Preamble … About Symphony

With many thousand nautical miles under our collective belts, the crew of Symphony is getting ready once again for an extended trip away.  In mid-July, 2017, we’ll weigh anchor (OK, drop the mooring), set the sails, check the compass heading and sail off into the sunset.  Er, well, not exactly.  The sun sets in the west, last time I looked. If we leave Sydney and head west… we’ll hit land.  So we won’t be sailing off into the sunset just yet.  The Skipper is probably fairly relieved to discover I know my compass points, as he’ll be leaving me on watch for hours at a time and will want to sleep with both eyes closed, I’m guessing.

It makes sense to tell you a bit about Symphony before we go any further (in the blog, not the boat. We haven’t left yet!)  Symphony is a Catalina 42 Mk 2.  For those who already know our boat (or know boats, in general), you might as well skip to the next blog.  This is just a warm up! But for the landlubbers amongst you, this will give you some idea of our ‘floating accommodation’ for the next four months.

Symphony was launched in 1996, so she’s got a few years on her, but like most 21-year-olds will tell you, she’s pretty cool and has awesome fashion sense.  We like the way the Catalinas are built, and many have successfully crossed oceans and circumnavigated.  (The featured image shows us coming into Panasia, an island in the Louisiade Archipelago, Papua New Guinea, in 2013.)

Symphony is a sloop, (one mast), is 42-feet long (almost 13 metres) with a beam (width) of almost 14-feet (more than 4 metres).  She has a large cockpit (with gas BBQ), which can seat around 10 people comfortably, a spacious and comfortable saloon, which can seat 6 or 7 people for dinner, three double cabins, an in-line galley (with double sink, 3-burner stove/oven and fridge), two heads (bathrooms), and a nav-station with lots of screens and buttons.  Symphony is powered by a Yanmar 50hp inboard engine.  She has a bank of batteries, solar panels and a wind generator to supply the boat’s many electrical systems.  Up forward, we’ve got a Rocna anchor (25kg) and about 100 metres of chain.

We find she has a kindly sea motion and we enjoy her many creature comforts.  Our average cruising speed is around 6-7 knots, which is equivalent to 11-13 kms per hour.  You can’t run faster than this, but you could beat us on a bicycle!  So, to give you a better idea, while it will take only a couple of hours to drive from our place in Sydney to Port Stephens (a distance of 185kms), it will take us from Pittwater about 14 hours to sail at our average cruising speed.

It is all about the journey, not the destination, haven’t you heard?