Every year, we have to get out the Marina for a couple of weeks over Christmas, to make way for the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race. Every year it’s a struggle to get the leave period sorted with work, get the boat provisioned, get Christmas shopping done, find a home for the car, etc.

What with Dad’s place lost to the fires, we decided to have a quiet Christmas this year, tucked into our favourite anchorage, the Duck Pond.

With blustery southerly weather forecast, we waited until an approaching low to catch it’s leading edge norther lies down the east yet and into the channel. Despite planning take the Friday off (didn’t happen, too much work, and even then I didn’t get it all finished!), despite last minute provisioning, fuel, water, Christmas presents, birthday presents, and clothes washing, we were ready.

And then this happened:

No rubber tip on the BBQ has feed line… Strewth and crikey, well it wouldn’t be an .Aussie Christmas with the bloody barbie, now would it!

Surprise, good friends won 4 tickets to see “Ender’s Game” at the cinema, and we had a legit reason to stay awhile longer to fix the BBQ that didn’t make me seem like some odd cross of macho alpha male and whiny cook.

Sunday, departure day, came around with the inevitability of a planet rotating on its axis, and we were up bright and sparky to catch the bus over to Eastlands. The movie was great, capturing the duality of the book nicely while being satisfyingly epic SF. Well worth the watch, and a big thanks yo our friends for donating the tickets!

We could the back into the city and trekked up to K&D for the rubber tip bits (got spares too, BBQ’s Galore out of stock), dropped by the pet shop on the way by popular request (“if we get a bigger boat, will it fit an aquarium?”), and down to the boat to cast off.

After a short delay required to discover we hadn’t quite untied all the lines before attempting to back out of our marina berth, we were off! The Christmas Cruise begins!

And then it started raining.

No wind… Just rain. We motored south, steering by compass in the fog and drizzle. IPhones really don’t cut it as a chart plotter in the wet.

My family abandoned me for the warmth below decks, and the good wife put a chicken on to roast. They boys fired up “Rise of the Guardians” for the umpteenth time, taking advantage of the engine running.

The breeze picked up in the channel swinging from a light sou’easter to a 20 to 25kt NE wind. By that time I was too bloody cold and wet to bother with the sails, but apparently not beyond a selfie…

Don’t I look all cold and wet to you?

We anchored down in the Duck Pond without drama, and we are the only boat here… The chicken dinner was awesome, thanks to my darling wife, and was just the thing to thaw out my bones!

All in all, a good start to the Christmas Cruise… I wonder what tomorrow’s 35kt SW change will bring?

So it’s a beautiful day today; gentle 5kt NW wind, blue sky dappled with cloud.

Yesterday there was snow on the mountain, it barely got into double digit temperatures and there was a brisk 15-20kt SW wind.

…talk about unsettled weather.

A few weekends ago I took a couple of days off work and we headed off down to Duck Pond for a break, a period away from it all.

We set off into a 20kt SW wind forecast to swing west and weaken. An hour into the 4 hour sail it strengthened to 30kts, still sou’westerly. Over the next hour it became 35, then 40. After another hour of singlehanded against the squall fronts, the sea had built and it was a steady 40 gusting 50 and we hadn’t made 10 nautical miles.

It had stopped being a nice get away for the weekend. The boat was a mess down below, things fallen out of lockers, broken on the cabin sole. The boys, still in pyjamas, took one look at the amount of water smashing into me at the helm and shut up the hatch. The dear wife was now hopelessly seasick on top of a rum induced hangover. Time for plan B.

Putting the helm hard over, I dumped the mizzen sheet to get the boat around on a run back to shelter. I couldn’t re-sheet the mizzen in the gale, so I dropped the halyard and wrestled it on a lurching boat in the slightly less howling wind to get it furled. Going from 2kts to windward to 7kts downwind meant that we lost a lot of ground quickly and were in danger of running out of water to float in too.

I got our home into the lee of a headland and considered my options. Docking in the tight marina was going to be tough in these conditions. Ralph’s Bay was horribly shallow and a very lumpy reach from here. Around then the Peppermint Bay tour catamaran came past. Close to us and even closer to shore. I watched them hug the windward coastline, keeping within two or three boat lengths of the cliffs all the way down and thought maybe that could work.

I have tried sailing close to cliffs in strong conditions before, and it’s not pretty. This time, to avoid being knocked about by the turbulence off the cliffs, I dropped all sail and motored very close to shore. How close? I kept our sounder at 5 meters or under all the way down the western shoreline of the Derwent. It was a bit too intense, I’m not sure I’d do it again, but we made 4 or 5kts and the seas were pretty flat.

Of course, once we rounded Piersons Point, we came out of the shelter and slammed back into the sou’wester again, but by that stage it had backed more to the south and “weakened” to a mere 30-35kts, and good old ERIK doesn’t mind that at all.

All up, it took us 7 and a half hours to do the 18 nautical mile trip. Once there we had a fine time… Oh, other boats dragged anchor, other dinghies got flipped (drowned outboards) in the gale force conditions and it was blowing so strong (in the Duck Pond!) that there were clouds of spray blowing through the anchorage… But we had a fine time!