100+ Mile cruise around Port Phillip Bay

Richard Lozell (aka Mirror 69199 on this forum) and his son sailed their Mirror "Sapphire" around Port Phillip Bay, some 220km, in February 2015.
A report on the cruise has now been published in the "Afloat" magazine edition of April 2016.
It sounds like a fun enterprise and I'm sure that the article may encourage other Mirrorists to join in a fleet sail of the same course in future.
The article also states that Richard and his son Connor are thinking about participating in the 2017 Everglades Challenge. I hope that you both succeed, Richard, and come back with a great story to tell!

Gernot H.

Kevin Green's picture

Great story in Afloat!
I too dream of the Everglades Challenge.
But perhaps we should start our own one in Aus?

PuffinInTegel's picture

The Texas 200 and the Everglades Challenge are fairly organized events that require you to meet certain rules and officially "join" or "register".
The JollenFlottille is simply started by someone kicking on an on-line discussion on the Segeln-Forum. Everyone comes at their own risk and responsibility. This has the disadvantage that the size and composition of the fleet varies greatly from one year to the next. The advantage is that organisational effort is minimal. This year we had decided to try circumnavigating Rügen and at the end of the decision-making discussion, only three boats managed to come. We did, however succeed, and managed the 112 nautical miles in a week (with one day holed up in the port of Sassnitz due to foul weather).
It was an adventure and a great experience. (Videos under https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=JollenFlottille).
BTW there was a similar discussion on the Wooden Boat Forum in this thread. One topic included getting a group of Mirror owners together informally, perhaps that could spawn a raid-type event.

sail_and_oar's picture

I wanted to do the Everglades Challenge but it was 4000 miles away and I didn't like the entry cost, some of the (dumb) rules or the fact you have a long overland journey to collect car and trailer after you've finished.

To make myself feel better I devised the "5 harbours cruise" which started from Chichester visiting Hurst Point, Newport IOW, Eling SC, Fareham Quay then back to Chichester. I was told it was impossible under sail and oar but did it 4 years in a row. It's about 90 miles and I got it down to 3 days. It taught me a lot about Solent tides. On the first year I did it in company with a 15 foot gaff cruiser which was a pretty good match to the Mirror in terms of performance.

About 5 years ago we bought the Westerly and went a lot further but I never did the 5 harbours again. I thoroughly recommend this sort of thing to people with the experience to do it safely.

Cliff