Although the sails now good to go, Kristie was away at Musgrave Island for 2 weeks, so I needed crew!
Evan and Maddy agreed to come along for a night away on Lazuli - they’d be out first guests.
The two girls and I headed up to the boat after school/work on Friday and settled in for a night at the marina.
Sushi for them, left over thai for me, and some Netflix made for a pleasant night.
A midday tide on Saturday gave me plenty of time to sort more boat jobs and get her ready for sailing, and time for Evan and Maddy to get up after rowing/hockey.
Unfortunately, the Sandhills on Moreton are pretty much directly SE of Scarborough… and the wind was naturally SE.
It meant for a bumpy and slow sail down, taking just over 4hrs. All 3 girls were more than a little glad when we finally stopped. Evan and I might have enjoyed the sailing just a tiny bit more than them ;)
As soon as the anchor was down it was time for Sip’s ‘n Dips.
I have “talked boating” to Andrew & Bride for many years, and had seen his boot “Hoot” while he was still building it.
They’d set out on Thursday, and as they were in the area we agreed to meet up, and we anchored a stone’s throw away from them.
Andrew always talks about how good crabbing is in this area, and he wasn’t wrong. They arrived bearing a container full of clawed treats.
Someone suggested to Emma that she might like crab, and it turns out she does… a lot! She spent the next 30min sitting there while Andrew and I fed her more than we had ourselves!
We had a few rain showers pass over while everyone was on board, but with the top done up we were all dry and cosy.
I had borrowed 3 sand toboggans from Luke, so the plan was to get up early, have breakfast and then head to the sandhills for some fun.
Evan whipped up (shook up!) some pancakes to get us going.
We had a bit of rain, but that brings out the rainbows :)
Rain also makes for fast rides:
The steep bits at the top made for great jumping/hopping down :)
Done with the toboggans it was time to head back to the boat and back to the marina.
We got the tender secured, a bit of food in us, got the anchor up and set sail. We had promised Maddy a flat ride home. I had suggested that we might be able to get away with just the head sail like coming home from Easter.. however we were only doing 5-6knts.
So we got the main up and Lazuli just powered ahead, loving the wind on the beam.. it was “Champagne Sailing” all they way home.
The girls all admitted that legs over the side was fun.
The girls also suggested that we would go to Morgans for lunch after we got back. Evan and Maddy packed up their stuff, and we walked out with them, then around the corner to our “local fish ‘n chip place”.
Then back to Lazuli and packing everything up. Didn’t get out of there until 5pm. The girls had Minecraft and didn’t seem to mind too much.
Stuff that broke this weekend:
- my bottle of show gel when it crashed on the floor during the upwind sailing
- two rolls of toilet paper that got wet as I didn’t close the sea-cocks and the bathroom flooded (during the upwind sailing)
Lessons learnt:
- close the bathroom sea-cocks when going upwind.
- Emma loves crab meat
- Lazuli likes to go fast off the wind.