Sailing on North Harbour
Jul. 13th, 2014 02:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranThis week, we've abandoned the familiar beaches and waterways of southern Sydney and driven an hour north until we've reached ... the beaches and waterways of northern Sydney. Here we are at Little Manly Beach, about to have a sail on North Harbour...
Here's the dinghy we'll be sailing: an RS Vision. It's bigger than anything I've sailed before, but extremely stable and great for beginners.
As it turns out though, it's going to be a day for working rather than relaxing. Once we're out of Little Manly Cove, the wind starts gusting up to twenty knots. Sailing a dinghy in gusty winds is an intense experience. Each time a big gust hits, we usually end up with one rail in the water, and have no choice but to release the mainsheet and turn up into the wind to depower the sails. But then, of course, as soon as the sails stop working, we need to turn back away from the wind and haul in the sheet as the boat starts tipping the other way. At first, we started fishtailing wildly whenever a gust hit, but with time I started to get the hang of it and we managed a semi-respectable course across the harbour (and then promptly capsized when we got hit by a bigger gust than expected). It was fun, but exhausting work, and we had to take a lot of breaks. Here's a shot from one of them, looking towards Dobroyd Point. We heard from another sailor later that he saw a pod of 10-15 dolphins heading towards us, but we never saw them.
And here we are looking out past the Sydney Heads at the open sea. To the left, you can see the old Quarantine Station at North Head, where passengers from quarantined ships were kept. Now, it's a tourist attraction and hotel. To the right, you can see South Head. The narrow gap between the two heads is the entrance to the whole of Sydney Harbour, which explains why Cook managed to miss it on his way north from Botany Bay. And in the middle is the ocean. Another adventure for another day...
Here's the dinghy we'll be sailing: an RS Vision. It's bigger than anything I've sailed before, but extremely stable and great for beginners.
As it turns out though, it's going to be a day for working rather than relaxing. Once we're out of Little Manly Cove, the wind starts gusting up to twenty knots. Sailing a dinghy in gusty winds is an intense experience. Each time a big gust hits, we usually end up with one rail in the water, and have no choice but to release the mainsheet and turn up into the wind to depower the sails. But then, of course, as soon as the sails stop working, we need to turn back away from the wind and haul in the sheet as the boat starts tipping the other way. At first, we started fishtailing wildly whenever a gust hit, but with time I started to get the hang of it and we managed a semi-respectable course across the harbour (and then promptly capsized when we got hit by a bigger gust than expected). It was fun, but exhausting work, and we had to take a lot of breaks. Here's a shot from one of them, looking towards Dobroyd Point. We heard from another sailor later that he saw a pod of 10-15 dolphins heading towards us, but we never saw them.
And here we are looking out past the Sydney Heads at the open sea. To the left, you can see the old Quarantine Station at North Head, where passengers from quarantined ships were kept. Now, it's a tourist attraction and hotel. To the right, you can see South Head. The narrow gap between the two heads is the entrance to the whole of Sydney Harbour, which explains why Cook managed to miss it on his way north from Botany Bay. And in the middle is the ocean. Another adventure for another day...
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Date: 2014-07-19 05:46 am (UTC)Little Manly Cove is, I have to say, a rather amusing name.
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Date: 2014-07-19 06:44 am (UTC)Recovering from a capsize is quite easy if you have two people (which we did). First, we jumped into the water and made sure that all the sails were loose, then Tania (my crew) floated inside the boat and held on to one of the toe-straps, while I climbed up on the centreboard (which serves the role of a keel) until the boat righted itself. Because Tania was floating inside the hull, she was scooped up as it righted and she was then able to help me climb up over the stern. (There was one trick when we did this, and that was that as soon as the boat righted itself, it immediately tried to pivot around me in the wind. Luckily our instructor was there to warn us this would happen and we simply waited for the boat to turn before I tried to get back on board.
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Date: 2014-07-26 01:01 am (UTC)