The Past Month
Last month we had a particularly vigorous start to the sailing season, especially with the dinghies. As soon as school was back, the trusty little Pacers graced the inlet on Wednesdays for the school teams training. Saturdays & Sundays saw the boats hauled from their roosts again for the ‘learn to sail’ weekends culminating in the graduation of promising new sailors including the Naval Cadets. A great credit to Scott to see the young sailor members grow from four to forty in four years.
WAGS has been well attended with a great range of members boats and crews eager to improve their skills. The ‘backpacker’ crew members, while not in great numbers this time of the year, are welcome ‘deck candy’ and often good sailors as well.
The first race of the season, Lindsay Joice Series race 1 to Fitzroy saw six boats start in virtually no wind drifting out to sea on an outgoing tide only to be met by a southeasterly of up to 28kts across Mission Bay then thrashed by drenching rain squalls before creeping into the anchorage at Fitzroy. Three boats stayed overnight joined by two other club boats which, thanks to ‘Snowy’ and his ‘one man band’ led to a pretty lively evening ashore. The sail home was a huge contrast to the race out, fair winds and a following sea were the order of the day. A late breakfast at Turtle Bay and a cool off in the freshwater pools were a fantastic start to a spirited sail home.
Already this Month
Lindsay Joice Series – Race 2 on Saturday. Also started with no wind and a drifting match out to sea on an outgoing tide. After bobbing around for half an hour, a north-easterly snuck in, a quick change of course by the fabulous Coast Guard volunteers and we were on our way. A pretty exciting start with a lot of boats trying to figure out what ‘barging’ meant to them. By the time they had extracted themselves from their foul air on the starboard tack, a couple of small boats had sneaked in behind on a port tack and clear air. Apart from the leader, it took the rest of the big boats the remaining four laps to overtake the little guys. The full range of spinnaker setting techniques were on display from wine-glass to advanced wine-glass and the occasional dip in the briny, but I think everyone got one up at some stage with the most agile getting one up (and down) four times. A beautiful day and such a pleasure to have a consistent breeze of 12-14kts.
Barging refresher – Simply put, the windward boats (blue) have to give way to the leeward (red). The red boats can point as high as possible to squeeze the blue boats out of the start.
School Team Sailing – Sunday. Drizzling rain couldn’t dampen the spirits of the young sailors as they rigged the worthy Pacers for round two of the battle between schools from Atherton, Tulley, Saints & TAS. The 24 scheduled races started well, but then the Inlet sent in a few tricks. Firstly, no wind then, the outgoing tide which dragged unsuspecting calm water sailors into buoys and over the start line before they were ready. A severe shortage of wind toward the end of the day meant that only 18 races could be completed. Huge thanks to all our volunteers who prepared umpteen burgers in an attempt to fill the void that is young sailors tummies. Thanks also the the SES volunteers that honed their boating skills ferrying all the crews in and out all day. An excellent service especially when it appeared they were wearing Antarctic survival suits in 35°C heat.
Gold Fleet –
• Atherton Blitz – 6 wins
• Atherton Thunder – 3 wins
• TAS 1 – 3 wins
• Tableland Tigers – 0 wins
Silver Fleet –
• Tully – 3 wins
• TAS 2 – 2 wins
• Saints 1 – 1 win
• Saints 2 – 0 wins
The competition moves on to Mission Beach next weekend for the finals. Townsville teams will join the Northern teams for this event on the 11th – 12th March.
The Rest of this Month
- Sailing Committee: Tuesday 7th at 5:30 pm at the Club rooms. All welcome.
- Ellis Beach Opening 18th & 19th. A fun weekend for the whole family. The Lasers will be there for another Laser challenge. If you talk nicely to the young boys with the cats you could get a wild ride, if not then just relax in the superb surroundings, have a chat, a beer, and a BBQ. Stay overnight, bring a tent, there might even be a starry night.
- Lindsay Joice Series – Race 3 Double Island Race – Race 1 SUNDAY 12th Double Island race.
- Lindsay Joice Series – continues on the 25th, Race 4 – Another Lady Skipper’s race. Time to be empowered. Get the owner on the fore-deck for a change.
- DISCOVER SAILING DAY – 1st April – Early indications are for a big turnout so here’s the chance to come down and show the curious what a great little Club we have and what a fantastic activity sailing is for the whole family. From 8 to 80+ it’s the only sport that is all inclusive. A great opportunity for keelboat skippers to encourage people to become active crew members.
- WAGS: Every Wednesday. Attention Attention. You don’t have to take the rum if you win. This age-old tradition has been replaced by… well it’s your choice, Vodka has found favour with some, or a couple of bottles of wine can be had to compliment your cellar. Course “C” has been given a pretty hard workout due to cruise ships in the inlet.
- Sailablity is every Tuesday & Thursday with Endeavour Foundation every 2nd Tuesday. We need volunteers to help out especially for the Endeavour Foundation group so make sure you put the dates in your diary, great if you could be there at 2 pm to help rig the boats.
For more information on what is happening, please check out the facebook groups
General Notices –
Margie is still waiting to sell you the CYC T-shirts & hats. We all need to dress up for the Discover Sailing day so go along and get your gear.
Serious Notices from Capt. John, the Commodore
As you will have noticed the port is getting busier and will continue to do so as time goes on. I have been sitting on the Ports advisory board now for the past two and half years, which not only has been enlightening, but advantageous as far as the CYC is concerned. Over that time we have had our share of incidents on the water that more than likely have gone unnoticed, especially by the perpetrators, due to the relationship I have built with MSQ and Ports North, which means I get the phone, call not the Harbourmaster, when a report goes in. This is why we have to ensure that all boats in the CYC have adequate radios, have them on, in a position to hear a transmission and comply. Radio licence is run by the Coast Guard, do you have one? Why not?
Some members, I feel, still think this is funny. I assure you it’s very serious and I’m getting tired of putting the fires out. You are putting not only yourselves at risk, but it could lead to the cancellation of the CYC aquatic license, that means no more sailing within port limits. The non free gas on board ships that come in require clear channel ( always ) between C16 -C20 VTS had four warning transmissions on Wednesday relating to the tanker that arrived during WAGS, who heard them?
All transmissions and replies are recorded along with video out to C1. (Big Brother is watching you, for your safety of course.)
There are 59 cruise ships scheduled for this year.. all require 50 m exclusion zone, that’s why we now cannot have a course with Warners buoy as this takes the fleet toward the cruise ship. Also our aquatic license states that all markers and/or buoys set for a yacht race must be marked in a way that is not to be confused with port nav marks and must be removed within one hour of race completion. Warner has spent the night out there on more than one occasion. I get the call, and thanks to WAZZA, he retrieves it. It is also in the way of departing ships.
Not so Serious Notices from Capt. John, the Commodore
The feedback from a Ports North, Harbourmaster, MSQ (Marine Safety Queensland) has been excellent, they all acknowledged the step up in junior, SWD sailing over the recent months and were impressed with the dinghies on the water over the weekend supporting Ports North logos on their sails
They also recognised the fact we had changed our (WAGS) set course away from the cruise boats when they are alongside.
To date, the largest cruise liner to berth was 274m, almost 100m longer than a year ago.
The shade area for the SWD has been knocked back, with the restricted view from the viewing platform being the issue
Roof extension to the boat shed to replace the sail is still with the umpire, that area was an addition to the club after it was built to allow dinghies to be stored with their masts up. I’m suggesting we now can stack the boats with the masts removed, they haven’t said no but has been a hard one to push over the line.
They (Ports North ) remind me, and rightly so, what we have is a boat shed and that’s all it will ever be, so we need to utilise what we have for now.
Capt Michael Barnett the current Harbourmaster would like to see what MSQ can do to assist the CYC moving forward. They have now taken a keen interest in recreational sailing in Cairns, he noted the date of our discover sailing day and would like to bring their educational caravan down to the club for all visitors to go through.
I think we have obviously impressed the powers to be by what we are doing and it’s fantastic to have the support they are offering, Capt Michael said they are there to help in any way they can.
My feeling it’s important for the CYC to continue to have a media profile to show that we are active and very much alive, without going overboard.
Tips & Tricks
True Wind vs Apparent Wind. = Brain freeze. Sorry, I’ll try to explain.
True wind is what you feel when you are standing still. If there is no wind and you start moving there is still no “true wind” but you feel a breeze coming from in front of you, that is Apparent Wind.
To sail anywhere you need a good dose of True Wind, the boat starts to move so now we have a combination of our movement and the True Wind. The faster we go the more the Apparent Wind moves toward the front. You trim the sails to the Apparent Wind. The neat trick here is that if you have a fast boat like a cat the wind from the side (true) and the wind from the front can make the wind on the boat and in the sails (apparent) stronger so you can go faster that the true wind. EXCEPT (sorry to mess with you) if the wind is from directly behind when your movement forward cancels out the true wind speed from behind. You can never go faster than the true wind directly downwind. That’s why you see fast boats “gybing” downwind. They avoid going directly downwind so their speed makes the apparent wind become a reach. They have to sail further but they are doing it faster.
OK, if this has confused you. Next month we will have vector diagrams and mathematical formulae. You could also check this out but I got confused when they started talking about taking your jacket off??
What are you doing this Easter?
Here is a fantastic opportunity to sail on a (almost) tall ship. Sail in the Brisbane to Gladstone race on ‘South Passage’. If you read last months account of sailing on HMB Endeavour, here is your chance to get something similar.
Cairns Yacht Club Newsletter 