Hello From Australia

[Graham andClare]

Hi Tacmed, welcome to CF. Good luck with the boat and the new life. We are just wrapping up our first Queensland coast cruise and have found it to be an amazing experience. (Read- life changing). A lot of the Queensland coast is relatively shallow but your draft shouldn't limit you too much. Just means you will have to anchor a little further off but at 50 feet you probably would anyway. Hope you have a dry and fast dinghy. Even the Sandy straits won't be too much of an issue, just use the tides like everyone does there. We are 1.8 metres but know of plenty of deeper draft boats cruising these waters. Hope to meet you out there.

[mtiag]

Welcome abroad!

[Wotname]

FWIW, all the banana-benders I've known (including myself) pronounce it HARvey Bay and spell it HERvey bay. Prolly just a Queensland thing eh; bit like starting most comments with "Yes, no...." or more often "yah, nuh..."

[Phillip59]

Hi Tacmed, Im new to the forum and I've just bought a 50 ft Hartley yacht and am considering buying something a bit smaller maybe around 40 ft for my partner and I , I see you've had a 50 footer and now you have a 44 footer , can you offer any advice as to which is preferable and why ?
regards Phil

[Tacmed]

Phillip. I much prefer the smaller one I have now. 38ft plus bow sprit etc. I got the bigger one out of ego and figured bigger was better. To sail comfortably I needed crew. This meant solo or partner sailing was out. In some states, and growing, anything over 49ft 10 inches had a mandatory 20 million public liability insurance. 10 is easy but 20 is hard. The cost to replace larger yacht rigging was huge. In my case, 25,000 just for standing rigging not including labour. Mooring. If you use finger moorings, the length affects your mooring cost significantly. I like island hopping. So many times i had to anchor a long way from island due to the depth required.
Of course larger is more room inside. More to paint and anti foul.
I scaled down not because of money, is was the flexibility of places to go.
Statistically speaking, the most common size yacht sailing to Australia from overseas is 28feet. Due to the deep water sinosoidal wave motion, the ride on waves is so much smoother on 40ft and under.
Freeboard. Lower freeboard made a big difference also. Less windage and less effect from a beam on wave.

In my case, a guy who had been sailing for 60 years helped me. He sat me down and asked what type of sailing i wanted to do. I want to island hop alĺ over the world. He then said "why am I making choices on yachts by EGO...big arrrr" he showed me a yacht that had done 2 full circum navigations and was 37feet with low freeboard. At first i thought no way. Then i asked the old salts... they all said the same thing. If you want to live on a river, get a big one. If you want to sail away, get one that you can go from island to island (food water) and you can sail yourself if the other crew is ill.
Of course, everyone wants different things and has different opinions. I can only say what made me choose the yacht i have.
38 foot, builge keel, points into the wind well, can be run up on the beach if needed, low freeboard for windage, 7ft standup space inside, plenty of room inside. Easy to find a hard stand lift, easy to anti foul, much much cheaper to run when cruising.
This was my choice and many may have a different opinion. Mine was a concidered choice with help from those who have sailed the world.
Regards
Terry

There w

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[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, Phil.

[Tacmed]

Got rid of our 52ft. Now jave a builge keel 37 footer. So much better for us. Less room but so much better to get into those nice anchorages. 4ft 2in draft is great.
Happy days. From SV Drummer.