from the Southern Highlands NSW to Paynesville Vic for a planned 11 day break with the grandkids who came up from Melbourne. First long tow with the boat and we broke our journey overnight in Bombala Caravan Park. Everything went well until the temperature dropped to -2 degrees C and our sleeping bags did not quite meet expectations. It was a chilly start and the admiral was less than impressed! However we had great weather in Paynesville for our stay with light to moderate winds most of the time. We had some good opportunity to sail as well as cruise and I am beginning to see why people do love the MAC. My grand-daughters (4+ 6) however see it as a floating play house. On my birthday we motored with ballast over to Loch sport for Lunch and we opened our 60hp etec to 5000 rpm in very smooth conditions to get the feel of the boat at speed. It was great until without warning the boat slammed into a steep turn to port then starboard then port again and did a a complete 360 before I managed to get the rpm down. My first mod had failed. I had put in a heavy duty SS spring clip as a quick release mod to hold the motor bracket to the steering arm and it had loosened up and fallen out! I would not like to do it again but I was amazed how well the mac handled it. No-one was thrown around or hurt and my Gd's thought that 'Grandskip' was doing it on purpose. We had a lot of fun in visiting Picnic Arm and moored for lunch where we had moored for the second night of our honeymoon 47 yrs ago and had a great time with the dolphins around our boat in Newlands arm and the Macmillan channelI still do not like the Genoa chafing the safety rail and wire and am seriously considering moving it up a few cm's with a new hound and an external turn buckle at the bottom end to make fore-stay adjustment easier. I know a number of mac sailors have done this. Are there any precautions I should lookout for?
My new Hummingbird depth sounder in its "Pugsy Design" wetbox worked very well. I got a bit of a shock when I found that my Oil injection reservoir was nearly empty after only 10 hours motor use! Is this normal? Someone told me that they usually only filled it about every six months with the XD100.
On Thursday my back gave out on me and so my daughter drove us back to Willow vale with an enjoyable holiday cut short. It looks as though I have some healing to do so WindSong will have to take it easy for a bit.
cheers
BB
