We have a new boat! Or at least a new old boat. Long story but she was looking forlorn with long kelpy weed and barnaclesExplanation here (Wikipedia) in Friday Harbour with a faded “For Sale” notice drooping from her rig. We noticed that she has an outboard motor well in the cockpit – perfect for a pedal drive unit…Coincidentally, the owner saw us and offered her to us for the outstanding marina fees – we borrowed wetsuits and dived and looked and she’s now ours. Woody, the owner, had owned her for 27 years and she has some robust repairs – WYSIWYG – and he told us all he knew about her faults. We sailed her to Anacortes, then to Port Townsend, back to Anacortes and she’s now sitting in the dry storage yard in Port Townsend waiting for Megan to arrive in April in her best fibreglassing overalls to fix a couple of patches and launch her for R2AK 2019. Then we’ll go and finish the thing and perhaps sail her further than Ketchikan. Wishful thinking but a nice maybe project. She’s a South Coast Seacraft 23 – perhaps better known as an Alberg 23 – if you google either of them you should get to this http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=304 An old design but seaworthy and from the days when fibreglass boats were rather better built than today. Carl Alberg designed a lot of similar boats and they are all good boats. She’s called Village Girl. She’s tiny, but bigger than Bobbles and a bit more suitable for The Project. Bobbles is in Portland and the plan is to get her to Homer to sail on Katchemak Bay and then maybe back to Portland in a few years as a sail trainer for a couple of kids we know. more as it happens

Sylvie Branton, the lovely talented wonderful person who created this website died this morning in Grenada. I’m devastated but I rejoice for her life and our friendship. Love and hugs to her family and a bunch of flowers in the teleport for her. Her creativity will live on.

Back in Port Townsend with Village Girl on crutches in the yard. Megan has spent 2 weeks sanding, priming, antifouling and generally fixing and it’s happening. Huge to-do list and a month to get it all working. Pedal drive being put together by The Cyclist and rowing station by the Decrepit Old Rower. The mast comes out next week and we’ll be on survival gruel once we get the bill for that but it has to be done. The yard is flat out launching boats and our launch date is May 22nd officially, but I’m sure we’ll get a slot before that once we are ready. Then it really begins. Sporadic internet so more as it happens.

What a week! It’s been Sydney hot and we have no usable shade so dehydration is a hazard to be respected. The ExaminerShe who asks awkward questions of the crew and tests them with difficult tasks. nearly got us both yesterday. The little boat is in great nick for her age – I wonder how you compare boat ages to human. I seem to remember that dogs get about 14 years for their four score years and ten but boats? VG has been in Australia about as long as I have – she was built in 1967 ish by East Coast Seacraft, so she’s already 52 but apart from the usual battle scars she’s better that a lot of today’s production boats. Heavier, no internal volume so very cramped for 2 people but structurally she’s got another 50 years with TLC. I’ve spent the last 3 days rebuilding the mast — a new half inch PVC tube (called a case here) for the wiring, new nav lights, coax fittings for the VHFVery High Frequency radio. Short range radio equipment for voice and other applications such as AISAutomatic Identification System. An automatic tracking system used on ships and by vessel traffic services (VTS) for identifying and locating vessels.. antenna and putting it all together. Rivetting the case to the inside of the mast was interesting – careful measurement, pairs of holes drilled through the mast every 2 metres or so and then a red hot spike through the drill holes and into the plastic to make holes first for holding screws and then rivets. A very hot long day’s work with much walking from one end to the other and not a little frustration. But it happened. PTR rigging have been wonderful, lending us their tools and workshop and lots of advice and they will run the halyardsLines to hoist the sails next week. There will, of course, be a bill but hey! Meanwhile Megan melded 2 cast off hatch covers we found in a dumpster into one, removed the sliding hatch and built a parapet around the sliding hatch coamings and fitted a new and very different opening hatch. We think that it will work well with a little dodgerAn awning that covers a small part of the forward part of the cockpit (about 30cm). It makes a small sheltered place that the person who's on watch can cower under as waves go over.. Huge job. Cross ‘em! We need to have it all sorted in the next week or so.

the competitors get a bit thin on the ground. Today was the Port Townsend Rhody run – final event in the Spring Festival. Megan, our friends Martin and Ingrid and I all ran it. Brutal, hilly 12k or in local terms 7.3 miles. Ugly, it was and I had to walk a lot of it but hey! 3rd and a medal. There were 987 finishers. Megan beat me by nearly 12 minutes which, I think, is the beginning of the end. The economists’ supply/demand graph comes to mind and that crossover point. Supply is running down.

It’s really just a longish Sydney Hobart but with much better scenery and a very different intellectual challenge but that doesn’t really alleviate the nerves and the ExaminerShe who asks awkward questions of the crew and tests them with difficult tasks. hasn’t had a good crack at us yet. The older I get the more nervous I get – doesn’t do to know too much! The noon start will be mayhem. We have to get off the jetty early to let the headbangers in the big fast boats out from inside us and then we can settle down to rowing and pedalling to get out of the harbour. Reasonable forecast for the first couple of days but, unlike last year, there should be wind. Right now it’s blowing 20 kts and we’re all rocking. We must now rely on all our preparations and hope for just enough luck to get us to Ketchikan. Best estimate 18 days or so. 3 elapsed Sydney Hobarts. I’ll try to post daily using our iridium Go and Berrimilla’s old faithful Toughbook but don’t fuss if you don’t hear from us. It’s a lot harder in Village Girl. We are Team Wingnuts on the tracker. Onya to any of the rusted on fans still out there.

Not the most auspicious beginning to a 700 mi!e race but hey. This is a big marina packed with squillion dollar boats, all meticulously maintained – polished till they shine – by a local company. Some look as if they get used, most don’t. There isn’t anything nearly as small or scruffy as VG but she does at least go places, when the tide let’s her. We have a long wait for said tide – but I don’t think we have much choice. 5 knots of breeze is not nearly enough for VG to punch into the ebb and the flood starts in 5 hoursish. There’s no way we could do it with Heath and the old fart engaged in human power either. We can make about about 2.5 knots for an hour or so but that won’t cut it. When the tide changes we have about 11 hours to make some distance north. I think this may become the pattern of our race. We will keep our towels handy and not panic.

This gig is not about instart gratification – unless you like whales breeching, dazzling sunlight on the snowy peaks along the track, wonderfully kind and interested people met along the way or that first medicinal dose of The Compound in the Campbell River pub after a hell of a difficult night in the rain getting here. Both in survival suits to stay warm. The ExaminerShe who asks awkward questions of the crew and tests them with difficult tasks. was in the offing but behaved. Thanks Carla! Heathfarting, drifting, wimping out of crossing the Comox bar for the first time at night, kiteSailors’ slang for a spinnaker flying, ( if you are reading this Brian, perfect little kiteSailors’ slang for a spinnaker, thanks!) soggy cold naps in the cockpit and hallucinations. It’s been quite a project. A year ago on the way back from Nanaimo with Bobbles, I saw VG in a slip in Friday harbour with a sad for sale sign drooping in her rig but – big but – an outboard well in the cockpit. Perfect for a pedal drive, I thought and next year’s boat. And so it came to pass. Huge effort, lots of modifications, lots of frustrations, Heath cobbled together brilliantly by Megan and we’re here. Yesterday we passed the point where poor Bobbles broke her rudder just out if Nanaimo. We waved in respect. Heath is losing his balls, poor lad. To be precise, he seems to be chewing up his bearings and Megan will lay hands upon him tomorrow. We will stay here tomorrow to make some other simple fixes and leave for Seymour Narrows on Wednesday. The photo shows VG waiting for low tide in Porlier Passage on a little public dock half a mile from the passage. We timed it well but still interesting. Nice to get out into Georgia Strait. To the kind lo gcanoeists who sent us a photo from there, thanks but in my tiredness I seem to have lost it. Could you please send it again?

We think we heard a strong wind warning for johnstone strait. VHFVery High Frequency radio. Short range radio equipment for voice and other applications such as AISAutomatic Identification System. An automatic tracking system used on ships and by vessel traffic services (VTS) for identifying and locating vessels.. weather is intermittent at best. if we can comfirm tomorrow or by gribWeather files. Graphics in Binary file: GRIB files associate a specific weather datum (eg wind velocity or atmospheric pressure) with a geographic position. Because the resulting file is a collection of these points they are extremely small and so ideal over slow links such as sailmail., we’ll hang out here in Otter cove till it blows out. We have out towels and medicinal compounds and the scenery is wonderful.

Towards the end of our miserable wet night getting to Campbell River,we passed a small rocky island which we’d been looking at since dawn’s grey crack. I was off my game – I’d been meaning to find out where Middlemarch Island was and that was it. A wildlife reserve but more relevant for us, the point where tides change from northerly ebb to southerly. We found out the hard way as the tracker shows. A vast coiling roiling thrashing of water where two huge currents meet and we went backwards completely out of control till I got my act together and got the oars out. We ferry glided across the maelstrom until we reached the calmer north flowing tide on the west side. Interesting and a much more vicious big daddy of the meeting of the south flowing East Australian and the colder waters flowing out of Bass Strait off the SR corner of Australia. Luckily and completely by chance we timed it right. Must have been Carla’s corralling of the ExaminerShe who asks awkward questions of the crew and tests them with difficult tasks.. We don’t have a water thermometer on VG but in Australia there’s a 3 deg change in temperature across the very obvious line where the waters meet. It happens in a boat length. Ain’t it a wonderful world! —————————————–

We got here yesterday evening – not easy getting into the bay heathfarting – against the wind but on the last of the ebb. The tracker may have enough detail to show out meanderings. Uncomfortable anchorage – we picked the main wind tunnel across the bay and had a difficult night swinging on the anchor line in the gustsShort increases in wind speed – or people who signed the Gust Book.. We moved 100 metres in a lull today for a bit more shelter. Loverly bay otherwise – surrounded by conifers and we can hear the birds singing when the wind isn’t blasting. A family of 16 Canada geese visited us this morning. I think we are stuck here for a few days – the westerly winds are just too much for little VG at the moment and there aren’t enough bolt holes to escape if we need to bail. ———————————-

Hmm. That was one of the hairier bits of sailing I can remember. 25kts wind against a 5.5kt current and short steep 5 ft wind waves breaking with a wavelength about half of VG so about 15 ft. Easy to exaggerate this stuff, so I could be wrong but we were almost out of control moving north at nearly 8 knots and rolling wildly. Wind and sea increasing and again nowhere to go if we needed to hide. I called it off after a particularly nasty roll thar nearly flooded the cockpit and we then had the reverse problem but at least under control. We crept into a private jetty owned by a fish hatchery and sailed alongside where we now sit waiting for the next tide. The equation gets complicated – we clearly can’t make headway in the prevailing conditions – we’ve tried both with and against the current – and there seems to be no break for at least a few days. And we just got passed by R2ache. We’ll watch and see how they go. And there is a deer on shore close by. ————————————————- 

We’ve been finding a bit of evidence about how violent those rolls were. Big standing waves, VG hitting them at 8ish knots and rolling about 80 degrees. We found things that had jumped off shelves with 4 inch high netting and lodged across the boat just below the shelves on the other side. We almost filled the cockpit a couple of times. Nothing I could do – 2 reefs and about a quarter headsail. VG needs a third reef-- As a verb – to shorten sail, to use reefing lines or other techniques to make the working part of a sail smaller and so reduce its power as the wind rises. --- As a noun, (1) the part of the sail that has been shortened, folded or rolled. May be referred to as a slab or a slab reef which is a particular way of forming a reef. -- As a noun (2) – a bank of coral, rocks or other obstruction usually close to a shoreline and potentially dangerous to sailors. and we’ll get that done when we can. We probably hit the worst point of wind and current – science is about observation, hypothesis and testing. Coming back here was also interesting – same standing waves, wind dead astern, incipient gybeGybe - A sailing term for turning the boat so that the stern passes through the wind. Potentially dangerous if not controlled because the wind can fill an uncontrolled mainsail from the wrong side and crash it across the boat, possibly causing damage to the rig and anyone getting in the way. all the time and making about a knot-- Speed: definition of speed at sea. One knot is one nautical mile per hour. The nautical mile is about 1.15 % longer than the "statute" mile used on land. A knot is about half a metre per second. -- A knot is also the result of winding a rope around itself or another rope to make a join or a loop . . Lowest I saw was 0,2 knots. We kept as close inshore as seemed safe – the current marginally less but violent rips in places. Fun, but also a bit scary. I was able to sail alongside the dock un der fully sheeted main with a margin of speed just in case. Bit of a bumpy but safe arrival. We’re now happily tied up to the private dock and we’ll stay here at least till this evening’s forecast. Lesson from playtime is that anything over 20 kots on the nose and against the stream is likely to be too much for VG. The owner’s representative visited us and gave us tacit permission to hang about. Apparently, they built the dock 6 months ago and we are the third boat to use it. Yay. We have a resident otter who has left us half a biggish fish and will no doubt be back to claim it. Packet soup is way too salty. Medicinal compounds soon to alleviate dehydration. ————————————————-

We are tied on the inside of a little floating pontoon by the grace of the owners. It seemed safe enough when we arrived yesterday but it is completely open to any waves and swell coming from the north. It’s 0200ish now and for some of the last couple of hours we have been grey knuckled trying to save the boat from bashing herself to bits on the pontoon. Dangerous and unfunny. There has been a series of big waves coming across the channel and VG and the pontoon have been violently out of phase and our puny fenders have barely coped. By a bit of inspired luck, I brought a pair of heavy mooring line snubbers from Oz and we have them woven into our bow and stern lines and I think they saved the boat tonight. So far…They are rubber cylinders that absorb the impact load when the boat and the pontoon move in opposite directions. VG weighs about 2 tons and without the snubbers would for sure have broken free and ended up on the rocks a few metres away. The snubbers and our springs. But my knuckles are still grey and the night isnt over yet. Watch this space. And you might be wondering why we don’t just anchor when things get pearshaped. VG’s anchor rode is about 200 feet of chain and rope. That means we can safely anchor in about 50 ft of water if the current isn’t too fierce. In these channels, the sides are rocky, sometimes cliffs, and they plunge sometimes almost vertically to more that 300 ft in places. We have to find sheltered shallow water to anchor and that’s why we are being very careful about not getting caught by a reversal of a 5 knot-- Speed: definition of speed at sea. One knot is one nautical mile per hour. The nautical mile is about 1.15 % longer than the "statute" mile used on land. A knot is about half a metre per second. -- A knot is also the result of winding a rope around itself or another rope to make a join or a loop . current with nowhere to go. We can only heathfart at about 2 knots and only sustain that for a couple of hours. Is, could you please confirm that these silly ramblings are actually reaching the blog?

Messy!

It’s all a bit of a blur. We left our uncomfortable pontoon in full heathfart middayish yesterday aiming for Browns Bay and hooningAs far as I can gather, if Berri were a horse, she’d have the bit between her teeth to be hooning down on the current. Wind and sail. The last point to be rounded before Browns looked rather nasty on Navionics current predictions and we needed to wait for slack high water to round it. Sailed into a tiny bay and anchored within a boatlength of rocky beach, trees and singing birds. Lovely spot. We tried to time our departure to get us to the point at slack but clearly left too early and we’re in danger of being swept past the very tricky entrance. Luckily a little tugboat came up and we asked for a tow. One man crew, fully in charge of his vessel and he idled his massive engine into Browns and he lobbed us gently onto an empty jetty where we now sit. Exquisitely skilful. Thank you Mr Lundqvist! Not sure how the photos will post but there’s an otter at the end of the discharge pipe on or pontoon, Angry Beaver in the far distance heading south with lovely mountain backdrop, our yellow mooring buoy in Menzies Bay, Megan fully relaxed and our little bay and the tugboat Broughton Warrior. Also a resend from Christelle and Kristian, two friendly canoists we met just before Porlier a few days ago. Thanks, you two! There’s a webcam at Browns Bay but it just misses VG…

The old proverb that a coward dies a thousand times while the brave die once has always seemed to me to be back to front. Apart from the fact that cowardice is an outdated concept, courage is about knowing it’s going to be nasty but doing it anyway. I’ve been sitting here pondering this silliness as we wait for our moment of furious activity getting out of here and thinking about everything that can go wrong. Catastrophising madly and watching every tiny change in wind direction and strength and the turmoil of waters a quarter of a mile out. It usually helps to have thought through foreseeable disasters but it doesn’t alleviate the slightly corrosive dread that comes with the anticipation of possible nastiness. Anyways, we’re all poised to heathfart wildly into whatever the ExaminerShe who asks awkward questions of the crew and tests them with difficult tasks. chucks into the harbour entrance at about 1230. So far, it looks a bit better than yesterday and we’ve turned VG around to the other side of our jetty so she doesn’t get pinned like yesterday. Our Narrows window opens at about 1300 which is, in theory, slack water but we’ve noticed some deviation from the current predictions we are able to access. We’ll see. In the photo VGs roller furlerA device fitted around the length of the forestay(s) of a sailing yacht that enables the crew to roll the headsail partially around the forestay and so make its effective area smaller (the same as reefing) or to roll it up completely (furling it). The sail would be furled when at anchor or otherwise not being used. There is a full description here . is just visible against the buildings far left and there are a couple of tugs pulling a huge log raft towards the Narrows in the distance. Narrows entrance is half a mile to the left of the photo

We got I to Comox late on Thursday after a difficult beat down from Campbell River and around Cape Lazo. W weren’t sure whether we could cross the Comox bar but, as it turned out, the channel was well marked and relatively easy. Comox is a fishing town and fully touristy too. We are in the fishing boat harbour with industrial sized cleats and other fittings and we have our motor back! Yay. Megan left yesterday for the bus to Nanaimo, ferry to Van, bus to the airport and Alaska Air cargo Depot and collected it and arrived back with it’s big ass box this afternoon. She’d lugged its 70 pounds across Van and the ferry with an overnight in Nanaimo and the final bus and was knackered. We cured that with appropriate medical draughts and we are now waiting for a favourable wind for Nanaimo. Looks like another day here. We’ll need the motor, I think, as we will probably need to avoid a military practice zone on the way. Meantime, Comox has an appropriate dispensary for an excellent prescription from the DoctorGuinness in Dublin.

More Mota-ing. Without her, we’d still be in Comox but we wouldn’t have buzzy feet. 12 hours of the little darling is a bit of a trial. Here we are in Sidney – last stop before the US border and the TSA. We plan to cross and into Friday Harbour tomorrow if they will let us in. Yesterday, we got to Dodd Narrows about half an hour before slack and stuck VG’s delicate nose into the current and decided to bale. Current running at about 5 kts and with some attitude. Again about 15 min later, same result but current slowing. Both times we were spewed out at over 7 kts. Third time lucky and we crept through at about 2 kts with Mota Lisa at warp revs. Old Fart ready to leap for the oars if Mota hiccupped but all went well and grey knuckles gradually returned to normal. Then to our friendly jetty in Trincomali Channel just south of Porlier Pass for the night, where the old fart had a missunderstanding with our obliging rubber bucket. Off again at 0500 to here. Flat calm. Photos show Dodd Narrows playtime and Megan’s new friend Lila, a cuddly local fluffball, who visited us on the jetty.

Was probably a Greek sailor working for the King of Spain who might have sailed into the Strait named after him – by an Englishman, based on the journal of another Englishman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_Fuca And the ExaminerShe who asks awkward questions of the crew and tests them with difficult tasks. seems to like the place too. It drains the waters of the Salish Sea into the Pacific and it has some interesting tidal and meteorological quirks. Shipping lanes everywhere and big ships doing 25 knots. We’ve crossed it twice in each direction, each time with attendant drama. The first 3 are buried in the back reaches of this blog but the last one was yesterday. 0445 departure from Friday Harbour captured in the webcam screenshot, courtesy of one of our friends – at about half what had been a huge tide tide on the ebb, glassy calm and we still had the fenders over the port side. Masthead light and what I think is the GPS screen clearly visible, Lopez Island middle distance across San Juan Channel and Blakely, Cypress and Guemes islands just poking up over Lopez and possibly Mount Vernon about 35 miles away in the far distance. Small fishing boat in the channel. Out through Cattle Pass on the last of the ebb with attendant whirlpools and sluices and off towards Smith Island. Grey, cold and drizzly, cloudbase 500 feet or so and no wind on a lumpy sea. Mota pottering at half revs, misty visibility all the way across to Whidbey Island and Port Townsend. Enter the ExaminerShe who asks awkward questions of the crew and tests them with difficult tasks. with her leathers and test kit. Mota Lisa making about 3 kts in the lumps and rolls so very slow uncomfortable progress and as we got to Smith, the cloudbase dropped to water level and we were in fog – ok to start with and visibility a couple of miles but it really socked in as we approached Partridge Point on Whidbey. Slow progress put us in maximum ebb current in Admiralty Inlet. The tide was flowing at 4.5 knots so it became a looong ferry glide across to Point Wilson – perhaps 4.5 hours to cover 4 miles with about 40 degrees of drift. Assuming Mota Lisa was giving us 5 knots at her best revs, that’s about 22 miles through the water. As an ancient aviator, drift is easy as long as there are visual reference points – I’m not much good at it in fog. The GPS lubber line is too insensitive for me to pick the early signs of wander and we did not have the big compass set up. Silly old fart didn’t think of it. So we wandered all over the place. Fog gradually lifted so we were able to see and avoid a big container ship and a tug with a long line towing a huge barge and a couple of ferries we knew were there via the Marine Traffic app. Tangled masses of very long kelpTypes of brown algae, which hold on to the rocky sea bottom with root-like structures. Floats in huge mats close to land and potentially capable of fouling a propeller or a rudder. More here (Wikipedia) in the current swirls. Finally into PT and up to friend’s mooring at Port Hadluck.(thanks you two:)) We shared the very last dose of the Dublin doctorGuinness’s prescribed medication. About 10 hours of fun for her in the leathers. Life, the Universe and our towels. Virus-free. www.avg.com <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

We set off from Nome in Berrimilla for the Bering Strait and the Northwest Passage. We had heard that the ice was breaking up at Point BarrowPoint Barrow or Nuvuk is a headland on the Arctic coast in the U.S. state of Alaska. It is the northernmost point of all the territory of the United States. More on wikipedia and it seemed time to leave. This is what it looks like along the breakwater today. Interesting day for a sail. I doubt we’d have sailed in this stuff in 2008. Virus-free. www.avg.com <#m_5911423379156649913_m_6883909018885569200_DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

Beside a remote bit of road on the way out to Cape Nome, there are two faded wooden grave markers. They are the only signs that people once lived out there. It’s bleak and windswept and, in winter, unsurvivable. Their story has died along with the people who knew them. Above them, silhouetted against the sky high on a ridge, there are five weather-beaten wooden crosses. They mark the repatriated remains of people who lived on Sledge Island and in other native villages and whose remains were collected and exhibited for the supposedly civilised curious to study and to stare at in the Smithsonian and other museums. Their descendants have brought them back and tried to give them peace. From their graves on a clear day there’s a magnificent view along the coast to Sledge Island and Cape Rodney 30 miles away. And for the geocachers, there’s a geocache up on the ridge not far away. Peace is a relative concept. Nearby, musk ox live on the tundra – shaggy survivors with dense layered furry pelts that protect them in the icy winters. They shed some of it in summer and it is collected and spun and woven into warm gloves and hats by the local people. It is called qiviut. Along the Nome waterfront, there’s a massive breakwater made from huge granite boulders blasted from Cape Nome. There are homeless people living under plastic sheets in the spaces between the rocks. In winter, when the sea is frozen, there’s a shelter and food for them overnight in town but they are out in the cold during the day. Grim existence.

Ugly Bob progresses. We hoisted the sail yesterday just to check that the rig works as intended. He’d be pretty except for the big crease in the sail – needs more tension along the gaff, I think.However, a ConsultationA regular engagement with alcohol. One might say this whole epic is a Consultation with a bit of a sail round it. See also Conservation Mode; Linear and Parallel Methods of Consultation occurred and Medicinal Compound was prescribed and administered. Thanks to Dutch Bob for the photos. Today, the ugly one gets turned over again to finish glassing his centerboard case and to have his bottom painted. Sadly, I think a sail around Sledge Island will be an island too far this time but he’ll be just about ready to go when I leave. Virus-free. www.avg.com <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

The boat is a Cape Barren Goose – also a JoubertJoubert, Peter: mechnical engineer, specialising in fluid mechanics, now retired. Highly respected sailor and designer of the Brolga and other yachts; many mentions but see 115; Pete’s meeting with him, 122 design, a bigger, fatter version of B2 with a centre cockpit. There were only nine built, all by Geoff Baker, so not very common and seldom on the market. I think she weighs in at about 22 tons – a lot of boat. I’ve been asked to help sail her down from Port Stephens to Melbourne next month. Potentially an interesting trip given the current La Nina conditions. There aren’t too many bolt holes in Bass Strait if it goes pearshaped but a good boat for it. Watch this space