Hi all ,
As it says how many here are also sailors .
Myself i currently have a 14' Hobie Cat and have had in the past 2 Cherubs and 1 intertnational moth ( no bloody snail pace sabots for Mrs Westwoods boy).
I have also helmed and crewed on a Flying Dutchman , Heavy weight sharpie , VJ , 40' Cole and several other cherubs and moths that weren,t mine.
Being the speed freak that i am i am also keen for a sail on my mates Nacra F18 Cat which to the unknown is a bloody quick catamaran
So what have you got , had , and are keen to sail on

Raced a Nacra 16sq for a few years and then graduated to 18 footers.

and they say sailing boats don't plane......

nothing beats thundering down the Brissy river in 20+ knots under a spinnaker with 3 on the wire......and then nose diving......

Gday
I am on my second Maricat. The first was an old 14ft and my current boat is the newer 4.3meter, almost the same just some changes to the rear transom and the trampoline is now one piece. You will love the Nacra, there was one were i used to sail and i went out for a run on it. Mono hulls are just way too slow.
Cheers Homer

Corsairs were my boat. Many easters were spent around the state racing in Qld titles
Ive also sailed from yeppoon to townsville on the South Passage and Sydney to Brisbane on the Young Endevour.

Iwant to race the Brisbane to Gladstone and the sydney to hobart

Yeah im into sailing probably more than VWs!

Currently sailing a Dufour 44 at Lake Macquarie Yacht Club. Ive sailed Pelicans, VJs, Cherubs, 16ft Skiff, Elliot 7, Eureka 34, Elliot 10.5, and Elliot 11.

Ive also done 3 Sydney to Southports, 4 Pittwater to Coffs harbour, and one Sydney to Hobart.

I've just got back into sailing after a 10 year absence as the kids were too small.

We had a Hydra 16 before kids. I've just bought a few months ago an old Nacra 5.0 (sail 1871). Not for racing, just mucking about on Moreton Bay. Good fun sailing across to the islands!

Angus

Us queenslanders better get together some time for a sail, BBQ , and after drinks to bull shit how fast we are/use'd to be

My first was a 16ft Fireball which we (mainly my father and brother) built in the garage ,in amongst the VW projects,had a ball learning to sail on lake Burley Griffin (Canberra) ..bit cold paddling home when the wind dropped out ..nothing like powering along on the trapeze single handed when your 16 and got no fear..next was a Unicorn cat ..again ply...taught my kids to sail on the mighty Clarence, used to leave it rigged on the bank and walk 100 metres from home with the boom and main/headsail and go for a spin after work...few scary moments on a big runout tide trying to beat up river...next was a Compass 30...great coastal cruiser many a memorable holiday spent on the old piles at Southport Yacht Club ...now have a Tophat 25 which is up for sale as ive just bought a Roberts 43 which im hoping to do some serious cruising in

We had a Hutton 24 fitted out for cruising and used to do the islands (Dunk/Hinchinbrook etc) fairly often,but sold it 6 years ago due to offspring arrival......I'll swap you a 411 for your Tophat Ray... I'll even deliver!!

I went through the sabot, 125, mirror and laser scene on the brissy river. Also spent allot of time in a cole 23 trailer sailer. But haven't sailed since school teams sailing in 99.....

The GF wants to get into sailing, though it might be time to buy a new boat for something to do over summer when the car racing slows right down. Any ideas on a resonable boat for a combined crew weight of 180kgs or a little more..... We are both over 6'2" and pretty heavily built.

try the mg14 bix
my mate and i sailed one for years and it was pretty good if you go say one thats a couple of years old they can be pretty forgiving
here is the website
http://www.mg14.com/newlook/index.asp 

We are to heavy, even if we can loose a bit of weight, still looking at 170kgs min...... thinking and old hartley may be the way to go.

I learnt on Kittycats - 12' catamaran - and still have the Tornado (20' Olympic class cat) that I used to race, but haven't sailed it for years - and there is the odd canoe, fishing boat, windsurfer and dinghy are also scattered around here among the cars and bikes.

I sailed from Cairns to Townsville a couple of years ago on a friend's new Malabar 2 replica schooner.

The mate who helped rebuild the boat in my avatar is a dual world champion in 18' skiffs. The avatar boat is a 70 year old Holmes Bros 50' sundeck cruiser.

Always liked the look of your cruiser , how about a few more shots of the old girl

I had them all on imagestation! - I'll dig some out

Here's a couple:

everything in this shot except the white ceiling and grey hull is new



Could've bought a new car with the cost of doing just this - and that included 50% family labour.



Putting down teak (deck step now has proper curved piece)



Latest addition

ahoy!
ive just returned to australia after 9 months of travelling..
the begining was sailing from australia to thailand.. all fell through after 2 weeks but, insane captain who didnt believe in life rafts or average life expectancies (wanted to go down in a blaze of glory type..) ended up working up the torres strait on a trawler for a while,then a little later trying to sail out of darwin to asia again... bad luck though, the crazy captain was mates with my prospective boat and badmouthed me.. anyhow... im all ambition with a bit of skill, having sailed in corsairs and cats, a few yachts etc etc... just love the water.. only other water sport i love as much as sailing is white water kayaking.. now that is awesome..

Beutifull workmanship mate ,a credit to you.
I gather from photo 2 she had a rotten bum / transom ???

I sailed as a kid (age 6 - 14) in cats ; Surf cat, Hobie 14, Mini Quest, Tornado, which overlaped my volksey addiction (10 - 35); beetle offroaders buggies, dc kombi's, drag choptop bug, Volksrestore 15 years, then sailing sounded pretty good to wash out the grease. Bought my first mono, a 32 ft M&W keel boat, then sold EVERYTHING and lived on our next boat, a '97 34' Catalina, then got really serious and built in 2 years our 36' 3200 kg Rogers sailing catamaran, with 2k paint detail and carbon fibre everywhere !!!!. Sailed about 35 000 nm on the east coast on these and others. Of course it's obvious the lure of the IDA sucked me back to vee dub addiction, but we do still have a boat, an old Hobie 18 that can run pretty hard so the Noosa bar is where we play on the water these days!

Yeah!! Lets have a dak dak sailing day??!!
Cheers Matt

no boat yet, but out on a mate's (self built) Green Island 18 often enough.
I'm looking at at building a Welsford Pathfinder down the track, but in the short getting a little hartley 14 or 16.
My old man has just finished the hull and decks of a steel 40' double-ended sloop in his back yard...built for blue water.
Also, love the idea of outrigger sailing canoes and wharram cats...simple but effective

"I gather from photo 2 she had a rotten bum / transom ???"

No - the deck and deck beams and cabin had some rot - all since replaced with new - the transom was more a prior damage issue, along with a dodgy beam that held the struts on.

...love the timber boats ..but as we say when working on the old trawlers ...cheaper to do it in Port Kembla Pine or plastic!!!....good timber is soooo hard to find at a reasonable price these days ...also you can frame and roof a house in 2 days with two blokes ...would imagine theres a week or two in that piece of teak decking ...no straight edges or squares used in boat building

yeah, always a sailor

duck punts,lasers,miracat, hobie 16's, 17, 18's, stingrays, A-class, tornados, 5.0 nacras.....now it's hartley 18's, windsurfing and the occasional drag by kite power

the "silent power" always gives me chills when i've been away from the water for a time

Yeah Damo. That was a huge buzz for me. Cruis'n along with a ghostly silence at times with your whole world cacooned in a shell, able to take you anywhere in the world, as long as there's 2 feet of water! And when the weather pipes up to have a machine that can handle it is something else. Especially after building her!

Love your latest mood Mat as it applies to not only the aircooled motors we all spend time with but air with a good push is a sailors friend too

Mat drop by and see me at the Custom Veedub stand Sunday , and we can through some ideas around for the AVD sail day.

Andrew 0407373781

See you Sunday Andrew. The sun has come out today, so hopefully we wont all need schwimmers !!