History and Development     

Our First Cruises

We didn't complete either of our first two planned cruises as beginners. The first, a fifteen nautical mile 'Sunday Drive' up to Broken Bay to spend the weekend, ended off Sydney heads, an hour from home, in 25 knot headwinds and a 3 metre swell. So much for the forecast 'light' northerly! We turned back, bemused, and spent the weekend pottering about Sydney Harbour. A short time later, after a few successful jaunts to Broken Bay, we thought we'd try a longer cruise - the 'Easter-weekender' to Port Stephens, (80 nautical miles north of Sydney), where we first met, lived and windsurfed together.

A cool, windless Friday night meant motorsailing from Sydney Harbour to Broken Bay and resting until daylight in a bay on the Hawkesbury River before leaving for Port Stephens in the early hours of the next morning. Spotting a National Parks mooring buoy in the bright moonlight was easy and we rested peacefully for a few hours. It seemed only five minutes later that we weighed anchor -at 2am - and headed back to sea, a 5-8 knot breeze following us down the river. Outside the heads, a 20 knot southerly had heaped the seas into oily black mounds. Not wanting another 'failure', we turned north and ran before the wind for four hours, intent on making Port Stephens by nightfall. 

The wind gradually built to 30 knots. With no autohelm to share the work, Glen struggled to keep us surfing straight on waves he couldn't see and which grew along with the wind. To make matters worse, the swells were crunching head-on into the fast-flowing, south-setting East Australian Current, creating steep, jagged packs of waves that boomed into our bows and showered the deck and cockpit with cold sea water. With no spray hood to protect Glen at the helm he was soon cold and very uncomfortable. The little harbour 'racer' was beginning to show her limitations and we were already painfully aware of ours (well, I was anyway!).

Throughout the night, I had been lying on the cabin floor, wedged in place against the roll and sway with life jackets. After a few hours of thundering through the tortured, surging ocean, Glen called me up to see the sunrise. In the muted pre-dawn light we could at last see the ocean - a seascape conjured by George Wesley Bellows, had it been a painting, and not, as it was, so powerfully real. Armies of grey-green waves, black valleys dotted by swooping seabirds, salt-spray clouds of mist blowing across a pale buttercup-pink dawn sky. At least it wasn't stormy, I thought. We both felt dwarfed by the sea.

I told Glen then that the cabin sole,which was meant to be held to the hull by long threaded screws, had been lifting during the night as swells rolled under the hull. The screws had all been ripped out by the force of the swells on the under-side of the bottom of the boat. The mast post, solid 4x4 inch teak, had been leaping about like a crazed fire-cracker whenever the floor lifted and settled. We agreed that didn't seem right. We also, ruefully, agreed to tack around and head back to Broken Bay.

Surfing invisible waves in a 30 knot breeze for four hours is uncomfortable enough in a little boat; but slamming into it for twice as long to get back to Broken Bay was a hull-shuddering, tooth-clenching battle. We spent the entire day thrashing into blue-black peaks over and over, hour after endless hour, until, at last, we could see Barrenjoey Light on the southern headland of Broken Bay; and there, at long, long last, was Refuge Cove (now we knew why it was so named!) - eight hours of bone-crunching ''sailing'' later. It was a hard, but a fast way to learn.

We learned, among other things, not to get in front of a young south coast southerly; we learned what 'beating' and 'running' really were. We saw how the sea heaps up when a strong wind meets a strong opposing current. We learned of the relentless indifference of nature. We learned we could handle it even if we didn't like it.

We knew, too, by the time we turned around, that the little Carter 30, ('fast in her day' as everyone who knew her just had to tell us), was no ocean cruising boat. Her bottom was flat and 'soft' - not much glass down there - and we thought it prudent not to press her beyond her design limitations. We still loved her; but she wasn't going to take us where we wanted to go. We still enjoyed her immensely while we were searching forDione and she will always live among our fondest memories.

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