Caper Cat Clarence River Camping

[DrSnapid]

I'm basically loaded ready to go for our first raid tomorrow. Sailing from Grafton to Harwood (~50km) - camping - then sailing home.

 

Got the cat loaded with all the gear and my 14ft 25hp runabout is coming too - my dad driving- for backup. I have loaded the cat with everything we need for me and my 2 kids. Dad's stuff is in the runabout.

 

Here's hoping the wind plays the game. 50km is a long way when sailing on a river!

 

I'll upload pics on return

[dave202]

Sounds like a great trip, looking forward to the report

[John Dowling]

Suggest you go the other way. You are much more likely to be sailing downwind. Light wind, tide, narrow river, poor tacking angles etc won't add up to a good time.

[DrSnapid]

John was oracle like in his prediction.

The first few km were head to wind and tacking in a narrow channel. But the it turned and I could almost go right up the river on a high reach - at one point I was on the trapeze for 4km doing 18kn

But then the river turned back into the wind and this time it was a wide and long stretch. Well the swell was brutal. 4ft waves were beating the hell out of us and making life very uncomfortable, we ony made 1km progress in about 10mins and this stretch of river went on for 7km. Ihad an incident on the trapeze where I ran out of hull and was hanging out the back of the boat in mid air for a few seconds then crashed into the rear beam and tearing my shin on the traveller car. My 10yo daughter was scared and wanted to stop so I really needed to find shelter but that stretch is mostly rock lined. So I decided to come right up to the ulmarra wharf and did a pretty good job too but had a few issues getting the sails down and in the mean time got a bit of superficial damage from banging the dock in the swell. After looking at the plan and deciding it was unworkable we decided that 12km was all we had in us today and we headed home tail firmly between legs...