Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Happy New Year!!

Brisbane has been all rain, rain, rain for ages now. We have not let this stop us from going out on the boat though. We were out a couple of weekends ago and had a range of weather from sunny at Horseshoe to storms with thunde and lightning which drove us down to Caniapa for the night and than an overcast Sunday at horseshoe where we met up with Craig and Luci fron Pabati. Last weekend we went out in company with Skimmer and aluminium Sayer yacht. A very pretty yacht with a superb open plan fitout down below. We were impressed and surprised when we discovered it was aluminium.
After boxing day we are hoping that the weather improves so that we can take off in the boat for a week. Doesn't look promising so far.

Back in the water tomorrow!

Lion Rampant will return to the water tomorrow. We felt quite lost not being able to use her this last weekend.

Canaipa Cup

Sally and Martin

Sail trim after the start!

Sunset Canaipa

Chris relaxing!

Under sail in the Sunday race back to Manly (photos by Neil Planck)



Hull reflections!

Sunrise Sunday Morning

Cheese and champagne for our motor to Canaipa on Saturday


Pan fried Salmon for dinner!

Shipwreck off Blakesley's (We don't know the story here but presume that the skipper of this boat didn't know which side of the beacons to stay on to avoid the sand banks or else he was swept up on the banks in bad weather. ) This boat has been there for a few months now!


Towing a bunch of Blazer sailors on "Shrek" down to Canaipa after the race abandonment. It would have emptied their fuel tank (and their Esky) since they only had an outboard!

Chris our foredeck whiz!

Lion Rampant!

We just had a fabulous sail in this years Canaipa Cup. This is an annual event organised by RQYS for the combined clubs of RQYS, WMYC and MBTBC. I (Sally) elected to be skipper for this event. I was a little freaked out at the start as starts in a yacht are far more risky financially than dinghy prangs! We ended up at the business end of the start line right next to the start boat. A Hick 42 Ceilidh Lass was attempting to barge through between us and the start boat and a Beneteau First 40.7 Blunderbuss was below us pushing up. We are only just under 30ft so it is a little intimidating to be yelling for water at the skippers of these boats. We all broke free in the end without touching and even Ceilidh Lass made it through! The wind during the race got lighter and lighter and eventually some boats were floating backwards on a glassy sea. The race officials abandoned the race and we all motored down to Canaipa for the BBQ etc at Browns on Macleay Island. Next morning was light and we all motored across to the start at the tip of Macleay Island. An easier downwind spinnaker start this time saw us right up with some bigger boats such as Medina, Its Natural, etc at the first mark. We lost some ground on the next leg and then regained heaps on the leg following with our big white masthead kite! Sailing only three up (Martin, Chris and myself) I think we did quite well with a 5th on handicap in the combined clubs results.

Lion Rampant's Story

The Lion Rampant Crest on our stern!


Lion Rampant at Peel Island


Lion Rampant the day she was launched with the new paint job!

Funatic before the repaint and rename "LION RAMPANT"

Lady Skippers Race 2009

INTRODUCTION

Lion Rampant is a Young 88 yacht designed by New Zealander Jim Young and built in 1983. Her first owner named her Funatic but after owning her for three years we have just changed her name to Lion Rampant. My husband Martin is Scottish by birth and used to sail a laser he called Lion Rampant. The Lion Rampant is the Royal Standard of Scotland (a Scottish battle flag).

Martin and I race and cruise Lion Rampant around Moreton Bay in Queensland Australia.

THE DAY WE BOUGHT FUNATIC!!

Martin and I had considered many boat designs before we purchased the Young 88 "Funatic". Apart from Young 88's we also looked for a Ross 930 but could not find one. Our goal was to find a reasonably fast but comfortable cruiser/racer! At the time we were looking there were two Young 88's for sale in Brisbane. We looked at a boat called "War Canoe" first but it was not the boat for us so we went to look at the second boat. For both of us it was love at first sight! We sat and talked with the owners for a couple of hours. It was weeks later (agonising) that we finally made an offer. The day we motored the boat to our berth I felt as if we were stealing the boat. It was just so hard to believe that it was finally ours!

Since that day we have done much cruising and racing in our boat.