Holy Cow cruising with a crowd!

Well known cruisers with their distinctive cow printed head sail, and loud sounding ‘moooooo’ boat horn, Holy Cow share their story.

Thousands of cruisers from around the world are seeing the many benefits of using Nebo to not only track their voyages and share their boating adventures with family and friends but to also enhance their regular safety routines.

Here is a story of boat owners that are self-confessed Nebo addicts. As some of our most regular users we contacted Kim & John from Holy Cow to find out more about them, their boat and how and why they love using Nebo.

Holy Cow’s backstory

Holy Cow Racing in the Whitsundays

Home port for John & Kim Clinton’s Beneteau Oceanis 50 Holy Cow is the CYCA in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney.

Early on, most of their sailing days were spent in Sydney Harbour until 2000 when they took one of Holy Cow’s predecessors from Sydney north to Queensland’s Whitsunday Islands for the Airlie Beach and Hamilton Island Race Weeks.

Now, several Beneteau yachts and many, many regattas later, it’s an annual pilgrimage that begins at the first sign of winter when the humpback whales start passing Sydney Heads on their way north.

Holy Cow’s John & Kim Clinton

On their current Holy Cow, John & Kim have sailed some 50,000nms, going north and then back south along the east coast each winter, several summer trips to Melbourne and Geelong Festival of Sail, and one Sydney to Hobart Race.

While some of their crew used to help out on the 1,000+nm sprint up the coast for the Whitsunday Regattas (best time six & a half days), now it is a much more leisurely 2-handed husband & wife cruise from anchorage to anchorage, avoiding nasty weather and long nights whenever possible.

At various ports along the way Holy Cow stops over to fly the flag for her long term sponsors realestate.com.au and take out staff and their guests.

Holy Cow races in Cruising Division in various CYCA race series and regattas on Sydney Harbour and goes north for the Airlie Beach and Hamilton Island Regattas.

Depending on the schedule other regattas include Sail Port Stephens, Geelong Festival of Sail, Magnetic Island Race Week and she’s done just one Rolex Sydney to Hobart.

Holy Cow & Nebo

Nebo’s Stephen Winter & John Clinton enjoying a sail on Holy Cow

“We have always kept very detailed log books (we have our entire sailing history recorded in shelves of log books) but when we read about the Nebo logging app we thought it would be a good option to have an electronic backup.

In Autumn 2018 we installed Nebo, just to try it out during our annual Sydney to North Queensland cruise see if we liked it. We discovered so many benefits, apart from just the logging, that Nebo has become a permanent fixture on Holy Cow.

As far as logging goes we do still maintain our traditional handwritten log books, but it is wonderful having the continual crosschecks and extra information, especially when you’re too busy to go below to fill the book out or when the odd figure doesn’t “add up”.

The ability to just print out the visual of the day’s journey or race, alongside the log, is another bonus. For those less inclined to meticulously record every detail manually (or who’ve grown up in the digital world) it must be a godsend to have all the tedious recording of lats & longs and various statistics done automatically.

Of all Nebo’s extra features, the ones we find most useful are to do with safety and communication.

Holy Cow Racing in the Whitsundays

The ability to select who, and when, you share your location and information with, and the option to see and contact both friends and other Nebo users through the messaging facility, have become essential utilities for Holy Cow.

We always have onshore friends and family following us, and we keep in daily contact wherever we can, but with Nebo our friends can now just look on their phone or computer and check where we are and how we’re travelling. These days we’ll get a phone call after we’ve completed anchoring (with a comment on our choice of anchorage) rather than checking on our safe arrival while we are still anchoring!

Nebo’s Tracking Device

Now Nebo’s latest upgrade, giving Holy Cow her own GPS tracker with a sim card, automatically logs her movements without even activating a phone or tablet – that’s just brilliant!

This will be a major benefit for charter companies and owners who share their boats.

This year when we journey north we’ll be sailing in company with friends on another (faster) cruising yacht which is also using Nebo, that means staying in contact, following each other’s progress and meeting up in anchorages will be so easy.

Better still it’s so simple to share that information with as many (or as few) of our friends and fellow cruisers as we wish!

Thanks Nebo, we love it and will continue to spread the word among our fellow boating friends!”

Kim & John Clinton

Holy Cow Photo Gallery

Follow Holy Cow

You can find out more and follow Holy Cow’s exciting sailing adventures by liking them on Facebook here.