the week ending 10dec23


I haven't been onboard this week, due solely to the fact that she lays some 300k from where I live. 
I do have good news though, and that is that this week I took formal ownership of JS and am about to secure the Clareville Beach mooring. The very same Clareville Beach from where Ann Gash departed and returned from her solo circumnavigation.
I have new lateral chainplates to install too, so apart from shipping safety gear (flares, vhf & ?), I just need to overhaul the anchoring gear and  ready for sea. SydHarb is just 16nm, head to head, so a solid halfday's sail could see us swanning around under the coathanger. Apart from getting under sail and testing her out, the under the bridge sail is the only immediate goal I have for JS. Taking a dump out the front of government house and Vaucluse mansions are two other perverse pleasures I may take part in, though l will need to mind the Fun Police. 
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Yesterday I avoided 42° heat inland by escaping to the coast just near where I will be moored up here. There were a scant few sailboats despite of being lovely and just 2 weeks before Christmas. 
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Sailors up north are under the pump with the imminent arrival of a cyclone named Jasper. The BOM is providing hourly updates and its still three days from landfall, so I'm not hopeful for sailors near Cairns of having an easy time of it
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At my sons insistence I visited a local antiques store this week. There was a goodly supply of nautical paraphernalia like brass portholes, glass buoys, ensigns, ships bells and the odd brass compass as well as a brace of sailing books. I managed to get a 1966 second edition of Robert Manry's "Tinkerbelle" that i have read electronically many times. But with this crusty old hardback, I can curl up in my cot with a coffee in a windswept anchorage, and enjoy an old-fashioned good read.

Take weather care

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