Monthly Archives: April 2018

Another easy day of motoring northward through the shallow waterways finds us approaching a Manta Convergence Zone. No, it’s not an underwater wonderworld of giant rays, but rather the homeports of three other Manta catamarans. Our boats enjoy a near cult-like following and our owners website with a private technical forum means we mostly know each other, if not personally then at least by boat name and often boat history. We share repair tips, upgrades and mods, and a general appreciation for our unique vessels.

Most Mantas are concentrated on the US East Coast and in the Caribbean, but there’s a growing South Pacific fleet and we’re hoping to meet up with a few of them here in the greater Brisbane area.

Our initial idea was to get the boats together for a weekend at some beautiful anchorage but we have an unpredictable cruising schedule and the crews of two of the other boats are still part of the working world. We hoped at least for a visit with Maggie and Peter of Shamara III. We met in Florida back in 2012 just after Jack and I bought Escape Velocity, and again a year later in Grenada. Six months ago they opened their home to us for an entire day of good eating and drinking, and of course admiring their late model Manta and all the beautiful and practical touches Maggie and Peter have added.

We made contact when we knew where we’d be and when, and to our delight not only were they home and up for a visit, but they convinced the others to drop what they were doing and join us. That’s what Manta owners are like.

Raby Bay is not the best of anchorages depending on conditions, but we were lucky the weather was settled and the holding is good. At the appointed hour we dinghied into the canals right to their house, admiring the shiny and pampered Shamara as we tied up.

Peter is an amazing chef and they’re both wonderful hosts. Soon we were joined by Terry and Coralie of Catalina and Glenn and Carol of Speakeasy, and we enjoyed non-stop bubbly, delicious food, and lots of Manta talk.

All three of these Aussie boats are a decade newer than our humble abode but all share the same basic design and layout, with the differences being in more subtle evolutionary tweaks during the production years, and interior finishes that were upgraded in later boats. Mechanical systems remained more or less consistent in all the boats so we can still share tips and tricks among us, even though our boat is hull #30 and theirs are #110, 111 and 114. Mostly we all learn from Maggie and Peter, who’ve owned their Manta the longest and are a treasure trove of experience and ideas.

The next day we motored a quick seven miles to Manly for a couple of days at a marina to do a provisioning top-up and knock a few more things off the list. The harbor is the home port of Speakeasy and we were wined and dined by Carol and Glenn at their club. After work the following day Carol drove us to Ikea so we could stock up on cheese (yes, cheese. Don’t judge) and gave us good tips on where to buy a few items we were having trouble sourcing. It’s good to have a concierge!

As reluctant as we are to leave the company of our Manta friends, it’s time to move on. We have a long way to go and the wind is in our favor. For now.

Conflicted, I walked up the side deck, slipped the safety hook off the anchor chain and stepped on the black rubber UP button for the windlass. After stopping to retrieve the anchor bridal I settled into the oh-so-familiar weighing anchor routine. We have the chain marked with colored plastic biscuits every 25 feet, done up in five fashion forward colors. Every time I see a color approach the windlass, I have to stop, reach into the chain locker and move the chain castles away from the hawsepipe to keep the chain from jamming up the works. So I’m busy, but there’s time to look around a little and ruminate.

Boat Works, I notice, is already yanking them in and out of the river. I’ll really miss this first world access, make that 1-1/2 world access to boat parts. It’s not all about the bass, it’s all about parts! It always feels like we accomplished a great deal at these work stops, and we did, but the same old irritants are still staring at me. Mind you, there are very few world cruisers who can look you in the eye and say everything is sorted in A1 condition, and if he does he’s probably lying. I try to concentrate on the positives like the new clothes washer and Charlize, the new silky smooth diesel engine.

The anchor arrives at the surface encased in a ball of crushed shells and mud, requiring ten minutes of washdown hose work. We complain about the mess when we anchor in muck but the truth is this kind of sticky bottom means the holding is good and we don’t worry about the anchor dragging.

Back in the captain’s chair, I slip Charlize into gear and take a sip of hot steaming coffee out of my favorite red mug from The Black Dog café in Martha’s Vineyard commemorating our very first offshore passage in a friend’s boat nearly twenty years ago. With the early morning sun glinting off the muddy river we begin to glide down the Coomera River.

The goal for our first day out is a conservative distance to a popular anchorage called Tipplers Island. As we turn into the passage we see a lot of activity, on shore and in the water. This is a real party spot and it’s a long holiday weekend so the merrymakers are out in full force. There are campgrounds, resorts and even a café. We have trouble finding enough room to anchor Escape Velocity with float planes, ski boats, motor yachts, runabouts of all descriptions, wallabies on the beach, and the ubiquitous Ozzy Mozzies, jet skis.

The next the morning, after the party crowd leaves, we find a floating dock and an almost deserted island to walk around, and when the café opens Yours Truly finds Eggs Bennie on the menu. This is already a good day.

It’s been so long since we’ve been in a boatyard I’d forgotten how social the environment is. Maybe it’s because there are so many boats thrown together for a brief period of high energy, maybe it’s because at the end of a day of hard physical labor you want to kick back with a coldie and bellyache about the long list of repairs, or maybe it’s just watching the bank balance drop precipitously and not caring anymore, who knows? In any case we end up having some fine times in the company of other cruisers whenever we pull in to get some much needed work done.

Our first boatyard experience in St. Augustine brought us together with the Boyer family, previous owners of Anything Goes. Then it was Moana Roa and the Haynes clan in Trinidad, and the Jameson/Fitzgerald troublemakers of Toucan in Whangarei. All memorable experiences that took the hurt out of hard work and draining pocketbooks.

This time, with two side-by-side boatyards and hundreds of boats coming and going every week, we had some fun meet-ups at one marina or the other. Most of the boaters were long-distance cruisers like us, but everyone was welcome at our potlucks at the barbie and often included local folks as well. It’s the kind of international social mix we’ve come to love about this life.

One Sunday we took the day off and spent the afternoon in clean clothes enjoying outdoor music and inexplicable stiltwalkers at an nearby plaza.

Inbetween the happy hours and potlucks we not only got our engine woes banished, we also fixed our tired freezer, replaced a broken watermaker pressure gauge, and ticked off a bunch of other small projects that had been cluttering up the list. The only think we couldn’t get fixed was the generator which has been low priority since we rely completely on solar power for battery charging. We don’t like having something onboard that doesn’t work even if we don’t use it, but the consensus seems to be that it’s stuffed and we’re looking at a complete replacement. So for now, it’ll stay on the list, to be dealt with after we win the lottery.

Meanwhile, the boats come and go. And we’re definitely ready to go.

We woke up in Southport rocking to the wakes of frenetic Aussies determined to have a good time at seven on a Saturday morning, sounding for all the world like a plague of giant mozzies screaming around on their colorful but annoying jet skis. We decided to head up the Coomera River to the famous Boat Works Marina which we’ve been hearing about since we arrived in Oz. We’d been warned that it’s particularly crowded and without a reservation it might be tough but we’ve always believed in special dispensation for spunky fools, so we upped anchor and ran right into a healthy two plus knot current. Without the services of the “Evil Twin” (the starboard diesel) this may take a little longer than anticipated.

We eventually wiggled our anchor into an unoccupied spot just off Boat Works and slowly it dawned on us that they are closed for the weekend. Marce busied herself ordering a replacement clothes washer that she’s spent months researching. We are not fooling around here, and they deliver! The watery details of the delivery we’ll leave to personal charm, charisma and a positive attitude, or just refer to the spunky fools paragraph.

We dinghied over to the dock determined to hit the ground running, and immediately ran into friends from Sea Wolf whose advice on a good diesel mechanic is to talk to someone named Craig who Grant says is the only one he trusts with his engines. Fortunate because this is a vast complex with multiples of each trade and getting a personal recommendation is golden.

By Tuesday the women in the office, after a lot of boat jockeying, found dock space for Escape Velocity at, let’s just call it slip 9 3/4. It’s not an actual slip, just a walkway, and there’s no access to water and no electricity, just 3 cleats we can tie up to. I’d be embarrassed to tell you what those three cleats cost per week but that’s cruising. In the meantime plan A with the washer worked when a small but wiry guy showed up at the marina and we lugged the thing down the ramp, down the dock, and up onto the deck of EV. This has been a long time coming.

Later I charmed a soon to be ex-friend, using beer, into carefully manhandling the washer down four steps, through three doorways with doors removed, twisting, turning, tilting, straining everything, but we did it. I didn’t mention that the complicating factor with replacing the washer was that our boat is wired for North American electricity, 120v, and we are in the 240v part of the world. Our new 240v washer required me to install a 240v inverter. This is a pretty common solution among the North American boats we meet on this side of the globe. I think this means we are now truly international.

We’ve spent serious “boat units” on our starboard Volvo over the last year. (1BU = $1k) The mechanics we hired did everything but fix the problem, persistent smoking and running hotter than the port engine. I’ve been managing this thing since day one and we’ve decided that we will leave here with a permanent solution. Our new best friend Craig said he’s got the right guy who can start on the Evil Twin the next day. You can see how this works…this “spunky fools” thing. I admit now that I have great foreboding about where this Evil Twin fix is going.

Ok, the new guy is very young but he soon gains cachet with me by finding smoke coming out of the small coolant overflow tube. There aren’t many ways for that to happen, none of them cheap. Within a half hour we were looking at a shocking crack in the cylinder head. Well at least it’s just the head and not the whole engine. Volvo being Volvo, a new head shipped from Sweden costs double what a new Chevy V8 costs and will require us to cool our heels for weeks waiting for it to arrive. Turns out it’ll be cheaper and faster to buy a whole used D1-30 Volvo and my new best friend “J-Rod the kid mechanic” found two right here in Boat Works, with working alternators which is more than you can say about our engine. Now we start to imagine what this project will mean. J-Rod went over the two available engines and chose his favorite which has only 2,300 hours on it and he compared our old engine with the new engine, using the best bits from both.

With incredible energy and resourcefulness we somehow exorcized the Evil Twin from Escape Velocity and even more remarkably installed the very smooth running “new” engine. Of course this level of spending has to stop and with both engines we can actually maneuver well enough to leave the dock and stanch the financial hemorrhage.

Bobbing at anchor again off Boat Works we accepted that several important projects like a haul out and bottom job will have to wait for South East Aisa. In the meantime I’m really going to enjoy having two reliable engines.

Look closely. There’s a kangaroo on the beach to the right of the plane.

Life in Coffs Harbor was relatively easy after we negotiated a protected T-berth inside the marina. We must be getting soft, nevertheless we still unfolded the bikes and saw a little of the town. The seas were impressive and pounded the exposed massive granite blocks that make up the jetty wall, vibrating Escape Velocity and the marina water all around us. Sometimes spray would even shoot up over the jetty walls. Ten or twelve times a day huge trucks lumber down the jetty access road, wait until you’re not paying any attention and then, when you least expect it, tip the truck bed filled with those monumental stone blocks making a sound straight outa hell, scaring the bejesus out of Yours Truly every time.

So where was I? Oh yeah, several times a day we’d ride along the beautiful surf beach on the other side of those giant blocks and marvel at the very large waves curling in towards shore and, under our breath saying, “Glad we’re not out there.” Because that’s what we really are doing here. Waiting. Waiting for the North wind to switch to South and whatever’s causing all those combers to just cut it out. It helps that there are a lot of boats waiting for the same thing.

Marce, who feels compelled to read every sign and flyer pasted to every light pole, found a concert and foodie festival in a park near the marina. Just because you’re waiting out a Norther doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun.

We really need two good days of South wind and reasonable sea state to make it up to Southport where we will see to some long deferred maintenance on EV. Southport Bar has a bad reputation for wrecking boats trying to enter the bar in anything but benign conditions. Trying to sneak through in deteriorating conditions would not be wise. Finally our singlehanded berth mate, Mr. Mojito, dropped lines at 04:00 with a planned stop at Yamba and we followed suit at a more respectable 08:00, favoring an overnight to Southport. Clearing Coffs jetty we found a decent SE wind so with all the laundry full and by we shaped a course north.

All and all we were having a good sail and at dusk our ETA at Southport, all things considered, would be quite early. Not an option against the tide. We reefed the mainsail for night running and when I came on watch at midnight the breeze was getting fluky. By dawn we were motor sailing and running into the stiff East Australia current further reducing our progress to barely 3 kts. With conditions deteriorating at Southport and precious little progress against the current, our ETA, barring some kind of miracle, would be well after optimum tide and in the middle of the night. We began to cast about for a plan B.

Finally we decided to turn around and tuck into Byron Bay, seven miles astern, where with any luck at all we might avoid the worst of the wind and building waves. As we sailed closer to the beach we could see five fishing trawlers anchored on the 30 foot depth contour. Good news or bad, we did the same. These two days we spent at anchor, waiting out the blow in rising seas were not restful. We’ll just leave it at that, but someone posted this photo on line asking who was this anchored off Byron Beach. Yeah, that was us.

We’d had enough of Byron Bay and Southport tower said “maybe” on the entrance to the bar. We said close enough, and we were off at dawn. Once again, as the day wore on, the tower said the entrance was iffy so try for late afternoon, closer to slack tide. By the time we arrived the tower was non-committal and no one was going in or out, but the later the better. Yours Truly has found that there are times in this life when you just gotta say fuck it, and jump in with both feet. One of my chief concerns was that the evil twin Volvo was not behaving and would only be available to the cause for brief emergency duty and there were breaking waves arriving at the entrance from several different directions. On the plus side we’d gone over the bar at Bahia del Sol, El Salvador and lived.

The tower gave us the southern vector approach which meant making a 50 degree turn after clearing the jetty wall. That’s about when I saw a breaking rogue wave coming across from the north. I was able to kick the stern around into the breaker avoiding broaching and manhandled EV the rest of the way in. As we turned to find the channel markers the tower called up and said, “That was a very nice crossing!” I actually got an atta-boy from the tower! Maybe I should retire. It’s always such a relief to glide into protected water and splash the anchor in peace and quiet with a “coldie” in hand, it’s hard to remember what you just went through. Which is probably a good thing.