Wings Cruising Log

At dawn the Sulfur Crested Cockatoos dive-bomb our hillside apartment at Hammo, better known as Hamilton Island. Their raucus skreeching cannot be slept through, so they make sure we get up in time to get to the boat by 9:00, when our day's work starts. For us, work these days is sailing on Icon, and since sailing on Icon is so much fun, who's complaining?

Judy & I are at Hamilton Island Race Week, in the Whitsunday Islands, at Australia's Great Barrier Reef. This is our holiday this year since Wings is still in the repair shop and we aren't going to go cruising on her again for another year. Got to have a holiday, right? So here we are, guests of Dick and Bonnie Robbins, Icon's owners, sailing in the tropics, at sort of a down-under adult's summer camp.

Today, after our daily cockatoo wake up call, we boarded Dick and Bonnie's 65 foot flyer and went out for a nice practice race, just a few hours and a nice 25 mile jaunt around a bunch of the Whitsunday islands. Then for some more practice, we sailed up and down the Whitsunday passage for a couple hours more. Total, 40 miles, a few dozen tacks and spinnaker jibes, a rain squall or two, toss in a bit of ocean swell and 25 knots of wind, a top speed of 17 knots, and that was a pretty good day. My job is navigatgor, (I am naviguessing), and Judy's job includes gathering in and repacking the spinnakers. Her job is called the "sewer", and today she experienced how the name "sewer" was coined. Just after she and Robin pulled in the spinnaker, and while they were still up in the bow unclipping sheets and guys, a big wave came in the bow hatch and flushed them right back to Dick and Bonnie's bedroom. There goes the dry tee shirts! Later we did a bucket brigade and emptied out the water they brought in.

There are 19 of us sailing on Icon, mostly pros, and they did pretty darn good. Of couse they have nothing on our old Wings crew, but for pick ups, they did all right. The real racing starts on Saturday and we are looking forward to it. The boat seems fast and the crew seem good. Even though Icon is a cruising yacht, we decided to sail in the "Big Boat" racing class. The cruising division sighed a collective sigh of relief. We'll let you know how the racing goes.

Meanwhile, back in Sydney, Wings is still undergoing refurbishment. The guys doing the work call in daily to tell us how they are doing. Today's call came as we were headed offshore on Icon. Lucky we were still in cell range or they could not have reached us.

About our Australian jobs? We just put them on hold and left town. Hope we can have them back when we return, but if not, maybe we can get full time crew positions on Icon.

Fred & Judy