Summer is Icumen In...

...well, south of the Equator it is. In England, as the poet Timothy Shy trilled. "Winter is icumen in, Lhude sing goddamn!"

In Australia, Alec Morgan is planning a summer expedition to Fraser Island, which is something close to paradise if the pictures on Panoramio are to be believed. 

Alec's blog follows him preparing his home-built boat, a Flint dinghy designed by Ross Lillistone, and plots his course up the landward side of Fraser Island, a national park on the coast of Queensland, to Wathumba Creek.

This is my type of cruising. Alec plans to float with tide and wind, do a bit of fishing and have a relaxing time generally.

His boat is my type of boat too. He has rigged it with a small sail right in the bow, the shape taken from Micronesian examples. The whole rig can be put up or taken down in a couple of minutes at sea, and the spars fit inside the boat. Alec says it has good downwind performance, which is what you want.

The latest operation has been to prepare the oars, which are standard chandlery oars improved by shaving so they balance better and give a nice bit of spring, but are still strong enough to use for the inevitable fending-off.

Alec leaves next month, when I suspect we in the frozen north will be fretting indoors, cursing the weather.

(Picture of Wathumba Creek at top by JWarnes on Panoramio)