Having now purchased a new cruising yacht, we needed to move Vestlandskyss from her existing berth in Queensland down to our home in Tasmania, over a thousand miles away. We plan to do this in stages, first down to our old stomping ground of Pittwater in New South Wales, and then across the Bass Strait as time and tide permit.
The most urgent need was to get her off her berth at the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron, because pens there are only for the use of members. We flew up to Brisbane and were joined by our friend Brendon who had agreed to help crew for us, as we needed at least three adults to operate an overnight watch system.
Preparations and Repairs
We had a lot to learn about Vestlandskyss and how she is configured, both in terms of sailing gear and technology. Thankfully, the previous owner, Ruben, had made himself available on WhatsApp and was very helpful in answering our endless questions.
It became clear that our most obvious problems were that neither the water-maker nor the fridge were working, and we would need both of these on passage.
The water-maker, a usually reliable and completely automated Schenker, would not get up to pressure. All of the documentation and troubleshooting in the manuals and online were about the opposite problem, with the pressure being too high. Reuben patiently listened to the symptoms and my thoughts, and suggested that when they had pickled the system on leaving the boat, perhaps one of the hose clamps had not been fully tightened, and some air was getting in. I tightened all of the clamps, and – behold! – we had water.
Vestlandskyss’ 26-year-old original equipment Frigomatic built-in refrigerator proved to be more difficult to fix. Ruben said that it had been working perfectly all the way across the Pacific. I could see and hear that the compressor and fan were running, but the cooling plate inside the fridge remained stubbornly at room temperature. I messed with the thermostat and cycled the power and banged the coils, but to no avail. We left it on for a few days to see if it would reach temperature, using the insulated box to store fresh fruit and vegetables in an attempt to protect them from the fierce Queensland heat. After a couple of days the compressor was running so hot that it cooked the carrots in the bottom of the fridge.
Rather than continue to fuss with it, we disconnected the Frigomatic, bought a camping fridge on sale at Anaconda, and strapped it temporarily to one of the bunks. We’ll sort out the Frigomatic unit later.
We also had a third problem to fix. When the surveyor was walking around the boat, he stepped on one of the many bilge access hatches. These floor panels are designed to be load-bearing, so even though he is quite a heavy-set man there was no reason to expect that the hatch at the bottom of the companionway would suddenly give way beneath him. Since then, we had all fallen in at different times, and had scratched ourselves up quite badly on the keel bolts beneath.
Each hatch is only supported across the short end, and in this one the stepped frame had come away from the deck. We checked around, and some of the other high-traffic hatches were showing similar signs of wear. I bought a length of Tasmanian oak and some Liquid Nails and some wood screws, and Brendon kindly lent us his new power drill, and we beefed them up a bit.
All this time, we had been watching the weather window for our first leg down to Pittwater. We were looking for three days and nights without too much bad weather, because we were keenly aware that we had never sailed this boat before and we had a child aboard who we wanted to enjoy the experience.
We waited a week for the weather to settle. In the meantime, we worked on a few more tasks.
The first time that we used the relatively new gimballed stove, the varnish on the wooden side mounts began to smoke. We found some metal ducting tape at Bunnings, and heat-proofed the wood. Then I relabelled the clutches which were in Norwegian, updated the navigation software, rewired a number of instruments whose switches were broken, and charged up everything that might need charging for the voyage ahead.
It was a Saturday, and we could see a weather window opening within the next week. We had paid for our RQYS berth up until the following Friday, but we badly needed some experience sailing Vestlandskyss before venturing out to sea, so we decided to take a shakedown trip across Moreton Bay to the famed artificial reef at Tangalooma.
Sailing to Moreton Island
And we’re off! The nice couple who share our RQYS pen gave us a hand with the lines because we’re still not sure how our new yacht handles, but we backed out just fine and motored up the channel in light winds.
As we passed Green Island we hoisted the sails in 15-18 knot easterlies. The main went up easily (more easily than on the survey sail, where we found that all the reefing lines were tightly secured). We found that the main was a bit overpowered for the wind speed so we put a reef in, which was a learning exercise because we were not clear which line did what. We had understood that Vestlandskyss had single-line reefing but this did not seem to be the case, we needed to manipulate five different lines along with the main halyard before we got it right. No doubt it will make more sense as we learn how she is set up.
We reefed the furling Genoa too, and Vestlandskyss settled into a lovely smooth 7-8 knots into the easy wind. Because this was a proving and familiarisation run, we experimented with different instrument settings, including a test of the autopilot which was very smooth indeed. We dropped in the Watt & Sea hydro generator and it seemed to be charging the batteries very well indeed. We forgot to lock the oven door, and all the metal trays spilled out as we heeled. You live and learn.
Tangalooma Reef is an attempt to make an artificial breakwater by sinking a load of old surplus ships in a line along the shore of Moreton Island. It was never very successful as a breakwater, but became very popular with snorkelers from the nearby resorts.
The reef is approached by a thin channel between the beach and the Sholl Bank sandbank, and the whole area was packed with yachts, tinnies, power boats, jet skis, resort barges, and swimmers. There was very little room to swing at anchor and we tried a few times to get our position on a narrow contour exactly right to avoid swinging into the sandbank. A couple of times the anchor chain jammed, once because it hadn’t been correctly flaked into the locker, and the next time because it got ahead of itself and several links tried to pass through the gypsy wheel at once, which took a quarter of an hour of disassembly to sort out. All of it just learning about unfamiliar equipment, and we got the job done.
We put out a mermaid line and went for a lovely swim in the warm sea, then spent some time (and more queries to the previous owner) figuring out how to turn on the deck shower. Then dinner at the cockpit table with a glass of wine, as the stars came out.
It wasn’t especially quiet, though. Tangalooma Point is a hive of activity. Jet skis buzzed past on the water, quad bikes on the land. A tourist helicopter, dolphin boats with running commentary. Then, as we put Berrima to bed, the disco started up ashore.
We still weren’t sure about our swing room. We turned on an anchor alarm, and a depth alarm, and a drift alarm, and went to bed. We had to set the limits very tight to be sure that we weren’t going to swing into Sholl Bank and the alarms went off with monotonous regularity all night, which had Bronwyn and Brendon up on deck checking the situation, but I didn’t hear them at all and slept on blissfully unaware. Apart from sleep deprivation, our first night at anchor was a success.
Tangalooma Reef
The main purpose of this part of the trip was to get used to all the equipment, so we spent much of the morning unpacking and installing and wiring up and testing the three ancillary solar panels that were usually stored under the forepeak. Between these and the permanently fixed tilting panels by the cockpit, Vestlandskyss can generate a quite astonishing 780 Watts of solar power.
The next task was to assemble the tender, which was rolled up in a bag under the forward bunk. It has an aluminium floor in sections which have to fit together in a non-intuitive way, and the cable from the electric pump was only just long enough to reach the only compatible socket at the chart table… but with a little help from the internet, we got the thing installed and pumped up and winched into the water.
The tender has an electric motor, another first for us, and luckily I had remembered to charge it up back at the marina, so it was snorkels on and off we motored to Tangalooma Reef.
It was a bit busy. There were swimmers everywhere, mostly in large groups marshalled by guides floating in inflatable rings, and an endless criss-crossing of tenders and tinnies. We found a gap in the throng, dropped the dinghy anchor near to the wrecks, and hopped into the water.
The water was warm, but my was the current strong! We got to the jagged rusty metal of the reef, but it was a real fight to keep station, so instead of diving down on it we returned to the tender and motored to the beach.
The beach was as crowded with vehicles as the sea was with boats, but the water was still and warm and a lot more enjoyable.
Finally we made our way back to Vestlandskyss, experimenting with the electric dinghy which was responsive and completely silent and very easy to drive.
Once aboard, we disconnected all the extra solar panels, hoisted and rolled up the dinghy (securing it in its bag at the base of the mast, rather than cluttering up the forward cabin), lifted anchor and Berrima took us out of the channel.
Instead of going north around Moreton Island and crossing out to the sea that way, we had decided to head back to the south to enter the complex river system that winds and forks its way inland and down to the Gold Coast Seaway. This would give us some more experience of controlling Vestlandskyss at close quarters, and would put a few more anchorages under our belt.
The winds were fair, 9-13 knots, and we put up a reefed main and reefed genoa and got up to 6 knots before letting the foresail fully out and giving Vestlandskyss her head.
We noticed the twin dunes and clustered yachts at the southern end of Moreton Island, and as light fell we anchored in 8 metres in the wind shadow of Big Sand Hill. We had a pleasant dinner on deck under the stars, with no resort disco and perfect peace and quiet.
