Well, I finally have time to write a blog entry. We have been in Australia for 2 weeks now, and back on the boat for all but the first two days when we stayed at a cute little B&B (while our boat was still out of the water). The boat got put into the water on Friday, the 15th of April and since then we have been working, working, working. So much to do – even after we put in so much effort last November to make sure everything was in good shape. I guess the boat just keeps aging and things start to fall apart more and more. (Kind of like us!) Since we have been back Mark has had to fix the fresh water pump, install a new flush pump for the toilet, replace the manual bilge pump, re-attach the auto-pilot, replace all the fresh water hoses, flush and clean the yucky, filthy bilge (where we found among other things a couple of long lost screwdrivers), install a new remote control for the autopilot and other instruments – then as part of just normal boat preparation we had to re-attached the back-stays, lift the mizzen boom, put up all three sails (which had been taken off for the season), change the water filters, re-insert the knot reader (speed instrument), refill the propane tanks, etc.,etc. I won’t bore you with more of this, but Mark’s list was huge, and mine was equally long ( although maybe a bit more enjoyable as most of it involved buying and storing food!) The deck of our boat looks like a tornado swept through – but we hope to get the clutter put away tomorrow, finish up our provisioning, and actually start heading north on Saturday.
The weather fluctuates between beautiful and nasty – with strong winds and lots of rain in the forecast for the next few days. We are looking for a break in the bad weather to start heading north as we would like to get north to Lady Musgrave (a coral reef about 240 miles north of here) for our first stop. This marks the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef which we will sail along for the next 6 weeks or so….
Guess that makes all this hard work so worthwhile.
We will say good-bye to Scarborough Marina and the little town of Redcliffe where we have spent a couple of months each year since first arriving in Australia at the end of 2008.
L.
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