the Adventures of Erica and Nico

It took us a long time to get there. We purchased French Kiss mid 2021 and it’s now October 2022. We have friends coming in a few weeks and we need to make sure that everything works.

Do we produce enough electricity for the two of us?

Is our electronic installation reliable?

Can we actually plan a trip? Provision, passage plan, anchore, launch our dinghy and outboard engine

Working a 9 to 5 job and having boat projects doesn’t leave much time for sailing and enjoying the boat. However, this week was looking great and we decided to go exploring our bay for a few days.

The plan:

• Start on Wednesday 26th of October
• 1st stop: South East of Mud island
• 2nd stop: Horseshoe Bay on Peel Island. Launch the dinghy, crane the outboard engine to it.
• 3rd stop: Dunwich on North Stradbroke. Sail there towing our dinghy.
• 4th stop: Brisbane River in front of Brewdog. Sail there with the dinghy on the deck
• Sail back to Moreton Bay Boat Club on Monday the 31st 🎃

The first day

The wind varied, it was predicted to be light and mostly North Westerly but we ended up with mainly Northernly and North Easterly winds.

Most of the wind was great to make our way South. We had decided to stop on the south east side of Mud Island, otherwise we would have arrived at night to an anchorage that we didn’t know south of Peel Island. Since Horseshoe Bay is generally busy we decided Mud Island was the way to go.

As long as the wind is light and mainly Northernly or North Easterly it’s a nice spot. There might be local fishers on their small boats or tiny, but they left us for the night. What was left was birds, insects, and a great sunset!

Erica also made BBQ, green beans, and Mac & Cheese! What a first treat!

Our second day

No wind! What shall we do? We motored our way to Peel Island. Strong winds were predicted for the night and Horseshoe Bay was ideally located to be protected.

We motored for 2h, with the tide we were often over 7 knots. I was testing our radar zones and alerts. This is really handy to have something else alerting you in case you have missed a boat, channel marker, whale during your watch. It can track targets too, when another boat doesn’t have AIS that can allow us to identify its speed.

I need to spend more time with it. It’s alarming me to often, and I am not seeing any crab pot yet. Maybe that’s a limitation on having the radar up our mast as opposed to a back pole or on a back stay.

Anchoring at Peel Island wasn’t difficult, it’s Thursday, there is a crowd but there is still plenty of space.

Let’s launch our dinghy!

deciding to launch our dinghy. This task used to be demanding with our portaboat. It was way too heavy for the two of us.

We now have a Zodiac 2.3m inflatable dinghy, which is much more practical and is able to fit in one of our cockpit lockers, next to our kayak. Inflating it takes 10min and hoisting it with our pulley is a breeze.

The other challenge was getting our heavy Yamaha 4acmh (4HP 2 strokes) 24kg outboard engine on the transom of the dinghy.

Thanks to the easy lift idea, it isn’t anymore.

It doesn’t look ugly and it works perfectly. My adaptation doesn’t have the wooden block and I might add something to avoid the hardware sliding up but that will be for another day.

Peel Island is mostly protected, there is a path, a camp site, and toilets. We briefly explored it before the low tide.

Tonight’s treat is Mexican. We had guacamole, tacos, nachos as well as a nice view. Only the strong wind kept us alert through the beginning of the night.

The 3rd day, Brewery day!

We sailed 40min, with our jib only to our next anchorage.

The wind wasn’t favorable at first but changed to North Easterly for the rest of the day.

Erica spent most of the afternoon editing our January video on the dry, when we did extensive work on the boat for 2 weeks, and I mostly worked on this blog post before heading to Straddie Brewing Co.

The 4th day, Brewery day! Again

On Saturday we wanted to explorer the river and navigate to to Brewdog brewery. Half of the way was sailing, we crossed a regatta off Manly with boats flying French colors, the river section was long and only motoring.

It was great to see Megan and Desi at the brewery.

The final day

On the last day we sailed home with a sense of accomplishment and a few new projects to hit before our departure.