Yesterday, Wednesday 14th March, Jim Colley set off in his Optimist on his mission to sail from RPAYC Pittwater to WSC Rose Bay Sydney Harbour in an effort to raise money for his World Championship campaign this year.
Jim will be representing Australia in the Dominican Republic.
Departing at 8:40 am Jim had a slow start sailing up to Barrenjoey in the very light easterly breeze.
After the first 2.5 hours Jim had made it offshore and started to turn south reaching along in the slowly building NE sea breeze.
With a full support team following including Traks Gordon and Dave O’Connor in the VSR Rib and Jim’s father Gerry Colley on his yacht, Jim started to head a little further offshore to get into the half a knot set which was running about four miles out searching for every little bit of assistance he could find to get him south.
After the fifth hour passing long reef Jim really started to feel the pain from working the boat hard downwind the whole time on the same gybe, However he was in good spirits the whole way and commented when asked about how he felt.
'I’m ok, my bum is pretty sore but North Head is getting bigger!'
As the breeze started to build to 14 knots and the heads started to become clearly visible, Jim’s average speed started to lift to about 5.5 knots as he worked hard to catch every wave which presented its self.
Once in Sydney Harbour the seas flattened out and Jim had a very pleasant sail all the way into Rose Bay.
With an elapsed time of 8 hrs 6 min and 39 secs to cover over 26 nautical miles, it was certainly a long time on the water with a huge effort put in by Jim to make it and to achieve his goal!
To find out more about Jim’s program for 2012 and support him check out www.optimistjim.com.au
Please not that this trip was planned based on a suitable weather forecast and having a detailed safety plan in place including adequate safety boats, first aid, food and drink with continuous radio log on positioning through out the trip.
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