Sunday 27th July Trial Bay to Coffs

Weighed anchor after the recovery breakfast and enjoyed a couple of hours of great sailing in 15 knots of Westerly. Of course it couldn’t last. The breeze died and engines had to be started. This confirms ‘Truswell’s Standard’ which states that any coastal cruising boat has its engines on 80% of the time. If you’re not trying to get somewhere because of tide, weather or the closing time of the local pub then you’re charging batteries or heating water. No one has accused us of being purists. Firstly this is a substantial catamaran. It has fridges, freezers, electric winches ( well, one ) three laptops, three GPS units, three radios, two TVs, three electric toilets, a myriad of pumps, an electric piano, radar, a microwave, air conditioning and a device of Lil’s which we won’t discuss here. Somewhere, powering all this stuff, are eight truck batteries. These need charging and given the state of the Fischer-Panda genset, which isn’t the best advert for German technology, (‘Vorsprung dur schititself’) the main engines have to be exercised regularly. No wonder its 2 nil to the good guys’ world warwise.
The usual dodging of whales and fish traps saw us into Coffs at 2pm. The berth assigned to us wouldn’t have accommodated a toothpick so we appropriated something more fitting and are currently crushing fenders against the end of the dock in the 30 knot breeze.
Caught up with Craig and Louise Bowen and Cate and Des Taylor for cocktails at the Royal Coffs Yacht Club and are now in possession of Dessie’s Audi Turbo Diesel. Thank you Des, very generous. As yet we haven’t siphoned the tank to replenish those on Twin Spirit and we probably won’t because we had a meeting of the Twin Spirit ethics committee and decided it would be wrong.
On the way back from the club Curvy was attacked by an Owl that she was attempting to photograph. With eyes like that you wouldn’t like flash photography either, not to mention the owl; it had two goes at her and we recorded 2.5 on the Pamometer, not a personal best but the day’s record.