KatieKat 2004 Cruise Chapter Ten

15 July, 2004 -- Cleveland

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In mid-July we sailed further up the protected inland waterways between the Gold Coast and Brisbane, and pulled into Cleveland for a few days. The marina has one of the most convenient locations to its town that we've experienced, with all amenities within just a few-minutes' walk. Better yet, the train to Brisbane is right at one's doorstep. Some of the most elegant mouth-watering lagoon-living communities have been created in Cleveland and neighboring Raby Bay - what I wouldn't give to have KatieKat at my dock and with my own workshop right next to it!

Two Fastback catamarans at the marina in Cleveland, the left one - Raptor- belonging to our friends Ray and Sally Roth with whom we had cruised up the Great Barrier Reef in 2001. We had also often crossed paths with Bach and Byte during our Queensland cruising. Note the modified transom which Ray made, yielding a nice boarding platform in addition to extending the boat's waterline.

My idea of a nice lifestyle - my own house only able to achieve waterfront status if a really big earthquake hits California.

KatieKat at the dock in Cleveland

Queensland has just introduced significant anti-pollution legislation aimed at boats, but here's proof that even before the legislation coral is growing under the dock right inside this marina!

We took our SeaCycle pedal-powered catamaran dinghy BikeBoat for a last spin around the canals of Cleveland before disassembling her in preparation for KatieKat's shipment.

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25 July, 2004 -- Manly and Final Days in Brisbane

From Cleveland it was just a short hop back to our "home away from home" - Manly, Queensland, which boasts that it is the largest marina complex in the southern hemisphere (open to debate). In addition to having all the usual amenities and yachtie support infrastructure available, it's just a short walk to the train station and a really inexpensive round-trip to Brisbane.

Our last wandering sail in Queensland was from Cleveland to Manly. A typical view looking aft while seated in our main saloon. This location for the bicycles allows them to not drip their rust onto the deck! The very comfortable contoured foldable patio chair has been a main saloon fixture for three years now.

East Coast Marina has a single VERY long main dock walkway, accessed from one end, with walkways and docks branching from it. It takes seven minutes just to simply walk to the, uh, showers. Riding bicycles is frowned upon...

The Esplanade in Manly provides a nice walking and bicycling pathway that runs for miles. A nice protected way of riding bicycles, as car drivers in Australia consider bikes fair game. An amazing number of people walk this in the mornings and evenings.

Outside of town there are mangroves at the tideline. There's a nice boardwalk through one of them, right off the bike path.

One of our last walks along the Brisbane River. I counted nine huge construction cranes in the first photo - building is booming in Queensland!

Final shot of me on Queen Street Mall in Brisbane, with a scavenging ibis unfortunately turned away from the camera so you can't see its huge curved beak.

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31 July, 2004 -- Sydney Boat Show

The Sydney Boat Show at the end of July marked the introduction of Seawind's brand-new catamaran design, the SW1160. Curiosity got the better of me, so I flew down to Sydney just to see this brand-spanking-new-just-launched creation, in addition to wanting to wander amongst all the vendors' booths. It was nice to renew acquaintance with the Seawind crew and Alby McCracken at Para-Anchors Australia as well as Gary Martin, the "retired" sailmaker who's busier than ever with multihull-related projects. No, the following isn't intended as a commercial for Seawind, but I hope will be of interest to multihullers.

This view from the bridge overlooking Darling Harbour shows most of the sailing catamarans at the show. From left are the Seawind 1000, Seawind 1160, Seawind 1200, Perry 43, Lightwave 38, Great Barrier Express 9M Sportsdeck, and a Tasman 35. Elsewhere there was a Lagoon 410. The right photo shows the three Seawind sailing vessels. Not shown are Seawind's two luxurious catamaran stinkpots on the other side of the dock.

If you click on this photo it will download a higher-resolution (136K) image of the Seawind 1160, which will take some time to load if you have a slow connection. The photo shows the track for the self-tacking jib, the opening forward tempered glass windows, the solid center cockpit overhead (with fabric out to the sides), and the mainsheet traveller on top of the targa bar. The aft end of the cockpit with BBQ and seating is one of the features they borrowed from the SW1000.

The galley on the Seawind 1160 is open above into the main saloon and has a good-sized freezer and separate large side-opening refrigerator and an outboard sink and stove with an oven below it. The opening window just above the stove will be a boon in hot climates.

The SW1160 borrows features from both the SW1000 (KatieKat) and the luxurious SW1200. This photo shows the main saloon integrated with the cockpit (a key SW1000 feature), with an ingenious solid folding door swinging completely out of the way into the overhead cockpit cover. There is both a port and starboard steering wheel, with this particular boat having the primary steering station on the port side.

This view from the main saloon shows Seawind trying to maintain the SW1000 concept of 360-degree visibility from the main saloon. Indeed, the vertical pillars are very unobtrusive.

The Seawind 1160 was launched just three days before the boat show(!). In addition to inboard diesels, this larger boat offers more features and more sumptuous accommodations than KatieKat. It'll be interesting to see how she performs and how each of its new features works out in real life. If you'd like to know more, you can go to the Seawind website

The coolest product I saw at the show is a man-overboard locator which requires no activation by the person in the water. It consists of a small onboard instrument-sized unit which sounds an alarm upon loss of an individually-coded signal and identifies the person and their location in the water. Everyone on board wears a very small clip-on Pendant which is a sealed unit and contains a transmitter and rechargeable battery. The product is called a MOBi-lert. Update 2012: here's a review of it in Sailing World.

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