Around the Buoys
Irish Sigma 33 Newsletter
Quarter 1 2011
Letter From The Editor
Welcome to the New Year!
The big news of the year is the election of Tim Goodbody as our new class captain who took over from Paddy Maguire. Paddy, who led us for the previous two years, did a fantastic job in holding the fleet together during turbulent financial times and not a boat was lost in the fleet! Many thanks Paddy for a job well done!
Hopefully we are starting to come out of the recession and the perfect storm of the past is behind us and maybe there is a glimmer of grey light over the horizon. I feel it in my rheumatic bones that this will be a better year.
Tim has led the fleet before and is a well proven master in the art of running the association and as past commodore of the Royal Irish Yacht Club brings a wealth of experience to the post. He has some exciting ideas that he will share with us in due course and there will be a few challenges in the year ahead and he will need plenty of support from us all.
Tim Goodbody
Class Captain
Irish East Coast Sigma 33 Association
On Elandra, we had a great season last year. Cruising is very much a part of the Elandra raison d’être and we got plenty of that with our trip to Spain. Racing came very much second and with the mast off the boat getting serviced for the best part of 6 weeks and the injectors plus the cylinder head in the workshop for another 4 weeks racing took second place. This year we intend to enter as many regattas as we can including Bangor for the championships, the Volvo regatta back home, Calves week (where I am told the craic is only mighty!) and hopefully we will get across to Wales for the keelboat regatta in Abersoch. I am told that we will have our own start and there is a fine welcome for us if we decide to enter. I will then have enough hours to sit the Offshore Yachtmasters that will give me commercial status at last over land, sea and air, always one of my ambitions! Paul Adamson at Sailing West has promised to give us good rates should a bunch of us decide to go ahead with the qualification.
I will dedicate a page with the required links for easy action and choice for all the recommended regattas. The Sigma championships are already there under Bangor 2011.
Remember as always I am on the look out for stories and would love to see another authors name on these pages!
All the very best for the coming season and see you on the water soon,
Aubrey Leggett
4th Feb 2011
Captains Address
February 2011Dear Sigma Sailor,
I am delighted to be elected Class Captain of the Dublin Bay Sigma 33 Fleet and I hope I can continue to build on the effort and success of my predecessor, Paddy Maguire in providing a varied programme of activities and keeping the “fleet” together and vibrant. One of his many achievements was introducing a “Captains” race and I hope to run this again in 2011.
The Class has an excellent and competitive year to look forward to and I detail below some key dates:
Class and Irish Championships - Royal Ulster Yacht Club, Bangor – 17th. to 19th. June.
Paul Prentice in Bangor has put immense work into this event which is the premier Sigma 33 Regatta of 2011.
Paul has been in touch with Sigma owners based in Strangford Lough, Isle of Mann, Liverpool and North Wales as well as the Dublin Bay and Scottish Fleets and is aiming for an entry of 20 plus boats. This will therefore be a very competitive event raced over three days in Belfast Lough with 11 races scheduled.
He has also arranged special rates for those who wish to stay in the Marine Court Hotel, which is located directly opposite the marina in Bangor.
Sovereigns Cup, Kinsale – 22nd. to 26th. June
The Sovereigns Cup has always been a highly popular regatta and has been on my “wish list” for a number of years, so “Mischief” will depart Bangor immediately after the Class Championships and head for Kinsale. It is a 48 hour sail in ideal conditions and the delivery crew have 60 hours to get there!
I hope some other Sigma owners will consider joining us for this very popular regatta.
Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta – 7th. to 10th. July
Our bi-annual combined regatta takes place in Dublin Bay and I am sure everyone would wish to express their appreciation to Volvo for sponsoring this event for the third time.
I am hopeful of attracting entries from other locations in the Irish Sea and if they support our events, then it is only appropriate we in turn support theirs.
Abersoch Week – 20th to 27th. August.
There is a growing fleet of Sigma 33’s in Abersoch and neighbouring Pwlheli at this stage I have this pencilled in my calendar for late August.
This is a glorious venue and it is now over 30 years since I first raced in Abersoch sailing my Dragon across the Irish Sea from Dublin Bay. Bad weather scattered half a dozen Dragons into various harbours of refuge on the west coast of Wales, but eventually made if safely.
Home Events
Our own programme for Dublin Bay includes the regular Dublin Bay Sailing Club and Royal Alfred races as well as the Volvo Regatta.
The first Thursday race is 28th. April.
Of special note is DBSC will now be timing Sigma’s for ECHO results and this provide added interest and competitiveness to the fleet.
Thursday racing for all fleets will now be from a Committee Boat Start to a Committee Boat Finish and so the West Pier will not be used for Thursday night racing.
Marks have been relocated and so the courses are new and we will have a briefing before the season starts and notify you of the date as soon as we can.
Now is the time to prepare your yacht for the water and above all carry out the essential safety checks of everything, especially flares and life jackets.
The success of the Sigma 33 is its pure One Design nature so inspections will be carried out early in the season along with subsequent spot checks.
I look forward to seeing you all shortly and wishing you all a very happy and successful season.
Regards
Timothy Goodbody
Class Captain
An Australian Experience
From the Desk of Aubrey Leggett
Having spent 18 years of my life in Australia many of the world chartering grounds were prohibited to me due to the vast distances needed to travel to get to them. Simply to get out of Australian airspace took 3 hours from Sydney in most instances. But we were lucky to have our own cruising spots both in Sydney and of course around the barrier reef in Queensland. We lived North of Sydney in a town called Gosford that sat on a large tidal lake close to the Pittwater estuary and the Hawkesbury river. We raced every 2nd Sunday through out the year with the main classes being J24s and Etchells. We sailed on handicap with an East Coast 31 that was Australian designed and built and as you can see is not far removed from a Sigma 33!
Our local sailing club was quite small and there were few boats over 35 feet in lengh. It could easily be compared with the Wicklow Sailing Club and like the Wicklow Club could lay claim to one major race every 2 years. This was the Lord Howe race which ran to the tiny island 400 Nautical Miles off the east coast of Australia. Not a trip I would want to do with only a sextant. Lord Howe was original a prison colony and is now just a tourist destination.
East Coast 31
Australian Design by Peter Cole
But with family and friends there would be nothing better than heading out early on a warm Sunday morning aboard "Moonraker" and anchoring in one of the many coves for a picnic lunch. Surrounded by the rolling hills, covered in eucalyptus trees and the sound of summer cicadas ringing in our ears we would relax and breath in our surroundings. Cicadas for the uninitiated are like large grasshoppers that incubate under the ground for 7 years then crawl up the trees in a cockroach like shell and then metamorphose into grass hoppers to mate and die in a matter of weeks. Rather a miserable existence! In the meantime they make such a racket it can at times be difficult to have a conversation outdoors. But I digress. Sailing the Pittwater and the Hawkesbury River estuary was a delight and a real privilege to have on ones doorstep.
Our local cruising grounds, looking north; Lion Island, guarding the entrance to the Hawksbury River North of Sydney
However, for our summer holidays we would often head north to the Whitsunday islands for a week of cruising. The scenery was not unlike Sydney with gentle hills covered in eucalyptus trees in a dry sandy type soil but without the people. We would fly up to Airlie beach which would be the launch pad for many of the charter operations working the Whitsundays and was no more than a 2 hour trip by plane from Sydney. The entry point would be the airport at Hamilton Island with its holiday resort and natural harbour crowded with luxury motor yachts waiting patiently for their owners to make an appearance. A short motor boat ride would get us to Airlie Beach to pick up our charter. Oceanis and Hanses were the norm and between 6 of us we would hire a 40 footer with plenty of space for a little privacy and a private cabin. If there was a gang of us, rather than charter one big boat we would take two smaller boats so that we could split up and do different things during the day and meet up later.
The glorious thing about the Whitsunday islands was that it was protected by the Barrier reef some 40 miles off shore. Although there could be strong tides and one needed to be selective of times and direction, there would be no great big rollers coming in from the Pacific which led to excellent cruising grounds. With 100s of islands to explore it could be difficult to decide whether to go north or south. Some of the islands carried holiday resorts from the most luxurious such as Hayman to the more mundane. It had to be said that the exclusive resorts often discouraged charter yachts and we were left with the more down market islands to visit! It was possible to sneak into the exclusive Hayman island resort by mooring on the far side of the island and walk 5 kilometres. Unless you wanted to make eye contact with a few celebrities the extortionate price of a beer discouraged most sailors from going near the place! We normally chose the uninhabited islands were there would only be us and unspoilt wilderness.
Depending on the season or which way the El Nino effect was contributing to the weather, one could never be quite sure of what could be expected. I once spent a week with grey clouds scraping the top of the mast and winds blowing an average of 20 knots. Even at night it never eased and there was always the worry that the anchor would drag and with no reference points in the pitch dark it was all quite disconcerting. On one particular night I had lined up our position with the other 2 yachts that were anchored in the same bay for the night. At 4 in the morning with the wind still pulling at the anchor chain I went back up on deck to discover that my bearing to the other boats had changed considerably. Wild panic took over and I yelled to my crew mates that we were dragging anchor and started the engine. I only then looked at the
compass and realised we had swung on our anchorage as the wind changed direction. I learnt to set the anchor watch on the GPS soon after that! Two days later having battled strong winds and dodgy anchoring areas, we arrived at the beautiful hideaway of Palm Bay. Looking out onto a small horseshoe shaped bay the place reminds me of something out of Robinson Crusoe. The beach had been dredged to allow boats to come in quite close to the shore and with a small channel that stretched for a few hundred yards out to sea, one of the staff from the resort came out to pilot us in and find us a mooring. Then just a small rather dilapidated resort, we were able to moor our boat stern to the beach with a long rope tied to a palm tree and the bow to a mooring. After 3 days of relentless weather we slept like the dead knowing we were safe and secure. Since my visit in the 90s, Palm Bay was turned into a luxury hideaway but unfortunately closed in January of this year. But it remains my favourite spot in the whole of the Whitsundays.
This year, so I am told, has been a total disaster with torrential rain for the whole summer season. But don’t get me wrong, most of the time the sailing conditions are idyllic and the temperature is always warm. The water is a beautiful turquoise colour and clear to the bottom 20 metre below. Dolphins and turtles are in abundance, chasing the shoals of silver fish that move like giant shadows in the water. Then there is the cacophony of sound as the cicadas wake up in the morning and the Kookaburras join in with their chuckling chatter. Salt water crocodiles, box jelly fish and other Aussie nasties are not found around the islands but can be commonly encountered along the continental shore line. Best to stay out around the islands I reckon!
Palm Bay: The chalets did not exist 12 years ago and the resort was hidden in the trees. My favourite spot in all the Whitsunday Islands.
Of course there is Whitehaven Beach that is considered one of the top 10 beaches in the world. Not being much of a beach person I only stepped on it once and wondered what all the fuss was about. Day trippers would come in their droves from the mainland and the island resorts and despite being at least 2 miles long it could become quite crowded – it was not for me! Many an unskilled sailor would be stranded in the falling tide and each time there would be the plaintive pleas for help over the radio. We would shrug our shoulders and down another cold tinny of VB or XXXX and watch the saga unfold. Mind you, in the high season the charter operators have ribs patrolling the beach to ensure their boats are safely anchored!
In usual Aussie style the friendliness and helpfulness from the local tourist providers and other yachties was excellent. My daughter Alyce aged 4 at the time left her prized doll, Miss Polly, at the airport in Sydney. An emergency call to the airline had Miss Polly located in the passenger lounge and was on the next flight up to Hamilton island where we were advised that she had had a seat all to herself in business class! In the evenings we would raft up with total strangers and share a cask or two of the local plonk (no bottles) and watch the sun set over the hills. What a wonderful way to make new friends!
There were many nature paths on the larger islands with aborigine art in isolated caves. How old these paintings where I have no idea but it did give you a sense of timelessness and appreciation of how tough and precarious life must have been like. Mostly I remember the swarms of blue butterflies that would lift off the trees and plants ahead of you as you rambled through the bush.
There are strict laws in the Whitsunday in regard to dumping rubbish. Not only was it considered socially unacceptable to throw refuse over the side the fines if caught were very high. It was possible to be away from civilisation for the whole week and garbage could mount up very fast and would be a major fact when provisioning. Beer in aluminium cans, frozen or dried vegetables rather than canned and all unnecessary packaging stripped and dumped before leaving. Even so, by the time we returned there would be a bag or two stowed in the dinghy prior to finding a suitable place to dump our waste.
Why did I ever leave Australia, you might ask? The weather was excellent and the sailing perfect. But the life of a commuter is the same no matter where you live and the pull for home can be quite strong. At the time the tiger economy was roaring and opportunities in what we all thought was a new Ireland were enticing.
Anyway I learnt more in one season sailing in Dublin Bay than I ever did in 10 years on the east coast of Australia!
Not a cheap holiday but this is an experience of a life time.
Costs:
Flight return to Sydney from Dublin: From €960
37 footer for 6 nights 6 people = €2800 - 3000
Whitehaven Beach
Daughter Alyce playing on Whitehaven beach 1998. (Had to get it in somehow!)
