West Australian country catamaran sailing

[Guest Barry Sanders]

The Peel / Harvey estuaries is just 45 minutes south of Perth via dual lane highway ( mostly freeway ) and has SIX times the navagatable water for catamarans as has the Swan River !!!!!! Contact me by e - mail at sandersb@tik.com.au and come down for a sail .

Cheers ,

Barry.

[Chookie]

Will take you up on that once my personal life (2 week old baby) settles down! Where exactly do you sail from?

Chookie

N5.0 #1880 "Hawaii 5.0"

[Goose]

What class of cat are you sailing?

I sail from Bunbury on a Nacra.

We have deep draft rudders and boards, which would be suitable for the Estuary?

Originally posted by Barry Sanders:

The Peel / Harvey estuaries is just 45 minutes south of Perth via dual lane highway ( mostly freeway ) and has SIX times the navagatable water for catamarans as has the Swan River !!!!!! Contact me by e - mail at sandersb@tik.com.au and come down for a sail .

Cheers ,

Barry.

[Guest Barry Sanders]

Hi , thanks for the replies . I sail both a Hobie 17 and my spare boat is a Hobie 14 . I am Western Australia's longest standing Hobie skipper , comming out of a Sharpie in '72 and into one of the States first Hobie 14's .'87 saw me into a Hobie 17 and a few years later added a mint 14 as my "spare" boat . My good lady was living in fear of Hobie 17 failures ( and it has had many , but that's another story ! ) and talking me into a spare 14 guarantees to get rid of me EVERY sunday !

I am also building a "off the beach" Schooner rigged trimaran based on a old Hobie 17 and Sharpie which I call a HOPIE 20.Details are posted at www.multihullboatbuilder.com under the project name of HOPIE 20 .

Back to the Peel Inlet , Melville Waters on the Swan River fits twice into the Harvey Estuary and FOUR times into the Peel Inlet . These figures are based on our chart's 0.5 meter contour whose datum is well below lowest low tide and has another 0.5 can be added to that for usual tides and one meter ( minimum ) out to two and a half meters is just fine for Catamarans . Now that the Dawesville Cut connects both estuaries directly to the Sea ( the Bouvard Bridge has 74 feet clearence ! ) , we often sail out to sea and either down the coast to Cape Bouvard or northward around Point Robert and in the other entrance to Mandurah . The navigitable length of the Harvey Estuary is around 18 kilometers and 2 kilometers wide and the centreline is at 50 degrees to the sea breeze , so if you want a 18 kilometer close reach with NO waves then come down ( or up ) and blow your mind (and if it is 25++ knots hopefully not your boat ! ).

My Schooner rigged trimaran will cary both skipper and forward hand trapezing from a wing ( amas and wings are stock Hobie 17 ) outboard of the windward ama so that our centre of bodyweight will be 14 feet to winward of the centreline of the boat and our eyeballs will do a trip of 32 feet when the boat tacks . there is a perminant 16 foot tiller extension on EACH side of the boat .So if you think that a 18 kilometer close reach on a catamaran sounds like fun ( and it is ),my tri is designed to plane the centre ( Sharpie ) hull to windward so I am looking forward travelling South down the Harvey Estuary in 25++ knots !!!

We rig and launch our boats alongside the western side of the Mandurah Bypass Bridge which is acessable by crossing to the western side and going down a road on the northern side of the bridge which goes under the bridge and directly to our launching site . We usually sail sundays from 9 to 5 and stop for lunch at any one of 6 places that we can buy a ham and salad roll and a pint of chock milk and sail away .

Drop me an e - mail during the week if you want to know if I will be sailing that weekend .

Cheers ,

Barry .

PS , We have 4 Hobie 17's , 3 Hobie 14 Turbo's , and a couple of Windrush 14's and one Nacra ( the keelless 18 footer ) that is sailed solo by a guy named Gavin and he blows away my Hobie 17 on most points of sailing EXCEPT hard to windward .