MacGregorSailors.com

Ray

We are lucky here in OZ
We can sail ALL year round

Allan

Yep, sailing ALL year round here in Oz (except for those periods of cyclones, gales, thunderstorms and miscellaneous other weather aberrations that seem to keep interfering )

gyroplanes:

I wonder if Ace was staring at the horizon to fend off seasickness? If so he is a smart dog .

I don't have a dog now, but a few years back I tried taking my water-loving, strong-swimmer, surf-mad blue-heeler-bull-terrier-cross on my Tankard yacht. I thought she would love it, but have never seen a more utterly miserable seasick creature. She would never go near the boat again.

Just to get back to yor question...The Murray River trip was all motor. however when we started at the mouth of the river it was blowing a good breeze...so we sailed up the river for about four miles, before it started to look like a snake...Puggsy...

Hey, Oskar...You have / had a TANKARD...a TANKARD wa one of my first yachts...23 ft, F/glass hull with timber topsides, fixed bulbe keel with a secondary 'keel' supporting the rudder. and a motor well inboard of the transom. what was her previous history and name? and what is the toerail made of?

could it possibly be the same yacht. ? email me. puggsy

We can also sail all year around in Chicago. The Coast Guard sends Ice Breakers through regularly, to keep the ship traffic flowing. I''ll pass though, and wait until spring.

Puggsy:
I had the Tankard from the mid 80s till early 2000's. I don't know what it was called before I got it. It was originally a red f/g hull but I had to paint it to hide all the pockmarks from repairing osmosis blisters, and went for a "faster blue" hull colour. The superstructure was a unusual for a Tankard - it had a glassed-over-ply 6x6x6ft cubed cabin so I could actually stand inside. Most other tankards I've seen had a very low cabin profile.

The wet well for the outboard and the thru hull for the rudder were the two weak points on mine. I never had a serious leak, but often had seepage into the bilge and never felt really confident about the joins there.

It was my first "true" sail boat (after a 12ft cat), and was a good stable boat to learn on. I kept it moored at Blackwall Reach in the Swan River but I sailed it mostly in the ocean, usually single-handed, and it took me the 12nm to Rottnest (and sometimes a fair way beyond) many times. Lots of happy memories including having a whale surface just a few metres from the boat. It was a lot bigger than the boat was!

I also have fairly vivid recollections of one rather hairy trip back from the Island. Overloaded, with 4 passengers (none of whom were useful crew) plus me and a lot of gear on board. Winds were 28-30knots, with decent following seas on top of a 4m swell. The boat was pitching so much that the prop seemed to spend more time out of the water than in, and the cockpit was frequently drenched. Crazy really, but the Tankard was a tough little thing and we made it back safely.

I just went to check out the "most popular thread" and found out I started it. The thread seems to end in 2008 (except for this post) Am I missing something?

Tom