01 September 2013





The newly cleaned out engine bay, waiting for the new engine to go in.

Newcastle

Here at last on the start of my long voyage, in Newcastle where I will stay until summer and get some work done on Chiara Stella.

The day sail up was fantastic from a sailing point of view -- good winds in the early morning, which died out in the late morning but by about 2pm we had moderate south easterlies which enabled us to put up the big asymmetric spinnaker I had made earlier in the year, which really cut through the miles.

It's an enormous sail, but the sailing angles we can use it at are fairly limited.  Fortunately for us the wind stuck to those angles for most of the afternoon.  We pulled it down about a half hour before sunset so we could go on the easier to handle sails for the trip into Newcastle, and in fact we motored for the last 20 minutes or so.

Pete and Taryn came along for the trip, and although Taryn was seasick for most of the trip I think everyone mostly had a good time.

Chiara Stella is going up on the slip at Newcastle to get work done tomorrow morning, and I will head back to Sydney before coming back here next week.