Music to sail by

Due to the lack of sailing (trip to Adelaide and crappy weather on return) I thought I'd share my list of favourite songs to listen to whilst sailing. The list is by no means exhaustive, nor is it an indication of my musical preferences as I believe, quite passionately actually, that ALL music is valid - anyway, enough of that - here's what's in my iPod under the heading 'sailing songs' I'd love to upload them as mp3s so you can hear them too, but, alas, I haven't worked out how to do that yet!

Southern Cross - Crosby,Stills and Nash

Wooden Ships - Crosby, Stills and Nash

Errol - Australian Crawl

Sloop JohnB - Beach Boys

Sailing - Christopher Cross

Orinoco Flow - Enya
Great Southern Land - Icehouse
Sailing - Rod Stewart
6months in a leaky boat - Split Enz
Beautiful Day - U2
Ship of Fools - World Party
Songs You Know by Heart - Jimmy Buffet (compulsory for sailing and quite good fun)
cheeseburger in paradise
son of a son of a sailor
a pirate looks at forty
changes in latitudes
why don't we get drunk
boat drinks
Love Shack - B52's (nothing to do with sailing but I like it)
A Case Of You - Joni Mitchell (again, not a sailing song but I love it to death and hey, it's my blog)
Carmina Burana - Carl Orff (just coz it's great LOUD)
The entire cd Nouveau Flamenco - Ottmar Liebert (because I am the only person I know who doesn't hate it - my family have frisbee'd two copies but I always manage to replace it)
Sailing By - Band of the Welsh Guards
Sea Shanties - Band of HM Royal Marines


Those last two? Ha.....didn't know I used to play principle trombone in a brass band, did you? Anyway, IF I ever work out how to upload music I shall, just for your enjoyment.
Meanwhile, let's hope the weather improves soon!
'Til then, fair winds and all that :)

Just popping out for a coffee......

Today Phil (of Phil and Tina (Mardi) fame) and I took Sirocco north to Mindarie. It's a lovely little trip, only an hour or so away and the easterlies did us proud, so it was a delightful sail. We could have decided to drive there, but with petrol at over $1.60 a litre, I think sailing there was much more environmentally friendly - in fact, I think I'll call it my "offset" against my flight to Adelaide next week!
We arrived at the little Marina, came alongside, hopped off, had a super cup of coffee at the 'Dome' then sailed home. What fun! Talk about arriving in style :) Here's the photographic evidence

Sundowner - a Cruising in Company Tradition

CiC members - doing what we do best :)

Mikes techie corner

Latest on Sirocco…

Bavaria locates the sea water strainer for the engine cooling water on the rear engine compartment bulkhead. To check it involves stretching over the engine, not an easy task for either of us, so I have relocated it onto the forward bulkhead, now as the cover is lifted it is right there, easy. No new pipes are needed for this mod as it is a simple case of swapping the inlet and outlet pipe lengths over.

We have been suffering gear selection problems, especially reverse gear, the gear engagement went in with a healthy clunk and things felt very stiff at the throttle lever. Volvo Penta have now sorted this out, firstly by installing 2 new cables from throttle to engine and secondly setting the idle speed down from almost 1000RPM to the correct 825RPM, the gears now engage with a click not a clonk and the whole feel is much better, Sirocco is a transformed yacht ! :-)

It is still a bit too warm to go crawling below decks to fit the wind generator; I will do that next month when things will be a bit cooler. We unfortunately have a slightly leaking sky light window, it’s very annoying to be dripped on while eating, so that is on the list of ‘To Do’ for next time.

Mike.

Sirocco under sail

Thanks to Phil and Tina from Mardi !

On the way to Rotto

At anchor, Longreach Bay, Rottnest Island

Cruising in Company to Rotto

Anzac Day weekend saw us cruising in company to Rottnest Island, our first real cruise!
We followed Chris and Sue (Vaya Con Dios, a 40ft Bavaria) through the gap in the reef - very exciting stuff, plus of course we were able to program some invaluable waypoints into our chartplotter!
We anchored up in Longreach Bay, perfect conditions, lovely and warm, I even went for a swim with a huge manta ray beneath me - not the Steve Irwin kind, don't worry :)
We hosted the sundowner aboard Sirocco, joined by Chris and Sue (as above), Phil and Tina from Mardi, and Kay and Garth from Heartbeat, another Bavaria.
After a fun sundowner and a hearty dinner, we retired, only to be awoken at 1am by howling winds, a choppy swell and lots of banging and crashing of waves from the nearby reef....I was in my element and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, but unfortunately a few of our party got rather green around the gills...next morning we hitched a lift in Mardis' tender to the beach, and walked to the tea rooms for a substantial breakfast - yum - then battled the swell back to our respective boats. As the conditions were really getting worse, we decided to all go home - we motor sailed from Longreach to the marker at centaur reef then switched to both sails for a speedy and smooth return to Hillarys, followed by a BBQ.
Great fun was had by all - thanks to everyone from the Cruising in Company division of HYC, and of course to Bob :) Here's some photos of Mardi and Vaya Con Dios, hopefully I will get some photos of Sirocco on the water soon to post up here.

Mardi

Vaya Con Dios in the distance

Cousin Ann

Cousin Ann is here from UK: she's very experienced, she sails out of Cowes, IOW, UK and has sailed in the Carribean - her partner, Geoff, has a Hunter which he races, so you can imagine, Mike and I were trying to do everything right with her onboard - harder than you might imagine! Anyway, today (Monday 14th April) we had a lovely sail, great conditions, and when Ann stripped down to her bikini we just knew it was a Kodak moment :)