Background Info

This blog is about Phlat Chat and our trip north in 2009. We are planning to cruise slowly up to the Whitsundays this season and we will try to keep this blog updated regularly. For a little background information please read on….. Phlat Chat is a Lightwave 35 , she is 10.5 m long and has a beam of 6.67m. Phlat Chat was built on the Gold Coast by Lightwave Yachts and is a Grainger design. She carries, a main, a self tacking jib and a screecher . She draws 1.05m and has mini keels. We deliberately chose not to go for a design with dagger boards – just another thing to go wrong. Maybe we point one or two degrees lower than a cat with dagger boards, but frankly who cares. We picked her up in September 2002 and sailed her back to Sydney from the Gold Coast. Phlat Chat lives in Middle Harbour in Sydney and is owned by Chris and Andrew Why a cat ? We had never owned a cat before and all our previous sailing was on monohulls but we chose a cat because it just made sense to us. It is fas,t stable and flat – what more do you want ? It is a safe and solid platform and all the nonsense about being more stable upside down is just that, nonsense. Read The Cruising Multihull by Chris White. We love our Cat – she is safe, fun, comfortable and we have lots of room. So, where has she been this cat of ours? Well so far she has been from the Gold Coast to Sydney, twice from Sydney to Port Stephens, many times to Pittwater and to Port Hacking. The Gold Coast was the delivery run, left on Tuesday morning and arrived at Middle Harbour in Sydney on the Thursday night. Great sail and few niggly issues to sort out, as you would expect with a new boat and we sorted them after a while. High points where: 19.5 knots off a wave with a flowing sea and Phlat Chat behaving like a perfect lady. My mate, Rob a mono man mumbling under his breath, while at the wheel, “I will not be converted – I will NOT be converted". The Admiral of the fleet demanding all the boys have a tub on the transoms (and only after two days at sea – strange we did not smell that much) ….. Port Stephens has always been fun – great sails up and back although the first trip we stopped at the new Marina on the Hunter at Newcastle as it was a bit of a slug from the south and as we all know “Gentlemen do not go to windward” – they were very welcoming too. The high points there were just deciding where to end up that night and being gypsies. Listening to the dolphins at night in Shoal Bay, hearing the prawns like a million scratches through the hull at night. Just love Port Stephens. Port Hacking was cool – shallow though ! Squid for dinner caught off the back of the boat. Skipper got a dose of black ink – lucky had his old black shorts on ( I think they are now blacker in a couple of spots).