Flying Home For Now

The trip south on Magic Roundabout has been called off for now after the skipper pulled out, the boat will be moved to a mooring on Wednesday and I'll be flying home. I'm a bit disappointed but have been having lots of fun and doing really well up here. I've been racing with the Cairns yacht club, meeting all sorts of helpful and interesting people including the Commodore of the Cairns yacht club, Warner who intends to become the oldest person to sail non-stop, unassisted around the world and the states premier Anna Bligh. All the yacht club members and almost everyone from the marina have been really encouraging and full of great contacts.On Saturday Ricky, Martin (the crew I've been sharing the boat with) and I headed up a place in the hinterland ‘Yungaburra’ to a Folk Festival wicth was good fun.
Enough for now,
Jessica

Cairns

Today I flew up to Cairns to join Magic Roundabout. The flight up was good with views of the coastline the whole way till we started the decent into Cairns which is surrounded by big, gray, wet clouds! Its crazy to think that the distance that the plain covered in 90 minutes is going to take us over a mouth to sail! Not that I'm complaining. This week I will be kept busy with jobs on the boat, helping to promote OceansWacth with local yachting community, meeting my school teachers who are based up here and of course school work! The skipper and other crew for the trip will be arriving over the next few days and we plan to leave, weather depending on Saturday.

Moreton and Progress

Hoisting the staysail
Almost!
The drogue
Action
I haven’t updated in a while so hopefully I’ll redeem myself be posting lot of pictures!
What have I been up to and hows the project coming along? Well great, a local business Ullman sails has committed to helping me out with sails and Red Lid Advertising and Design is working on a website with me. I’ve been sending off proposals, scouting around for managers, learning lots and doing plenty of good old networking. It amazing who knows who and the support and interest from everyone has been very reassuring.
The pictures are of last weekends sailing with friends on their catamaran Big Wave Rider down to Moreton Island. The original plan was to sail north up the coast but that’s not what the wind had planed, it was light and on the nose so we headed down with it to Moreton instead. When the wind came up we had some good sailing, there were whales everywhere! By the end of the weekend the novelty had worn off and I stopped bothering to try and catch them breaching on camera.
On the way home the drogue, which is a lot like a parachute and is used to slow the boat down in a storm, came out the bag. It was great to finally see one in action and it worked a treat. I have to say that letting it out the back of the boat was a lot more fun that winching it back in!
Late next week I’m heading of up to Cains to sail back down to Brisbane on the Oceanswatch boat Magic Roundabout. We’re going to be using the trip to promote OceansWatch and my voyage, doing presentations at local yacht clubs and getting the local media involved.
I’ve been following Zac Sunderland’s solo around the world voyage which has been great as he is going through everything that I soon will be, his website and blog are definitely worth looking at www.zacsunderland.com
Cheers

Jesse