Elbeaucapercat said..
Hi again all and thanks for the words of wisdom where they were given,

The trip would be a series of day trips that would be done in the calmest of weather, if the wind looked like it was going to blow over 15 knots we would wait for a few day until continuing. We have an outbound motor as a back up and to navigate smaller waterways. The boat is currently undergoing a full inspection and reinforced where nessesary. We do pack extremely light- all the gear including water and the engine will weigh under 60kg. Extra forstays have been added for extra strength. We will be hugging the coast and not traveling more than 200 meters off shore, surfboards will be strapped under the boat, incase of the boat getting pounded by the ocean and (and hopefully unlikely event of) coming apart we could paddle in (we are keen surfers and are fit enough). Wetsuits and wet weather gear is in order. We will be making various stops up the coast to stay with friends so we can have breaks from the trip, as we assume it will be exhausting.

Once again, thank you to those of you who put time and effort into giving us constructive, helpful tips, we really appreciate it. Unfortunately there are a lot of people on the internet who decide to take their lack of fulfillment with their own lives and think that it is some how funny to waste their energy by writing derogatory, misogynistic comments, for no other purpose than to make themselves feel a little bit less ****. Those comments are neither helpful nor constructive, and really aren't going to get you anywhere, so please do not continue to try and make yourself feel better by putting others down.

Thank you

Keep us updated. There is a hot shower and a meal ready for you in Ballina when you get here.

Keep us updated. There is a hot shower and a meal ready for you in Ballina when you get here.

Sure will santanasaga! Thank you so much!

A while back a mate of mine finished partially renovating a 22ft no name cat. Soon after that he announced he would sail it from Broken Bay to Lake Macquarie. About a month after that his gf called me and said do I know where her bf is, she hasnt seen him for a month!! (They werent very close sometimes). Next thing he pops up on his cat at Airlie Beach! Sailing up coast in small boat is no problem if you take care.

From Wikipedia :

The Caper Cat (or Caper Cat 14) is a 14 ft sailing catamaran manufactured by Calypso Sailcraft in Brisbane, Australia.[1] While in many ways similar to other catamarans of its size (notably the Hobie Cat), a unique feature of the catamaran is its large storage capacity.[2] Each hull contains large storage bins that make it an ideal boat for camping and short island-to-island cruising trips.[3]In addition to the more common 14 ft version, 18 ft Caper Cats with extended storage capacity were also built, although few of these boats exist.Although these boats are no longer in production, there are a large number still being sailed.

I reckon it could be fantastic trip. I recall that the northwest passage has been done by hobie cat !

The trip will be more akin to sea kayaking than sailing. When less than 5km offshore and less than 25knots wind, I feel much more comfortable in a sea kayak than in a sail boat. There is so much less to go wrong and there are lots of more exit options. There are several committing crossings but these should manageable keeping a close eye on the weather.

IMO, the biggest issue will be theft whilst camping on the beach. This has been where sea kayakers have come undone on the east coast.

A

Once again, thank you to those of you who put time and effort into giving us constructive, helpful tips, we really appreciate it. Unfortunately there are a lot of people on the internet who decide to take their lack of fulfillment with their own lives and think that it is some how funny to waste their energy by writing derogatory, misogynistic comments, for no other purpose than to make themselves feel a little bit less ****. Those comments are neither helpful nor constructive, and really aren't going to get you anywhere, so please do not continue to try and make yourself feel better by putting others down.

This way of order for the Seabreeze form. You told us that you have very little experience and you asked for advice. It has a range from "go for it" to "don't". Unless you are omnipotent you can't fathom why people gave you their piece of advice. Yet you claim they do for all the wrong reasons.

If you badmouth the people you meet the way you badmouth people on this forum I think you will have a bad trip. I for one would urge you to look very carefully over your old Capercat. The beams will be 30 years old and if they fail you may be in dire straits. Many of us on the forum knew people lost to tiny errors that cost them heavily. Your trip could go wrong really easily if you think it is going to be a doddle - you could die, we all can whenever we venture offshore. Break one beam in a strong westerly in winter and I wouldn't like your chances. It could be boringly easy - it depends on your planning and some luck.

The trip will be much like a sea kayak trip and many people have done the coast in sea kayaks. The great thing about a small cat is that you can visit places big boats can't visit, like Sandon, Hat head, Wooli, Brunswick etc. Read trip articles on the NSW sea kayak club website.

nswseakayaker.asn.au/index.php?Itemid=647

A good (check the beams for any cracks) cat is on my view a lot safer than a sea kayak, faster, more stable, able to run waves well and it will stay upright even when you get sea sick. Sea kayakers do lots of trips along the coast and you should be able to as well.

But the good sea kayakers are really well trained and that is where your circumstances differ. So for the first few weeks I would suggest
- no sailing with westerlies greater than 12 knots
- no sailing in any wind over 20 knots
- no sailing in large seas
- ensure you have good phone access so you can stay up to date on weather using Meteye every few hours.
- have a map with sea kayak type escape points. Don't rely on yacht type cruising guides.
- carry spare spark plugs and shear pins for the outboard. Have simple tools to clean and drain the carby and change plugs. Practice cleaning it before you go. If you break a mast it will be very handy.
- research sea kayak blogs - buy Stuart Truemans book and read kayak blogs

kayak4earth.com/brisbane_sydney/index.html

You will do it easier than the kayaks and cover more distance. When I kayak I often wonder why I am not sailing, but the shore will be your safety valve, as it can be in a kayak, IF it is safe to get ashore.

lydia said..

Elbeaucapercat said..
Hi!

My boyfriend and I recently bought a capercat and are looking for some insight, recommendations, tips, basically any knowledge about whether sailing from Ulladulla (three hours south of Sydney) to North Queensland would be feasible/possible.

We bought the capercat 5 months ago, and go sailing once or twice a week in a lake.

Neither of us had any prior sailing experience but I think that we have picked it up pretty well and have done a lot of research.

We've bought a radio and epirb, and have life jackets. Is there any other important safety precautions you'd recommend?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Having followed this for while, my tip would be tow it to Tin Can Bay and leave from there.
Make the trip in August September.

You get great advantages in doing so.
You are not exposed to full ocean swell and the weather systems are more stable and not as extreme.
The only long hop is around Shoal water Bay and pretty of short sails with good beach landing..
Learn about tides, as Flock pigeon island just north of there has a 13m tide range.

There is only one kayak book to buy and that is Caffyn.
He paddled around Australia solo and told no one he did for 8 months.

All sounds like great advice to me. I'm on the west coast so don't know the east coast well. It's all about the weather and local knowledge plus experience no matter where you are. Not sailing in more than 20knots is a great tip. I always started my crossings to Rottnest with a following wind then I was done by the time the wind changed and picked up. If you have the wind behind you and can't depower you definitely don't want more than 20knots. If it's not from behind it just gets ridiculously unpleasant and not worth the stress on the boat. The other tip I would say is that it is very easy to break a mast when beaching. If there is any wave action at all its essential to have it directly behind you or you will get rolled and break your mast. If it looks dicey it probably is. Wait until a better option presents itself. With good planning you can avoid a lot of potentially crappy situations.
Reading is the next best thing to experience and it's a buzz too. Confidence is important but misplaced confidence (ignorance) is dangerous. It was a great idea to engage this forum. Some good advice and enthusiasm and some sensible tempering. The sea kayak info should be very useful.
Might sound obvious or silly but make sure you take a small anchor and rope. I had a small Danforth in a loop off the jib bridle. If you don't need it for anything else it will still come in handy when beached, tired and don't or can't pull the boat up far enough. I had my boat float away and only saved by a stranger rescuing it. Extremely embarrassing apart from anything else.

Kankama said..

Once again, thank you to those of you who put time and effort into giving us constructive, helpful tips, we really appreciate it. Unfortunately there are a lot of people on the internet who decide to take their lack of fulfillment with their own lives and think that it is some how funny to waste their energy by writing derogatory, misogynistic comments, for no other purpose than to make themselves feel a little bit less ****. Those comments are neither helpful nor constructive, and really aren't going to get you anywhere, so please do not continue to try and make yourself feel better by putting others down.

This way of order for the Seabreeze form. You told us that you have very little experience and you asked for advice. It has a range from "go for it" to "don't". Unless you are omnipotent you can't fathom why people gave you their piece of advice. Yet you claim they do for all the wrong reasons.

If you badmouth the people you meet the way you badmouth people on this forum I think you will have a bad trip.

i don't think this is a very fair interpretation of what has gone on here. it's pretty clear to me which comments are being referred to.

the internet would be a much healthier place if people interacted with the mindset that they are in a face-to-face social engagement. from that perspective, responding to somebody you have just met with the equivalent of "show us yer tits" is not appropriate and is not acceptable. it is highly disrespectful, and i know most people here value respect for others highly as a principle. the sad truth is that we live in a country where domestic violence and the abuse of women and girls is a shameful scourge, and this will not change unless we are all prepared to make a profound shift in terms of recognising the unhealthy parts of our culture and upbringings. and that includes the tendency to rationalise blatantly sexist behaviour as a joke, or a "bit of fun", or "locker room banter".

Mate of mine did a crazy trip in the eighties, I think it was on a nacra (21ft?) - was trying to sail around oz, made it from Pittwater around to Perth

the boat started to break up & had structural issues coming down the north west, they did running repairs to get themselves to Perth- the prospect of crossing the bight was too much for them so they trucked it home

he is ex-navy, engineer, experienced sailor, master 4 etc, said the best bit was north of Brisbane to the cape, before and after that was just a chore....

samsturdy said..

fishmonkey said..

Kankama said..

Once again, thank you to those of you who put time and effort into giving us constructive, helpful tips, we really appreciate it. Unfortunately there are a lot of people on the internet who decide to take their lack of fulfillment with their own lives and think that it is some how funny to waste their energy by writing derogatory, misogynistic comments, for no other purpose than to make themselves feel a little bit less ****. Those comments are neither helpful nor constructive, and really aren't going to get you anywhere, so please do not continue to try and make yourself feel better by putting others down.

This way of order for the Seabreeze form. You told us that you have very little experience and you asked for advice. It has a range from "go for it" to "don't". Unless you are omnipotent you can't fathom why people gave you their piece of advice. Yet you claim they do for all the wrong reasons.

If you badmouth the people you meet the way you badmouth people on this forum I think you will have a bad trip.

i don't think this is a very fair interpretation of what has gone on here. it's pretty clear to me which comments are being referred to.

the internet would be a much healthier place if people interacted with the mindset that they are in a face-to-face social engagement. from that perspective, responding to somebody you have just met with the equivalent of "show us yer tits" is not appropriate and is not acceptable. it is highly disrespectful, and i know most people here value respect for others highly as a principle. the sad truth is that we live in a country where domestic violence and the abuse of women and girls is a shameful scourge, and this will not change unless we are all prepared to make a profound shift in terms of recognising the unhealthy parts of our culture and upbringings. and that includes the tendency to rationalise blatantly sexist behaviour as a joke, or a "bit of fun", or "locker room banter".

I'm not one for making political statements but I have a cousin who lives in Connecticut USA. She posted a blog
about a couple of cops who shot a young black guy in his Grandmothers backyard. They shot him twenty times
because they thought the cell phone he was holding was a gun. Our sexist behaviour might be unhealthy but
it pales compared to the legitimate murder the cops do over there. Apparently it's almost impossible to get a
conviction against the police force. It makes me mad...............enough said.

i get what you are saying, but the one doesn't diminish the other.

also, taking things a bit further, it is deeply entrenched racism in the US (and here) that underlies the situation you described. similarly, it is deeply entrenched sexism that underlies the persistence of horrific levels of domestic violence and other forms of abuse directed at women (and other social inequalities).

both racism and sexism are deeply entrenched, socially and culturally. this is inherent in statements like "I'm not racist, but...", and "I'm not sexist, but...". those statements may seem harmless, but they form part of the same spectrum of beliefs.

if racism and sexism were truly considered unacceptable by the majority of people, then their prevalence would be a lot lower...

fishmonkey said..

samsturdy said..

fishmonkey said..

Kankama said..

Once again, thank you to those of you who put time and effort into giving us constructive, helpful tips, we really appreciate it. Unfortunately there are a lot of people on the internet who decide to take their lack of fulfillment with their own lives and think that it is some how funny to waste their energy by writing derogatory, misogynistic comments, for no other purpose than to make themselves feel a little bit less ****. Those comments are neither helpful nor constructive, and really aren't going to get you anywhere, so please do not continue to try and make yourself feel better by putting others down.

This way of order for the Seabreeze form. You told us that you have very little experience and you asked for advice. It has a range from "go for it" to "don't". Unless you are omnipotent you can't fathom why people gave you their piece of advice. Yet you claim they do for all the wrong reasons.

If you badmouth the people you meet the way you badmouth people on this forum I think you will have a bad trip.

i don't think this is a very fair interpretation of what has gone on here. it's pretty clear to me which comments are being referred to.

the internet would be a much healthier place if people interacted with the mindset that they are in a face-to-face social engagement. from that perspective, responding to somebody you have just met with the equivalent of "show us yer tits" is not appropriate and is not acceptable. it is highly disrespectful, and i know most people here value respect for others highly as a principle. the sad truth is that we live in a country where domestic violence and the abuse of women and girls is a shameful scourge, and this will not change unless we are all prepared to make a profound shift in terms of recognising the unhealthy parts of our culture and upbringings. and that includes the tendency to rationalise blatantly sexist behaviour as a joke, or a "bit of fun", or "locker room banter".

I'm not one for making political statements but I have a cousin who lives in Connecticut USA. She posted a blog
about a couple of cops who shot a young black guy in his Grandmothers backyard. They shot him twenty times
because they thought the cell phone he was holding was a gun. Our sexist behaviour might be unhealthy but
it pales compared to the legitimate murder the cops do over there. Apparently it's almost impossible to get a
conviction against the police force. It makes me mad...............enough said.

i get what you are saying, but the one doesn't diminish the other.

also, taking things a bit further, it is deeply entrenched racism in the US (and here) that underlies the situation you described. similarly, it is deeply entrenched sexism that underlies the persistence of horrific levels of domestic violence and other forms of abuse directed at women (and other social inequalities).

both racism and sexism are deeply entrenched, socially and culturally. this is inherent in statements like "I'm not racist, but...", and "I'm not sexist, but...". those statements may seem harmless, but they form part of the same spectrum of beliefs.

if racism and sexism were truly considered unacceptable by the majority of people, then their prevalence would be a lot lower...

Extremely well put and definitely worth saying. I for one am inclined to gloss over things for a peaceful existence. I commend you for taking a stand and making an important point.

Oh fgs a stupid and inappropriate comment is made by one person and everyone can't scramble quick enough to jump on the pc wagon.
The subsequent worse comments by a couple have only inflamed the issue .
get over it everyone .

Mate for a start your assuming the poster is female .
What right do you have to assume such.
Joking but get the point . Your " show me your ...." was totally unwarranted so get off your high horse.
this is a sailing site if someone slips up tell em so straight up.
END

Bananabender said..
Mate for a start your assuming the poster is female .
What right do you have to assume such.
Joking but get the point . Your " show me your ...." was totally unwarranted so get off your high horse.
this is a sailing site if someone slips up tell em so straight up.
END

I agree B.B. No issues with the calling out, but the point was made, good,done, move on.

Howd he make it across the cliffs of the bight, Did he sleep on the kayak?

Wow, Lets calm the farm.

I think we all have to remember that if you ask a sailor for their thoughts on a plan , 9 time out of 10 the answer is "Ya all gonna die".

No different here.

Its a caper cat. Its not going from port to port. It can land in the corners of many beaches and bays.
Its probably got the standard mast head float with all the gear stowed around the point of righting rotation. If not there going to be dumping/loosing gear to re-right it if it does capsize. They'll learn real quick, Probably Built like a brick outhouse as caper cat was known for. If these guys aren't picking their weather and doing 1 to 6 hour hops then I'll be surprised.

Enjoy.