Official Jessica Watson Blog

Hoisting the staysail

Almost!

The drogue

Action

I haven’t updated in a while so hopefully I’ll redeem myself be posting lot of pictures!

What have I been up to and hows the project coming along? Well great, a local business Ullman sails has committed to helping me out with sails and Red Lid Advertising and Design is working on a website with me. I’ve been sending off proposals, scouting around for managers, learning lots and doing plenty of good old networking. It amazing who knows who and the support and interest from everyone has been very reassuring.

The pictures are of last weekends sailing with friends on their catamaran Big Wave Rider down to Moreton Island. The original plan was to sail north up the coast but that’s not what the wind had planed, it was light and on the nose so we headed down with it to Moreton instead. When the wind came up we had some good sailing, there were whales everywhere! By the end of the weekend the novelty had worn off and I stopped bothering to try and catch them breaching on camera.

On the way home the drogue, which is a lot like a parachute and is used to slow the boat down in a storm, came out the bag. It was great to finally see one in action and it worked a treat. I have to say that letting it out the back of the boat was a lot more fun that winching it back in!

Late next week I’m heading of up to Cains to sail back down to Brisbane on the Oceanswatch boat Magic Roundabout. We’re going to be using the trip to promote OceansWatch and my voyage, doing presentations at local yacht clubs and getting the local media involved.

I’ve been following Zac Sunderland’s solo around the world voyage which has been great as he is going through everything that I soon will be, his website and blog are definitely worth looking at www.zacsunderland.com