Well only 4 days until we fly to Cairns. Long range forecast is for scattered showers, temperatures in the mid 20's C and light SE winds. Beats the frosty weather we have been having in Canberra.

All this foolishness first started when we bought Solar Mist, a venerable Sunmaid 20 built around 1982. As our first boat on which to learn to sail she was ideal, easy and forgiving of our many mistakes, and learn we did, from tentative L plate sailing days on Lake Burley Griffin (mind that ferry!!) through two seasons of twilight racing at the CYC to our first ocean cruise, yes the "big one" from Batemans Bay to Moruya on the NSW South Coast.

    And plenty of fun in between, racing on Lake Macquarie, Lake Illawarra and the iconic Marley Point and cruising on the Hawkesbury, Sydney Harbour (Mind that ferry!!!!) and the Gippsland Lakes. We have learnt many things, first getting cold & wet can be fun and more importantly ferries DO NOT change course to avoid small sailing boats!

First Post

On our Coastal Skipper course

This is our first post just to see how its done, hopefully we can erase our mistakes later.
To gain some sailing experience and knowledge we signed up for the Coastal Skipper course out of  Lake Macquarie.  We had five days of chart reading, blind navigation, night sailing, a bit of rough seas - pass the bucket, quick! - and excellent  teaching from Chris on Sea G.  So  we are feeling a bit more confident to face the open ocean on our Cairns to Darwin trip.