Sailing Lady Kate Experiences with Bolger's AS29  Text (c) TJ Fatchen.  Sailing photos (c) Graham Cheers. Other photos (c) TJ Fatchen or NJ Fatchen

For AS29 cruising click here
 

Who said Bolger Boxes were unlovely and ugly?  AS29 Lady Kate photographed from the Martha Jane Shirley Valentine.  Click here for an expanded shot

All plain sail up in light airs.  Wing and wing in the small inset.

One reef in in a good sailing breeze (15 knots) in the Finniss River estuary -- flat water and little wave action.

Lady Kate hove to under mizzen.  The close up is in light air, and she's not moving at all.  Lady Kate has to lose all her forward way before she'll settle down.  Attempt to leave the tiller until she's properly hove to, and she'll tack herself out of the hove-to position and sail in circles.

Lady Kate hove to in a good sailing breeze. She's moving across the wind and her "slick" is just visible.  The GPS said we were sliding to leeward and forereaching at about 1 knot.  Boards up, helm lashed hard down, mizzen sheeted flat.

 
 

Lady Kate in her first marina, in the early stages of refitting.  Most of the clear wood had lost its varnish and epoxy.  We cleaned up and resealed with epoxy, which amine blushed badly in heavy dews.  We cleaned that up and painted with enamel, which was ruined by heavy dews.  We foamed at the mouth, threw all the enamels away and reverted in true atavistic fashion to plastic house paints - which succeeded. There were a number of deviations from Bolger's design in the construction of Lady Kate. Every one of the deviations degraded the purpose.  As many as we could, we rebuilt back to as-designed.  Some we can't. The cockpit, for example, was built flat, not with the slight backward slope the design shows, so...when it rains, water ponds in the cockpit.  Not much, because the end of the cockpit is, after all, fully open and self draining--but enough to be a constant irritation underfoot and potential rot-starter. I'll leave the moral to you...

Very early on we discovered that Lady Kate is a BIG boat.  Our first sail was actually a transfer, following a second break-in, from her original marina to a more secure one.  Inevitably, the wind was well oevr 20 knots and blowing onshore, and we had difficulty clearing the T-piece of the old marina's little jetty. "Give her a burst of forward motor" called Roger Keyes, so we did... There have been other embarrassments, such as the almost-faultless docking under motor only, with the last-minute application of full astern power to stop her, which turned out to be full ahead.  That little slip was rapidly corrected, but too late to prevent a loud contact with our jetty.  The performance raised muiltiple sneers from a nearby floating gin palace which, to our joy, was later seen imitating a WWI tank climbing out of a trench as it mounted the marina jetty in some sort of mating frenzy.  Well, frenzy, anyway, at the end of which it was well and truly...

The big foredeck leads to a lot of uses not necessarily envisaged by the designer.  Here, Graham Cheers does his imitation of the Rat Race Regatta race committee, berthed at the famous Guano Jetty of Clayton*.  The shadecloth awning is supported behind a cocked-up main boom, spread by the mizzen's sprit boom and held by a boathook.  Resort chairs await their rightful occupants.  No-one sat on the solar panel... The Wiley Windows in the doghouse are completely out for ventilation in the high-80s temperature. *The Guano Jetty is famous for the balletic performances of a previous Commodore of the Clayton Bay Boat Club in his attempts to persuade gulls, terns and pelicans to leave without adding to the resource.  The birds always applauded the performances in the only way they knew how...

Lady Kate's spa bath in full operation with increasing seas.  Not a sight for the weak of stomach.  The motion of the boat at this time was lively but comfortable in the cockpit, but oceanic at the bow...  Lady Kate was motorsailing under mizzen hard to windward in a mid-20s wind with a building chop.  Every third or fourth wave would result in a dig-in of this nature.  Steering was rather like a large fishing trawler--a small yaw off the wind followed by a yaw back and the boat shouldering the chop aside....

...with quite a bit of spray coming into the cockpit (and into the galley, courtesy of whoever was below at the time doing pea in pod imitations on the head).