Crowther Catamaran sailing in 30 Knots | Scarfell to Shaw Island | Sailing with the James's (Ep. 45)

Hi we're the James family. Are you sick of your day-to-day life? Ever thought about doing something different? Well we did just that. We bought an unfinished aluminium catamaran and we're fixing her up as we sail around the world. Come along for the journey and click subscribe. This week we set sail and predicted 20 knot winds and end up being caught out in 30 to 35 knots as we find out firsthand how this aluminium catamaran handles near gale winds. Good morning from Schofield. So it's it's an absolutely beautiful Bay here at Refuge Bay and it's surrounded by quite big hills all around us and what we've noticed on one of the beaches over on the side there is there's some buildings there so we've put the tender in and we're gonna go across and check them out and see what's ashore. This is Schofield, Refuge Bay and over here is the hut in the distance right there on the beach that we're gonna go check out and it's a beautiful anchorage. Lots of reef so all of this around us here is reef. You can see the dark patches in the water and at low tide they should come out and you should be able to see all of them and there's been a few turtles around as well. We found a pavilion on the beach which has a picnic bench, a rainwater tank which would be great for washing dishes after a barbecue and a toilet. Well I should actually say the toilet is a bush toilet. And after exploring the island we head back to the boat. We secure the tender on the back and prepare for the next leg of our journey. Before we head off sailing there's a bit of cleanup we need to do because the other day when we sailed a whole bunch of stuff was knocked over and this time we are securing everything. We've just left Rescue Bay at Schofield and at the moment we're aiming for Thomas Island. We've just put the main up and going 6.5 knots at the moment. So we're slightly overpowered. I don't have the third rig almost yet but it might have been a better option today. So we're going to have to run deep just to de-power the rig a little bit there. She's blowing sort of 20 to 25. She's blowing from the south but there's like an easterly swell, a cross swell which is making it a little bit jostly. But we'll make for a quick run down there. We'll pop the heady, stretch our legs and get down there before we know it. Yeehaw! Yeehaw. Shortly after doing that top we got hit with 30 knots and decided to drop the main to the third reef. We have a reefing hook which is something that we will explain in a future video but the reefing hook is not set up for the third reef point. So we lashed the third reef to the boom with some spare rope. And the main went from looking like this to looking like this. We're going to pull up the staysail which is this black line here. It's the staysail which is the inner one up there. We decided to put our staysail out because it is our smallest headsail. With the staysail out and with three reefs in the main she sailed and handled beautifully. Our plan is to do a lap around the globe and today it was very comforting to see her handle the high winds well. We have a lot of trust and confidence in this boat and today solidified everything. So we are arriving at Thomas Island right now. Just come around the corner and the anchorage is right over here. And it looks beautiful but what we are debating is you can see in the mountains it's a beautiful beach there and the mountain dips and tonight it's going to be windy. And so basically we're just debating if it's going to funnel. We think we'll get a lot of bullets and that camel's back in there. So it'll come and it'll funnel through. You can already see the ripples on the water of the gusts coming through. So rather than go there just around the corner of Shore Island we know it's really good holding there. Quite a nice beach we can go and revisit our old haunt. Yeah and the last time we were there we saw a manatee, no a dugong. Yeah which is a manatee right? Yeah. So yeah we saw one of them which is very special. They're very shy so it's hard to see them. Yeah it looks like it. I'm glad we came and looked at it. It's a beautiful spot. We're definitely going to come back but just not with a strong look on it. We'll go somewhere else. Kennedy Sound it is. We went past the anchorage at Thomas Island and decided to keep on trucking a little bit further to Shaw Island to an anchorage we know well called Burning Point. We're coming up to Shaw Island now. It's the one right over here. We've been here a few times before and it's a beautiful spot. And we've just put the staysail away and we're going to start in turn to go into the gap of Kennedy Sound. So we've just arrived safely in Kennedy Sound just before sunset so we're pretty happy with that one. All anchored up nicely and as we came in the bay we're anchored out a bit wider than we normally would be but we had to because I don't know if you can pick it up there. But, twinning! That is another alloy keraltha. Can't wait to go across tomorrow and have a chat about life with them and hopefully meet them and say g'day and talk about everything nautical. We're all safe here at Burning Point. Yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous inside here. We'll head on over and have a chat about life with our twin sister. The next morning we popped on over to our sister ship to say g'day. The vessel is called Noramunga and the owners are now really good friends of ours. It was super interesting comparing the sisters, likes and differences and it was super cool how the two vessels are same same but different. Okay, so today's job is putting fairy lights or Christmas lights onto the back deck. We've got our fairy lights here and we've got a few strands of them so we'll be putting one on either side and basically when we moved out of our house we kept some of the Christmas stuff and these lights are lying around and we think they're gonna look awesome on the back deck and they're solar powered so they don't need any batteries or anything. So that's today's job and we'll show you what they look like when they're on. So when Kate came to me and said she wanted to put fairy lights up on the back of the boat I figured well fair enough, wife happy life right? So me and Kate we see eye to eye on a lot of things but decor is one of them that we usually don't because for me my question always is what does it do and she says it looks pretty and to me that doesn't make a lot of sense but when she put up these fairy lights I think they're absolutely fantastic. So it's a bit windy outside but I'll show you in a sec what they look like but they do several main things for the boat. They make it easier for us to identify a boat over night time. They also are on our boarding platform so it's easier to see before we turn on our main lights and because we're heading to Airlie Beach which is a drinking town with a sailing problem a lot of people who are coming out over night time they don't look up and see the mast headlight with the anchor light up the top there so this is something at peripheral vision that'll let everyone know that we're here. So it's a really great idea and instead of me just sort of letting Kate do what she wants now I want to get more for the bow as well. Let me just show you. So this here is the back boarding platform and there are the lights right there. They look absolutely awesome. Thank you for watching. If you're enjoying our videos and would like to help support us making videos and content consider becoming a Patreon. The link is in the description below. 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