Hi All fellow sailors,
I am thinking of bringing a boat from Central Coast NSW to Sunshine Coast QLD. Does anyone did that passage non-stop?
Thanks for sharing experiences.
Cheers,
Edward

Hi Gurdian,

The trip you propose can be done in one leg but a lot depends on many variables.

We usually go from Sydney to Qld with just one stop at Coffs but in the right conditions you can stop in lots of other places.

Without knowing about you or your boat and what crew you will have on board it is hard to give a fairly decent answer.

If your an experienced sailor, the boat is in good nick, you have crew and the weather is right there is no reason why you cant do the trip in one hop.

The trip can be tiring as you have to mostly stay close to the coast to avoid the EAC and in a few places it can still work against you.

One advantage of the northern leg is that the scenery is quite spectacular at times compared to being well offshore for the southern leg.

Thanks for the replies. The boat in question is a 26 footer, good state, unfortunately I don't have much time to bring it home hence the question. Re: my experience, I have been sailing since I was 11 primarily dinghy racing, some offshore racing too overseas. But never did the passage I have mentioned before.
Thanks all again!
Edward

Hi Ramona, it is a folkboat.
Cheers,
Edward

Gaudian said..
Hi Ramona, it is a folkboat.
Cheers,
Edward

Just one of my Folkboat heroes.

www.smh.com.au/national/this-sailing-granny-went-solo-20060620-gdnshc.html

Folk Boats have a very good reputation..........................as sea kindly boats with following winds!!!

I have never heard it said that they punch to windward well in a chop.

Winds on the east coast of Aus are generally from the North this time of year and the East Australian Current is always from the North. It just varies in strength.

Does the Folk Boat in question have a good strong RELIABLE diesel engine that will push her along at 4.5 knots at least???? If not I would not attempt the journey. The EAC can run at that speed and does come right in to the coast at certain points such as Smokey Cape.

Just ask MorningBird about his 6 hour watch getting past that particular point Easter last year.

You may be able to achieve the passage if you hug the coast very closely and get into the backwash but with northerlies around 10 knots during the day, expect to get 20 to 25 knots from 2 pm onward to dark as the afternoon seabreeze kicks in. This is the time you tack offshore so that during the night you are well clear of land.

This of course will put you beam on to the EAC and you may well lose the ground you made during the day. After two weeks of that you may run out of food and water.

Being a Folk Boat, pardon me for making the assumption that it is not equipped with the latest in electronic navigation enhancements such as tiller pilot interfaced with chart plotter. That being the case I suggest attempting this voyage single handed is sheer madness, two handed is still crazy unless both hands are young, fit and have wisdom beyond their years and three handed is doable with meticulous provisioning, deep trust of the crew members in each other and a very thorough preparation of the vessel.

Make of that what you will but that formula has worked for HaveFun, MorningBird and Cisco twice so far, the first time Easter last year on a vessel we were all new to from Lake Macquarie to Bundaberg on a 30 footer and last month from Sydney to Lord Howe Island and back on a 34 footer.

You are new to the forum Gaudian and seem not to be familiar with Australian conditions. One of those conditions that most Brits and Euros fail to understand about Australia is "The Tyranny of Distance", be it by sea or road. For us a 1,000 klm road journey in one day is not too big a deal. It is about 12 hours in the saddle.

Are you up to the task????

Blondie Hasler is of course one of the more famous Folkboat sailors.

70point8percent.blogspot.com/2008/10/minimalist-cruising-part-two-blondie.html

Mmm, interesting. We have a Northshore 27 and one day hope to sail up to the Whitsunday. Would you say if you could wait until the southerlies kick in over the winter months that it would make it more doable ?

I know what you mean about the north Easters. We had a long trip from Botany Bay to the harbour one time with the with the wind starting off northerly then going more north east. That in combination with a barnacle fouled prop took us forever.

Thanks everyone for the tips. It seems that a trip like this will take more than 7 days, hence I am a bit tight with timeframes. I would love to do it, but I will have to keep on looking for some other boat closer to home.
Ramona great article about Anne Gash, she is indeed a great inspiration!

Whilst on this topic, one day I would love to get some self steering. How would you compare the performance of a full auto pilot versus something like a Hydrovane. Personally I prefer the later as I wouldn't have to upgrade electricals.

I like sailing the boat but don't like to be tied to the tiller, can't think of a better feeling than having something steer the boat on longer voyages. Looks like Hydrovane might cost about 7.5k.

keensailor said..
Whilst on this topic, one day I would love to get some self steering. How would you compare the performance of a full auto pilot versus something like a Hydrovane. Personally I prefer the later as I wouldn't have to upgrade electricals.

I like sailing the boat but don't like to be tied to the tiller, can't think of a better feeling than having something steer the boat on longer voyages. Looks like Hydrovane might cost about 7.5k.

You would be better served with a decent windvane.

www.windpilot.com/n/pdf/bookeng.pdf

For those people into or considering windvanes I would suggest this forum.

www.cruisersforum.com/forums/tags/windvane.html

I'm Ramona there too although I have not posted for awhile. Interestingly I answered a post on the general page from Cisco in 2008!