G'day,

Today I went for a sail on Doug's harriette and Sidecar, his highly
modified Elementarry cruiser. Doug towed harriette up from Mandurah
behind Sidecar yesterday, including 3 bridges with small gaps. This
is the best part of 100 km and is an impressive bit of seamanship.

Sailing harriette is a hoot. Fast and fun. It has an old pretty
grotty 5 sqm/52 sq' windsurfer sail on an unstayed mast and I weigh 87
kgs/192lbs. Still plenty of yahoo moments and it flew a hull pretty
easily, and very controllably with me sitting next to the rudders in
15-20 knots. Shunts and steers well. Only the aft rudder is used
which makes it faster, but limits maneuverability and makes more
leeway than I expected. Using both rudders upwind is something to
try. The through beam kick up rudders work well, and they and the
rest of the boat are very solid. Nothing creaks or cracks.

Took us about 2 minutes to derig it. Remove the rig, slide the sail
off the mast and roll it up. That's it. For it's intended use of
getting kids (and adults) into harry sailing it is ideal. Not sure
how much it weighs, but carrying it up the beach, my end did not feel
a whole lot heavier than lifting a 25 kg can of resin, so between 50
and 60 kgs. I hope to get Katy (7 year old) and some of her mates
out on it over the weekend. Hopefully there are some other kid's
trainer boats out there for comparison, particularly Optimists at 40
kgs with 3,3 sq m of sail. Can also try it with an Opti rig.

Sidecar in cruising mode is about as far from harriette as you can
get. The cabin is huge, with Doug's boogie board on one wall, his
charts overhead and all his supplies etc underneath. Leeward of the
cabin is a hard deck, then the trampoline. A removable hard bimini
over the top and a fold up lounger will make it very comfortable to
sail for long periods. Interestingly, especially in light of the 15m
that we are about to start building, Doug reckons the extra windage
and weight are not particularly noticable. A "condo harry" is much
more feasible than I thought.

Tomorrow Doug is heading north, aiming for Darwin, then maybe Cairns.
Look it up on a map of Aus. This is an epic trip in a small boat and
I wish him well. Hopefully we will get regular reports along the way.

I will try and get some photos of both boats into files tomorrow.

regards,

Rob