Thursday 27th November
The queen of last minute organisation strikes again… Queenscliff Harbour phoned today to say they have found us a berth against the jetty at the entrance to the cut. Forecast looks ok for going down, even better for coming home on Sunday. A hasty annual leave day application for Friday is approved, the dogs are at my son’s for the weekend and I’ve submitted an early vote this morning – we’re off!
Friday 28th November
I log on to work remotely and set up my ‘out of office’ email. Pack bags – i.e. phone, laptop, clothes for three days – time taken: 5 minutes. Despite the early hour, I jigsaw the crockery rack I’ve been making for the boat and wanting to install for weeks with a silent mental apology to my neighbour for the noise. Next; throw some wine and cheese and bickies in a chilly bag – all the essential foodstuffs. We pick up diesel, milk and apples on the way. Arrive at RYCV – yay, the bar is open! I grab two coffees to go and we load our bags onto the boat. A quick stop off to pick up a barge board from Richard’s boat, Ariel, out at her mooring in Hobson’s Bay. Then it’s head to wind to hoist the main… Let’s go!
The wind doesn’t quite match our enthusiasm – it’s dropping under 5 knots a lot of the time.
The motor goes back on and assists our progress for the next 5 hours, averaging 6-7 knots. Coming down the Western Channel it’s picking up and is on the nose – we drop the main to avoid having to tack our way down the channel. Approaching the Heads my thoughts drift to May next year – will we be heading out? I’m hoping to take the boat up to New Caledonia for the Great Lagoon Regatta in June; I’ve negotiated a flexible arrangement with work, I just need to get finances in place and the boat set up for some longish passages.
We arrive at Queenscliff Harbour at 1:50pm. I’d been a little worried about arriving at the fastest point of the ingoing tide and navigating the cut in a strong current but all is fine and we dock up at the jetty in amongst the fishermen without any drama. Except that I forgot to buy tickets for the festival on the way down; damn! They’ll be $10 more each now. We check out the line up on the QMF iPhone app and I decide I must be getting old; the only band I’ve heard of is The Church.
We’ve got a couple of hours to kill so we get busy and install the new galley bench – tripling the available working area. The crockery rack goes in next (sorry again to my neighbor); it fits and seems fairly functional. An ex-neighbour from Williamstown is living in St Leonards and she comes to meet us on the boat for drinks and nibbles. We decide not to buy tickets for tonight, just to go for a wander into town. No venues in town have any music on tonight – everything is very quiet, lots of car parking spaces everywhere. The festival organisers will be hoping it picks up tomorrow. I wonder if the election will keep people away? Fish and chips for dinner – best I’ve had for a while.
Saturday 29th November
Being in the cut has it’s disadvantages – every time a boat goes past, its wake knocks us up against the jetty. The fishing boat exodus starts at about 4:30am, so from then on the best we manage is lots of disgruntled dozing. The boat is protected by the barge board, but there’s nothing to protect my sleep. Mental note – make an earlier berth reservation for next year! There are lots of spare berths inside the arms, but with my 2.25 draft I don’t get in to most of them at low tide. We eventually decide there’s nothing to be gained by staying in bed, so the token bloke makes tea, I wander up to the Harbour office for a shower, then spend a relaxing morning doing some writing and pottering on the boat waiting for the festival to start at 11:00am.
Happily the first band we stumble across is Yirrmal & the Yolngu Boys – a group of 5 young indigenous Aussie artists from north-east Arnhem Land and the one band I really wanted to see. Most of them are in Melbourne pursuing studies and to hear Yirrmal speak with passion about the knowledge and skills they’re hoping to take home to help their communities is as inspiring as the group’s lyrics and vocal harmonies. We also catch Hayward Williams, The Little Stevies, Marlon Wiliams, Sagamore, Tijuana Cartel, The Imprints, Dyson Stringer Cloher, and five minutes of The Church. Getting old doesn’t stop me enjoying most of the music on offer… especially the Blues and Folk genres. ‘Home’ in the evening to the boat and hopefully a less eventful night as the harbour office has found us a new berth – still in the cut but against a floating arm rather than the jetty. We’ve had a great time, thoroughly enjoying the QMF weekend for the second year in a row.
Sunday 30th November
We’ve checked the forecast and the tides and decided to wait until the afternoon for the southerly shift, which will also have us going up the Western Channel with an incoming tide. As we turn left up the channel coming out of Queenscliff, I can’t help looking back at the Heads, wishing we were turning right instead, heading out and off on a bigger adventure. The forecast lives up to everything it promised – a relaxed, sunny sail home under masthead spinnaker; the autopilot doing all the work while the two of us relax, one reading a book and the other writing one. We make good time to Gellibrand, heading up the Bay with Blue Chip for distant company. For the last hour the breeze swings south-east and picks up to 20+ knots, still with a flat sea. We’re surfing along doing 10-12 knots boat speed, putting the autopilot away and enjoying some manual steering in a fantastic breeze. We arrive at Gellibrand almost at the same time as Blue Chip. Back in the pen, packing up takes considerably longer with only two of us compared to after twilight racing with the full crew. Tucking into a bed that doesn’t rock feels a bit strange, even though we’ve only been away 2 nights. Three days of couldn’t-be-better cruising… both of us convinced more than ever that this is a lifestyle we could easily adopt, actively plotting the next adventure.