What do Sailors do in Winter?
Where do cruisers go in winter?
No it’s not a joke, it’s a serious question! You walk down to a marina in the winter time and all you see are yachts tied up, lonely and forlorn, waiting for the summer to come so that their owners will return to them and take them out once more! And those owners are back at their desks, or working in their everyday life, dreaming about the summer they had and the summer that is to come. To look at a marina in south Eastern, southern or even south West Australia you’d have to think that sailing was a summer sport with no winter component!
For us it’s a little different. When we began to cruise we sold everything, let go of ambitions for monetary success and stepped into a different life.
For two winters now (and one summer)we have called ourselves cruisers and while in the colder weather we don’t get out sailing as much, for us this is a very rich and fruitful time.
We spent last winter preparing our yacht, which we had bought in Albany WA, to begin a circumnavigation of Australia. We expected this to take us quite some time, working as we went. The first part would take us across the Great Australian Bight and for this we had allowed several months to prepare and achieve. We spent four months getting ready and waiting for the right weather pattern to start. We had the best time getting to know a part of the country we had never been to before. Albany it turns out is a very significant part of the country as far as the Anzac tradition is concerned for Albany is where the ships gathered ready to leave our shores and begin the epic journey which would see the establishment of the Anzac Corps. Albany played a profound role in equipping the ships, and being the last place many soldiers ever saw of the country they were going to fight to protect. Many of course never returned and no doubt Albany was a vivid memory in their dying moments. Albany is a peaceful town that boasts the loveliest place to learn to sail, or to learn to sail a new yacht. We needed to do both as we had almost no sailing experience prior to arriving.
King George Sound and Princess Royal Harbour are delightful. When we first arrived we were amazed that there were so few yachts taking advantage of the magnificent waterway, after our earliest sailing adventures on the vastly more populated waters of Lake Macquarie in NSW we were stunned. Though for us it was probably a good thing – fewer boats meant less chance of collision! We really had the best time venturing out into the often calm waters to practice this newly found art.
And so we spent the winter learning to sail, learning to manage our yacht and her 8 sails and preparing her and ourselves to leave. This included all manner of maintenance tasks, provisioning, figuring out what needed to go where when we set off, learning to navigate, learning to understand and deal with the weather in all its eccentricities.
And this I suppose is my point. During the winter there is so much that can be done by the cruising sailor. This is the perfect time for all those jobs that you are too busy to do during the warmer weather when you are off sailing all the time, when the weather report leaves you feeling excited that you will have a great day, when little problems are pushed aside. This is the time to service the engine, replace worn and jaded parts, upgrade to that new thing everyone was talking about or that you read about in the last Cruising Helmsman!
We have been so surprised to see so many yachts abandoned for the winter. There are sunny days in the winter when a picnic at a nearby anchorage would be lovely, and when friends who are curious would come out. In the meantime, we plod away every day doing little things that will make the next part of our journey more comfortable, or more safe.
This winter finds us in Batemans Bay. Many told us we couldn’t enter this Bay, that the bar was difficult and shallow and the services to cruisers abysmal. Stubborn creatures that we are, and having the agenda of proximity to family and friends in Canberra, we went in anyway!
The bar required entry on a calm day with a higher-than-usual high tide (or a spring high tide). We anchored off the Bay the night before at Snapper Island and came in on the flood of the incoming tide during its last hour. We did struggle at first to locate services, but they are there if you hunt them out! The marina has been very welcoming to us allowing us to be tied up over the winter where we now have access to power, water and all the facilities. The marina is a short walk to town where there are ample shops and suppliers of most sailors requirements.
We have spent this winter looking at all the things that we could have done better in our sailing so far. Now we own a Sailrite sewing machine and can repair sails ourselves, make covers etc. We have serviced the engine, stocked up with fuel and necessary spare parts, replaced aged systems – like the toilet, the water-maker, several halyards and sheet lines, and given the boat a complete make0ver inside and out. We don’t view the winter months as a deterrent to sailing but as a season of preparation.
© 2013 Susan Parry-Jones
No it’s not a joke, it’s a serious question! You walk down to a marina in the winter time and all you see are yachts tied up, lonely and forlorn, waiting for the summer to come so that their owners will return to them and take them out once more! And those owners are back at their desks, or working in their everyday life, dreaming about the summer they had and the summer that is to come. To look at a marina in south Eastern, southern or even south West Australia you’d have to think that sailing was a summer sport with no winter component!
For us it’s a little different. When we began to cruise we sold everything, let go of ambitions for monetary success and stepped into a different life.
For two winters now (and one summer)we have called ourselves cruisers and while in the colder weather we don’t get out sailing as much, for us this is a very rich and fruitful time.
We spent last winter preparing our yacht, which we had bought in Albany WA, to begin a circumnavigation of Australia. We expected this to take us quite some time, working as we went. The first part would take us across the Great Australian Bight and for this we had allowed several months to prepare and achieve. We spent four months getting ready and waiting for the right weather pattern to start. We had the best time getting to know a part of the country we had never been to before. Albany it turns out is a very significant part of the country as far as the Anzac tradition is concerned for Albany is where the ships gathered ready to leave our shores and begin the epic journey which would see the establishment of the Anzac Corps. Albany played a profound role in equipping the ships, and being the last place many soldiers ever saw of the country they were going to fight to protect. Many of course never returned and no doubt Albany was a vivid memory in their dying moments. Albany is a peaceful town that boasts the loveliest place to learn to sail, or to learn to sail a new yacht. We needed to do both as we had almost no sailing experience prior to arriving.
King George Sound and Princess Royal Harbour are delightful. When we first arrived we were amazed that there were so few yachts taking advantage of the magnificent waterway, after our earliest sailing adventures on the vastly more populated waters of Lake Macquarie in NSW we were stunned. Though for us it was probably a good thing – fewer boats meant less chance of collision! We really had the best time venturing out into the often calm waters to practice this newly found art.
And so we spent the winter learning to sail, learning to manage our yacht and her 8 sails and preparing her and ourselves to leave. This included all manner of maintenance tasks, provisioning, figuring out what needed to go where when we set off, learning to navigate, learning to understand and deal with the weather in all its eccentricities.
And this I suppose is my point. During the winter there is so much that can be done by the cruising sailor. This is the perfect time for all those jobs that you are too busy to do during the warmer weather when you are off sailing all the time, when the weather report leaves you feeling excited that you will have a great day, when little problems are pushed aside. This is the time to service the engine, replace worn and jaded parts, upgrade to that new thing everyone was talking about or that you read about in the last Cruising Helmsman!
We have been so surprised to see so many yachts abandoned for the winter. There are sunny days in the winter when a picnic at a nearby anchorage would be lovely, and when friends who are curious would come out. In the meantime, we plod away every day doing little things that will make the next part of our journey more comfortable, or more safe.
This winter finds us in Batemans Bay. Many told us we couldn’t enter this Bay, that the bar was difficult and shallow and the services to cruisers abysmal. Stubborn creatures that we are, and having the agenda of proximity to family and friends in Canberra, we went in anyway!
The bar required entry on a calm day with a higher-than-usual high tide (or a spring high tide). We anchored off the Bay the night before at Snapper Island and came in on the flood of the incoming tide during its last hour. We did struggle at first to locate services, but they are there if you hunt them out! The marina has been very welcoming to us allowing us to be tied up over the winter where we now have access to power, water and all the facilities. The marina is a short walk to town where there are ample shops and suppliers of most sailors requirements.
We have spent this winter looking at all the things that we could have done better in our sailing so far. Now we own a Sailrite sewing machine and can repair sails ourselves, make covers etc. We have serviced the engine, stocked up with fuel and necessary spare parts, replaced aged systems – like the toilet, the water-maker, several halyards and sheet lines, and given the boat a complete make0ver inside and out. We don’t view the winter months as a deterrent to sailing but as a season of preparation.
© 2013 Susan Parry-Jones