Cruising and loving it

by Al Constable on 19 Aug 2005 The Adams 13 Alabaster has been sailing in the cruising division of the 16th annual Hogs Breath race week, the crew of New South Wales central coast sailors have been coming at the back of the bus, but they have been having a great time.

Kerry Nicholson and Ian Westlake are co-owners of Alabaster and most of their crew is from Gosford Sailing Club, including Brian Baker Commodore of Gosford Sailing Club and Lochie Stuart Baker his son.

‘We had a very relaxing cruise up and as we all live at Pearl Beach, near Patonga, on Broken Bay, we thought we'd better call in at Pearl Beach, about a days sail north of Yeppoon.

‘We came in fine, being careful with our charts and positioning. But we left Pearl Bay just on dusk and we hit an unmarked bommie, a hard smack with the centreboard and we know at least some of it broke off during the night. We came the rest of the way OK, when we got here, we saw the centre board was pretty short and we rang our friendly boat builder and he pulled out all stops to build us a new one.

‘It been a great regatta with great breeze, but with no centreboard, we’ve been sailing one step forward to two steps sideways; we've really not been competitive at all.

‘Luckily we had it back in the boat for the last day of Hogs Breath and now for Hamilton.

‘On the smell of an oily rag, we've been having a wonderful time at Hogs Breath Race Week. Its beautiful here, we've been enjoying it a lot, everyone is so friendly and it’s so relaxed and we've had a great time and we'll be back again.’

Did the new centreboard help? Yes it did in the last race in the series, Alabaster came home fast and scored second place.

Thursday night the welcome to the new centreboard party was rocking on Abel Point Marina and yesterday morning there were seven hung over sailors and Alabaster's mascot Dufus the duck on their way to Hamilton Island.