Sailing Story - Careening Pegs, Dinah Beach

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    Dinah Beach CYA



Our time at Dinah Beach CYA
    Dinah Beach Cruising Yacht Assoc. caters for all yachties, cruising or not, and is a great facility for boat building in close proximity to central Darwin. Along with loads of friendly people it has the “Song Saigon Bar” and great food on offer. This was our home for 10 months.
Ready To Go At Dinah Beach

    A Sailing Story is incomplete without tales of times in shipyards! Whimoway spent the first two weeks on the pegs before being craned onto the wharf. We cleaned her out, a task in itself as she was full of mould and other assortments.

    Even in that time it was evident that she needed more work than we initially thought! The real surprises came when we started digging around the hull. For a time it seemed that we would smash her all apart but we found good steel eventually and then proceeded to re-cement.

    New steel was welded then chicken wire tied in. We used a product called Emaco to do the repairs. Her transom was replaced as well as a vast part of the deck and several other spots including a large hole starboard-side under the waterline.

    We chose a Ferro-cement yacht over timber for this trip as the tropics are too harsh on timber boats. Ferro is cool and needs minimal ongoing maintenance and to do the vast repairs like this on a timber boat would have taken a much longer time and many would not bother.

    Running rigging was replaced and sails sourced from several places. The hatches were re-set with new frames and then she was painted and made watertight before the first rains of the wet season. The motor wiring was replaced and the whole boat rewired inside, or enough for us to have a few lights plus the necessary navigation equipment.

    Mike built a large fridge-freezer, learning as he went, and lining was fitted as well as a temporary galley, chart table and saloon. Mike managed to put into place a bit of some Tasmanian feature timber including some beautiful myrtle above the galley; the rest of our timber is still stacked in the aft cabin! Finally we acquired more than enough ground tackle (anchor gear) which we consider to be essential.

    We made some great friends there and we had a fantastic going away party at Mica Beach on the other side of Darwin Harbour carrying 25 of our family and friends across on Whimoway along with a generator, amp and speakers, all camping gear and Rex’s dog who got waylaid in Darwin. As we went to leave the first time our fridge compressor blew up so we were delayed for a week or so, but, after a little more boat building at Dinah Beach, we eventually headed to Gove which is our first real Sailing Story.

Map Of Darwin - Northern Territory, Australia