Bavaria 44 across Bass Straight
In December 2002 the Bavaria 44 Lazy Jack had a testing crossing of Bass Straight,we had prepared the boat for heavy weather as i have previously seen Bass Straight pretty ugly.The Bavaria as delivered is in coastal mode so we added some more offshore features.Running backstays and inner forestay to beef up rig,Boombrake preventer to control the boom when jibing and reefing,third reef point fitted to sail and lines through boom.No.3 headsail with fwd sheeting,secondary cockpit winches,extra bilge pumps,harness points,resealed hatches,Dodger,Targa some fishing gear,Life raft,safety gear,zodiac,engine spares,tools and more tools.So finally we were ready. Left Sydney in good northery winds so easy run to Eden the jump off point for Tasmania.Once in Eden time was short so we grabed a small weather window,SE 15 for first twelve hours so resonable progress,swung to NE and started to build,before long we were running in 45knots of Southern Ocean Wind,the 44 ran down 5-6m waves with no problems as we were down to third reef and10% of our No.3 and doing 10 - 14 Knots,we pushed hard all nigjht and felt good about the innerfore stay and runners,we kept pushing the boat hard even adding a few rpm from volvo to keep the pace up to 10knots.Why push so hard ? we had 55knots of SW predicted the next day and 5m sweels into 55k from Antarctica did not seam appealing,We made the entrance to Wine Glass Bay about 1 hour before change hit so a fast passage.Conclusions-By having a fast light yacht we were able to sail away from weater that would have caught a slower one and boat has the ability to sail off lee shores,we if we were caught out,not shore like all fast planning yachts i would want to smash to windward for weeks i think she would do it,the Bavarias are tender and must be reefed early and deeply after which they handle well.Did we break anything?Suprisingly no,a few little hatch leaks fixed by removal and reseal,steering chain retension,top rudder bearing housing retension,but nothing that a bit of service time didnt fix,glad we did the afore mentioned upgrades as they proved essential.