It was that time again, 
the Hobart wooden boat Festival. 
Its on. Once every two years, it started on the 8 and went to 11. February 2013. This year, my friend Dick and his son Luke, came down from Queensland to sail with me to Kettering and then up to Hobart. for the show. We loaded our gear aboard moonshadow and set up a towing bridal to tow the 2.7 m inflatable dingy with a 4 hp Suzuki. We sailed from Lewisham, the first couple of hours were motor sailing, lack of wind then, just as we turned the corner. The wind came in from the SSE at about 15 to 20 kn, which put us in a broad reach across the top end of storm Bay. I had two reefs in the mainsail and a little under one third on the head. sail, we maintained a speed of around 5.5 kn for about an hour and a half. Once we entered the channel at that northern end of bruny Island we had a course changes which put us on a beam reach with speeds around 5.5 to 6.4 kn. We arrived at Kettering around 330 picked up a mooring near the marina. We jumped into the inflatable and went through a bit of a look around. That's when we found it a macgregor 65 in the flesh tied up to a berth in the marina. It was the last thing I expect to find here in Tasmania.
The next day we headed out of Kettering and sailed up the Derwent River with a huge flotilla of wooden ships, old and new wooden boats of all sizes, I had my wooden breadboard at the ready
the next couple of days, we walked around the marina surrounded by beautiful new and old wooden boats of all descriptions. On Sunday we motored for 2 hours down the Derwent the wind was straight on the nose then we turned the corner the wind was straight out of the South around 25 to 30 kn with a 3 to 4 m swell we had a reach for a couple of hours and then we had turned into Frederick Henry Bay, all we had up was less than one third of the headsail and no main, our speed averaging 3.5 to 5 kn. We had to tack across the front of the waves all the way in as the waves were too steep to come straight in plus we were towing the dingy, the boat did it easily we were very dry for the amount of wind that was about, and the yacht felt surefooted and very safe. The round-trip ended up being around 105 nautical miles and it was very enjoyable . Regards Andrew
. Just sayn' 
