Here are the boys trouble shooting the engine. Trying to work out why it is losing water. The second photo is me pulling apart the place to clean out the lockers and move stuff around.

We have been having some beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

We took the boat out of the Marina and anchored up just on the other side. You’re not allowed to do boat maintenance while in the Marina so we went out to make a bit of noise. There are some rust spots and one of the hatches was leaking so we had to dig a bit further to find the issue. Oh no a holey boat. We will do a semi permanent fix and when we sail south we have a friend in Coffs Harbour who can help us weld a more permanent solution.

Campfire dinner at Roz and Vic’s. Little Allie liked Rowan.

The boys working on the engine

I have had two outings without the boys. First one was learning bowling in Proserpine with Uncle Phil and Aunty Heather. I wasn’t the youngest as they had a woofer (farm worker) from Germany with us and she is 19. Sinja and I got a run down for about 15min on the very basics of lawn bowling, Phil was a pretty good teacher.

Sinja and I were playing in the same game against one another for the first one. It was an even tie. We had two old boys who helped by telling us where to aim at the other side of the field near the jack (small white ball). Phil was on both of our teams as he played for both as we were one person short. It started at 1.30pm and we finished around 3pm. We had a cuppa and a muffin as our break and then we went off to play another game.

The next game Sinja and I were separated. I played atrociously after our break, I feel like I shouldn’t have stopped. But then I got into the swing of things and actually won my team two rounds. Wahoo! My bowls are the green ones, I took photos as I was so proud haha. My team ended up winning by two points. It was a great day out, I think I will bring Rowan back for a game when we can. The hardest part was the heat, and feeling the sun. I can’t imagine playing in summer as winter is warm enough for this Kiwi.

Just a couple of pretty photos. I have been looking at redesigning the paint job on the boat. I have a design in mind and have considered buying another vinyl cutting machine to do it. But by the time I do that it will be pretty costly and I won’t have any use for the machine afterwards. Also the cost to get it done by a sign writer will be in the thousands. I will most likely end up hand painting it with two part epoxy gel coat paint. It is not a job I will do for a long time, but it is fun to work out what I want to do.

I joined some ladies for a quiz night run by SeaKeepers and the marina. The quiz was about the Great Barrier Reef and I thought I would be hopeless as my knowledge is Finding Nemo and that movie is more than 20 years old.

I also hoped to make a few connections but also expected most people to be cliquey. Well it was but I made friends with Gen, a lady from Barosa who is not like that at all. I actually have talked to her a few times early in the morning while getting coffee at the Ocean Club. Oh Ocean Club is where the showers, toilets, laundry are and above is a big deck area with a bbq and coffee facilities a book swap and a little interior chill out lounge. There is a bean to cup coffee machine there which provides me with bean juice.

Back to the main story. Gen and I ended up on the same table and you did your test individually so no groups. There were beautiful food platters and whatever beverage you fancied, I got into the bubbles. Gen and I got the same score in each round and came out with 25 out of 30. It was really funny as we got different questions wrong so we definitely didn’t cheat. The top three had 26 score and had to do some bonus questions in order to figure out who was first. They were some really fancy prizes. I was really happy that I did so well considering my limited knowledge.

SeaKeepers is a non profit organisation that has a but load of scientists around the world. One of the biggest costs is collecting data so cleverly they employ citizen scientists (every day people) to help. There are a lot of vessel owners who can help in different ways. You can put some scientists on board and take them out to gather data. You can also collect data for them, email it off and the scientists then use that to help. I got a coral checking pack for when we are snorkelling we can check the corals and record what we find. You can also get a noise listening device that records the whales. They are trying to develop a sound that can be put on boats that tell the whales not to come near. There is no official data for how many collisions there are but I heard one of the ladies say her friends are waiting to see if their boat is a write off and that 3 were hit with last years rally. I know a lot of humpbacks are migrating but that is a lot of whales! Some really cool initiatives that Rowan and I will definitely get involved in.

More campfire

First photo is taken from David’s block of land looking over Airlie Beach, what a view. An important label, I think it was the gearbox. Rowan searching for a leak. A huge strawberry!

Rowan and David pulled apart the outboard for the dinghy and cleaned out the carburettor at Vic’s. Rowan drilled some anodes for the boat. They are sacrificial metal chunks to protect your propeller and in our case steel hull from corrosion.

I cleaned out the first aid kit and found a few goodies that expired in 1994.

David had a bit of a breakdown and wouldn’t tell us what is wrong. He tried to leave the boat after a few too many so I took the car keys and hid them so he couldn’t try to drive. I ended up calling his wife Jennifer to help us and in the end he called Vic to come pick him up. I really struggled with the situation as Rowan communicates clearly if he is frustrated but David doesn’t so we still dont know what upset him. Even more difficult was hearing David drunkenly go on about how if Rowan wasn’t his son he wouldn’t have anything to do with him. It is just hard for me to hear a father say that to his son and say openly that he tells all his friends this. I cried myself to sleep that night and it was tears for Rowan. I can’t imagine what it would feel like hearing a parent say something like that.

David came back and apologised in a David way a couple days later. Rowan forgave him. I don’t know if I can.

Time to leave Airlie, this is the hard part. We only just got here and I really don’t want to go. Not when I feel like we have barely scratched the surface of getting the boat ready and not when it has taken such a long time to get here. I am rather frustrated. We are heading back to Sydney to look after Bette for 10 days. Bette is very easy to look after and it is not a problem, I’m just itching to properly start living on the boat!