, 24 July 2002
Staying on the boat in Sydney for a week or so - will take off north from here with friends instead of meeting them in Brisbane. Currently dealing with a broken digital camera and recovering corrupted photo files. Sigh...

:-)

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