Oz East Coast

Sept/Oct 2008

Cruising Whitsunday and Northumberland Island Groups.

As usual we were arguably in one of the best place in the world for boats, with absolute devine weather non-stop.

We caught up with fellow Nordhavn owners Iain and Ros Couper, and John and Gloria Shuttlewood.

John and Gloria on BACCHUS have been up this neck of the woods for over 40 years, and Ian "Coxwain" Couper was on his first to sea adventure on DAUNTLESS, and laid to rest his sobriquet of the "Morten Bay Bug".

This was the time of the Hamilton Island Race Week, and our friends Marcel & Ingrid buzzed us in their Maritimo REX on the way home from a race lay day at the fabulous Whitehaven Beach at about 30 kts.

On their second time around three of us replied in typical displacement hull speed defiance with a full "mooning". I can't believe my first time experience of this was done at age 65, what is worse still is that I instigated it.

Margs friend Veronika came up to spend two weeks with us, and with guests on boats, like fish, tend to go off after three days, she swung into defensive mode and started to cook me some great meals which immediately negated the pressure of the occassion.

We explored much more than the previous year, and had a chance to anchor off some lovely locations.

I tried out my "flopper stopper" for the first time and it worked beautifully in a rolly anchorage, when Rick and Diane came up for a few days.

A flopper stopper is a SS collapsible plate suspended by line from a 12' whisker pole which is deployed 90 deg from the hull, sits a couple of metres below the surface, and creates a resistance when the boat wants to roll one way and collapses when the roll is the other way.