Inigo Wijnen

voyage

admin — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:05:00 +0000

Because of an illness of my son Joshua, gaiasdream’s departure has been delayed.
The new departure is set for early next week around the 18th of June, weather depending.
Preparations are in full swing, among lots of other things, I did an success full HF radio check with yacht “spice” which is 500M away, witch will tomorrow depart Bundaberg Australia bound for Fiji.
I will be sailing single handed bound for the Kingdom of Tonga, where I will take on a crew for the rest of the voyage. More updates soon.

pacific proa adventure project

admin — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 08:10:21 +0000

Gaiasdream and me,
are all most ready for the trip, today we did the big shop which is always fun buying food in bulk to last us at least for the next 6 weeks.
We also have 400 liters of veggie oil on board to run the main engine, and 32 liters of ethanol for the stove. I have ordered some sun and wind from the right direction to supply the electricity and main propulsion for the boat.
Weather depending we will be departing this week.

Latest sea trials of Gaiasdream.

admin — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:12:38 +0000

Today I took gaiasdream out single handed to try out the new modifications.

The spreaders have been modified to face more aft to solve a number of issues. Witch worked really well.

Also There was a risk of she main sheets getting caught on the new davit, it turned out to be no problem at all.

We tried out the davit as well, while Gaiasdream was under autopilot doing 6.5 knots my son Joshua came alongside in Aquarius the blue fast boat I built for him with a top speed of 23knots.

Hooked up the towing and hoisting lines and then lifted it clear of the water, it was extremely easy and worked really well, the dingy is high enough above the water to keep there on an ocean voyage.

This is a great asset, not many yachts can deploy there dingies while under way and at short notice.

All in all a great day on the water!

Our new tender davit

admin — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 09:20:31 +0000

Gaiasdream has another improvement, with each step we get more ready for the voyage.

This week we have added a davit to hoist boats out of the water and were they can stay while we are at sea, since its on the leeward side of the main hull its away from potential waves hitting the boat. This position also makes it possible to raise and lower the dingy while we are under way. The only draw back is the main sheets can get caught on the dingy, but I have put some things in place to stop that from happening.

Record Breaking Summer

admin — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 09:32:49 +0000

Australia has officially just had its hottest summer on record, and one that has broken a number of other records for floods, rainfall and heat. Australia made the news worldwide for adding extra colours to the weather map and here on Gaiasdream, we are still waiting for a calm and dry weekend to get the lazy-jacks back on after Ini took the spreaders off to modify them. The one plus is that the rainwater catching system works a treat and we have two full tanks of freshwater and can take lots of long hot showers.

Electrics and Sydney heat wave

admin — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 11:40:22 +0000

Last week there was a 45 degree heat wave in Sydney.

Gaiasdream for the first time ever hat an electronics problem as that is in, we almost run out of electricity despite it was a nice sunny day for the solar panels.

The cause was because it was sooo hot the fridge could not cope and was running continuously for almost 24 hours on top of our normal electricity usage.

This illustrates on a small scale what happens in the normal electricity net, with every ones fridges and air-conditioners running.

Lesson learnt for me and every one else, change the settings on your fridge on really hot days and reduce electricity usage as much as possible.

In the end of the day the energy needs to come from some where.

up coming feature

admin — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 08:25:46 +0000

Happy holidays and happy new year for all the Gaiasdream friends and followers.

A Christmas present for me was a great 7 page spread in Australian multihull world magazine.

Written by my close friend Simon Bradshaw.

It is in the new January February issue.

Looking forward to keeping you posted with news of our adventures in the new year.

testing the new equipment

admin — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 10:35:48 +0000

new wheels and autopilot

Had a great day on the ocean today, trying out the new equipment, rudders, wheels and autopilot.
It all worked like a dream. Gaiasdream is so much easier to sail and shunt now. The autopilot keeps a razor sharp course even when we did 15 knots on a broad reach. Shunting is also much quicker now. One shunt was so quick the girlfriend had her up to 7 knots when I looked up from finishing of the ropes.

All in in all, a great day and a great result, worth all the hard work of the modifications.

Happy Holidays to everyone and hope you have a safe and fun time

Annual haul out

admin — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 09:36:24 +0000

looks like the boat is levitating

steel support frame

gaiasdream above the beach in morning bay

Gaiasdream had her annual haul-out these last few days.
She was on the beach for 3 days, sitting on steel frames to get access to her bottom, and now has a nice new coat of antifouling.
Also the topsides of the small hull had a new coat of paint.

GaiasDream has two new steering wheels

admin — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 11:10:53 +0000

Instead of the tillers I have built and installed a set of steering wheels which are working very nicely.

We took GaiasDream for a spin today to refill the tanks with water in the marina.
She is now amazingly easy to steer with the bigger rudders and shunting is much easier to with the new wheels, especially when we go ‘back wards” into the marina.

Most yachts that have two wheels have them side by side. On GaiasDream the wheels are at each end of the yacht, which clearly confuses people as they sail past the mooring, but most seem to work it out eventually.

The next item due for an upgrade is the auto-pilot. The plan is to get a more powerful system installed before Christmas and I am now just waiting for the parts.

This week I will take her for a spin under sail, can’t wait….