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| Early Morning Light |
Sailing at last - Fremantle to Bunbury!
We departed the Fremantle Sailing Club (FSC) harbor before
dawn on New Year’s day for the 35 mile sail south to Mandurah. We departed at 5 am to catch the morning
easterly winds. The east wind was predicted to shift to the south at noon, and it did. It was just a fantastic,
ideal day of sailing and we arrived Mandurah midday. By evening several other FSC boats joined us in the anchorage. We were part of the group heading south during the holiday
season.
With several mornings of lovely
easterly winds forecast, it was an excellent time to go south. The predominate summer wind pattern here is
easterly winds in the morning, and southerly ‘sea breeze’ winds in the
afternoon and evenings. The southerlies
can be quite strong, more of a gale than a breeze at times. Regardless of strength, wind from the south
makes it difficult to sail south, and certainly uncomfortable as the seas tend
to be rather lumpy along the coast when the south wind blows!
Cockburn sound is the body of water just outside of the
harbor, and it is quite shallow, so Katmai must use the channel that is dredged
for cargo ships for at least part of the way.
You can see our zigzag in the first part of the trip as we sail out of
the harbor. Once we rounded the north
end of Garden Island, it was a lovely beam reach between the two reef complexes
until it was time to make the turn in to Mandurah and anchor off of Robert Point. It is fantastic to sail as the
sunrises; it is so peaceful.
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| FSC sailboats at anchor with us off Mandurah for the evening of 1 January 2017 |
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| Sunset at Robert Point, Mandurah. |
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| People fishing on the spit at Robert Point, Mandurah |
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| Enjoying the evening in the cockpit |
That evening at anchor was just fantastic with a light
breeze to cool us off from the days' heat, and a nice sunset with fishers and
walkers silhouetted on the beach.
Mandurah to Bunbury
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Koniara left with us just before sunrise.
Here her sails glow in the pre-dawn
light of 2 Jan 2017
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The next morning, January 2nd, we again departed
before sunrise, about 4:30 am with several other FSC boats. It was a magical ride down the coast on
easterly winds that ranged from 10-25 knots.
We were inside of the main reef complex called the ‘Boulevards’.
We did however keep out eye on the depth
sounder at all times as we had about 20 feet under the keel the whole way. It was once of the nicest sails we ever had,
with perfect weather, incredible scenery of the sand dunes along the coast,
porpoise, flat seas and turquoise blue water, friends sailing along in their
boats and lovely warm light.
We arrived in Bunbury about 1 pm. It was a lovely 50 mile sail. There were already several FSC boats here,
including ‘Divided Sky and ‘John Barley Corn’.
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We passed by 50 miles of amazing
coastal sand dunes on the way to Bunbury
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By evening, Miss Saigon, Koniara, Pegasus II, Eucalypt and Celeste were
all anchored and we did what cruising sailors all over the world do….we took our
tender inflatables to shore and shared a few drinks and appetizers and enjoyed the
lovely company of friends both old and new.
We plan on staying here for two nights and then returning to
Fremantle on Wednesday. It will give
some time to fish and crab and perhaps take a swim!
Meanwhile the big job of preparing the hatch hardware to receive new lenses commenced. The hatches were cleaned, serviced and all the old silicone removed in preparation of bedding the new lenses. We used the recommendations from Tony again, and bedded the main deck hatch new lenses with Sika 295UV and applied the manufacturer recommended primers etc. For the small side portlights we installed the new lenses using Dow 795, the same product that is used to attach windows into skyscrapers, that should be good enough for us!
