Yacht Zen Again: Rockingham Night Sail

Sunday, 7 December 2014

Rockingham Night Sail

Hi everyone,
On Saturday evening we sailed from FSC to Rockingham in company with Stingrey and Osborne Star. The weather was perfect for Singrey's first night sail - 15 to 20 knots from the SSW initially and the breeze gradually backed around to the south and decreased to 8-12 knots by 2200. We had full moon in a completely cloudless sky.

Heading south

On Sunday we returned to FSC in company with Stingrey, Osborne Star, Divided Sky and Aqua Vitae.

Here's our track for the two passages...

Zen Track - tack south, straight back

Zen Speed for the passage south

We really enjoyed the sail south. Tacking into the wind in flat water is fun. Our tacking angles look very good on the track once we got into the flat water of Cockburn sound.

Zen Again and Stingrey at Rockingham

Ditto

Osborne Star at Rockingham

During the sail we discovered a plastic fitting below one of our sinks is leaking, so fixing that is now on the to-do list. Also the leach cord of our No 2 jib partially pulled out of the sail due to the stitching failing. The sail is 20+ years old and was cut down from a light No 1 in 2011. It had no UV strip so we're impressed it lasted so long. Happily Extreme Sails is building a replacement already!

What did work very well was our boom bag which was recently refurbished by Fremantle Ocean Canvas. Work included tidying up the zip and removing the aft part of the bolt rope which secures the bag to the boom. Removing part of the bolt rope allowed us to install slugs to anchor our reefing lines. Doing so avoids their having to pass around the boom and rolled-up boom tent. The modification was tested and works very well.

The sail back to FSC was great. We sailed back with a reef in the main and the No 3 jib. For much of the trip there was a halo around the sun due to thin cirrus cloud.