Back to Australia

We are back in Scarborough, Queensland, Australia after a tiring set of flights from Providence. Instead of our usual two flights to get to Brisbane, we had four because of the limitations of our round-the-world airline ticket. As soon we arrived in Aukland, New Zealand we checked the monitor to see when our flight to Brisbane was leaving. We noticed that the monitor listed a flight that was already boarding and we wished we were on it since it was 3 hours until the next one. So we sat down to relax in the terminal for a while, and then i went scouting out a place for breakfast. As I came up the escalator, a uniformed flight agent was calling my name. How odd I thought. It turned out that we were on the flight that was boarding, and they were looking for us. They were also calling our name on the public address system. So we ran quickly to the farthest gate to get the on the plane that they were holding for us. We both thought we had a two hour layover in Aukland and did not bother to check out boarding passes on arrival. The only silver lining on this episode is the possibility that their holding the plane allowed our baggage to get transferred. All 250 pounds of our checked baggage made it on the plane. After our bags were X-rayed, the Australian security agent asked if we had a toilet seat in one of the bags, and why we did. The answer, that we had a boat, was good enough for him. I guess that they have seen enough “yachties” to know we pack odd gear with us. (The marine toilet seat we had cost us $16 in the US, but we were quoted $185 in Australia. Perhaps they plate them with gold in Australia).

“Sabbatical III” received it’s final coats of bottom paint today, and had the prop cleaned and coated with Prop-Speed. She goes into the water tomorrow (Friday) at 4 pm. It is a good thing that we booked the boat painting and launching early since it is a crazy period in the marina. The school holidays begin next week, along with the unusual juxtaposition of Good Friday/ Easter with ANZAC Day, resulting in a five day national holiday, plus next week is the start of an important ocean race. All the Aussie boats are trying to either get ready for the holiday, or get ready for the race. Finally, we posted some new video from last years cursing season on our web site. Go to our home page at https://sabbatical3.net and click on the new video link.

M.

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