Sailing 2016
Some yachtsmen love racing yachts. I used to be one of them
but now, getting a crew together and stressing the boat to sail up and down the
same courses week after week has lost its appeal. With a small fleet of very
different boats the handicapping system is difficult to make equitable which
can lead to the same boats winning each time. It’s demoralising for crews on
boats not popular with the handicapper, and I would imagine embarrassing for
the skipper who wins race after race after race. Then again perhaps not.
At the end of 2015 I relocated Dreamagic to Townsville. A
big step, but the sailing scene here is much more socially active, and a change
is always good for the soul. I brought the boat down, parked it at the
Townsville Yacht Club for January and joined in their activities. I went to the
Christmas Party which was excellent. The club provided a terrific meal, the
company was welcoming and we had a great night.
In the short time I have been here I have been made very
welcome and I have sailed twice on club members boats for their weekly
Wednesday Twilight Race. They get a strong fleet for this event and being a long
triangle, rather than a repeated reaching course around close buoys, it is very suited towards bigger boats and crew
skill. On both occasions after the race we have repaired to the clubhouse for a
meal where most crews have a table booked and share a meal together. This is
why I am here and I am feeling at home very quickly. However Dreamagic doesn’t have her own crew.
I do have some friends in Townsville but they are crew on
other yachts and it would be unfair to try to get them to jump ship. It’s also
very bad form. Skippers put a lot of work into getting a crew to work together
and they would view very badly someone who comes and tries to poach them.
So DM needs to find her own. I found an app on the net
called Meetup which seemed to do the trick. I advertised on that for people
interested in Wednesday afternoon social racing and weekend social sailing. I
think it cost about $25 from memory but the response was 37 people who
expressed interest in coming along. This is of course far in excess of the
compliment of Dreamagic’s crew, but I thought it would be a good base.
I have advertised a few times recently for crew for various
trips I have been organising. It is always interesting to see who makes an
inquiry. In this advert I had made it clear that I wasn’t really interested in
people who just though it might be nice to come out for a free ride around the
bay on a sunny afternoon if nothing else appealed more. What I was looking for was a group of people
who would join the boat and get involved. Sail regularly, learn to sail, and learn
to work together to improve the performance of the boat.
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| Doing what Dreamagic does. NB the couple at the back |
The advert showed pictures of Dreamagic engaged in the sort
of thing I was trying to recreate, and all of the requirement points in the preceding paragraph
were included. Meetup allows you to ask would be participants a few questions
so when it came to trying to pare down the 37, the first cull was to discard
anyone who couldn’t be bothered to answer them. That could sound a little
heartless, but I have to use some basis and my rationale was that if someone wanted to come sailing but could not be bothered to get into dialogue with me, they would be pretty tough
people to go sailing with.
The next cull was anyone who could not be bothered to
complete their Meetup profile. Along the same lines of thought. I am looking
for a crew who I am going to lend my boat to, spend my free time with, and work
with to teach them to sail. If you want me to do that, but you don’t want to
tell me who you are, alarm bells are ringing.
I got down to about 10 and invited them all to come down
to the boat on January 2nd so that we could meet each other and make
some plans. Townsville Yacht Club had a
Social Sailing Day planned for Australia Day on Tuesday the 26th
January at Magnetic Island. My, (in hindsight probably quite ambitious plan) was
to take Dreamagic out for the 4 days of that weekend, and crew could join and
leave by ferry if they couldn’t make the entire trip. Alas, as often happens
from an initial resounding “Yes! I am in”, one by one they fell off the boat until only
one crew and I remained and I had to cancel.
I eventually imported my great friend Andy Barbour, who has sailed Dreamagic out of
Cairns for about 4 years and with his 4 year old son we took Dreamagic away for
the weekend. We had an absolute ball. TYC certainly know how to throw a party.
Magnetic Island, with 23 individual bays just lends herself to exactly the sort
of life I am pursuing. The club used their crash boat to transfer a BBQ and
tent to Florence Bay and we enjoyed doing the sort of things yachties do when
they assemble en mass and anchor is a beautiful protected bay with a reef and a
beach. Dreamagic played host to a crews
from a couple of other yachts and I realised that relocating to Townsville was
a good move.
However, I still didn’t have crew for DM. Much as I am sure he would
enjoy it I can hardly keep importing Andy from Cairns, and everyone I have met
are either busy, or committed to other boats.
A chance enquiry via the meetup site from Mary Anne fixed
that. She and her husband had recently moved to Townsville, had sailed before,
and were looking to get some sailing experience. Amongst the 37 original
inquirers I had fielded an inquiry from another
woman who had told me she and her husband were keen to join the boat, but
somewhere they fell by the wayside. I suggested that Mary Anne get on this
website and make sure that she wants to do what I am trying to achieve, and
also find the boat on Facebook. She followed through, nothing she read evidently
turned her off so I suggested she and her husband come down to the boat.
What a great couple! Mary Anne and Louis came
aboard armed with wine, (which on Dreamagic is the passport to success) We sat
into the evening talking about everything and anything until late and made plans for a Wednesday
night sail. Louis was travelling the following Wednesday but Wednesday week was
locked in, and for good measure we planned the following weekend as well.
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| Komang. Bob the rescue dog on rescue duty |
I invited what was left of the original crew to join, but
commitments prevented that so I thought it would be the three of us until
Komang, a Balinese National asked if she could join. She explained that she was
female and was that a problem, she had never been on a yacht before and was
that a problem, and she was nervous. Sound perfect to me, welcome aboard!
And then Joey got in touch. A guy with a lot of boating
experience but none sailing he was keen to learn and sounded like a great asset
to the boat. We all met at 5pm on
Wednesday at the marina, made quick introductions and hastily departed to get
to the start line. On board I had two who had never sailed, and two who had a
little experience. I also had the Townsville Yacht Club fleet of about 25 boats
out there and I was keen not to look too stupid on our maiden voyage. My plan
was to get the sails up, explain how it all works, then teach my new crew Basic
Sailing 101 while keeping out of the way of the fleet, using it to pace us and
give us some company.
The wind started kindly at about 10 -12 knts but quickly dropped
out. We sailed for about an hour before retiring and coming back to our dock. I
was so pleased with the way this had all worked out. We had a ball. The
atmosphere on DM was great, the sailing was good, the company was excellent, so
much so that we are all off to Magnetic Island for sail training and lunch on
Sunday.
Meanwhile, like an old war horse I have smelled blood.
And these Wednesday races looks achievable
One of the best things we've done in a long time was to connect with Alan and join him on Dreamagic. Great comaraderie and fun. Learning lots. This is the beginning of a great journey!
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