We are back

So much to do and the weather is teasing us for working. Here is us walking to the shops for supplies.

Taking the dinghy for supplies. We park at the local Marine Dock (2 hour limit) and walk from there.

Uncle Phil has let us hire a car off him. Here we are replacing the fire extinguishers that are no good anymore. We also replaced the EPIRB (emergency beacon). The tools are absolute chaos that we left when we went to Sydney. They are getting sorted and put into the storage space in the engine room.

The supplies keep coming. All of the spare backup parts are going under the bed. Here is a Curlew nesting on an egg out on David’s land. They are great at camouflage.

We picked up an old chess table from Joannes friend who has stored it for the last 30 years. I would hate to think of the bill for that one haha.

I got a bit overwhelmed with all this work and amazing weather I nudged Rowan into a quick dinghy trip to try out a few of his fishing rods. As we were about to hop on we got talking to the neighbouring boat, Eliza & Clint. They’re around our age, he currently has a large motorboat (as us sail sailors call stink boats) but he has also had sailing yachts too. He loves fishing so he says he struggles to stick to one type of boat because he likes sailing as well. It’s nice to have someone close our age. Most people in the Marina are 60 plus.

When we went out on our little dinghy Rowan snagged an Estuary Cod. He was a bit small so we put him back.

A large heavy job that arrived for us while we were in Sydney. Changing three of the house batteries. There are three sets of batteries on the boat. One for the engine, a set of two and a set of three for the house batteries. The set of three were totally gone so Rowan removed them and replaced them. He needed help getting the last battery out and he called me to the engine room and said Katie get your clothes off! I thought gee it’s a bit small in there Rowan haha. No he just didn’t want me to get grease and oil on my good clothes, very thoughtful of him. He did a good job getting those all sorted in such a small space.

Today we met another sailor our age Lala. Lala is from Hastings, NZ and she has been in Australia 14 years. She lives the boat life with her 14 year old son and they moved on about 3 years ago. Rowan found her on Facebook because she was selling some anchor chain. Which we want ours a bit longer so that worked out well. I will have her over for dinner. She said she hasn’t found anyone our age in the area and she has been here 6 months.

First photo, a perfectly good gas regular haha. The bbq regulator fell apart when Rowan went to check the gas bottles. There is no one in town that doesn’t gas bottles checks as everyone appears to do swap a bottle. We don’t want to do that as all three bottles are hot galvanised dipped to stop the rust. Plus when we start getting overseas there is no swap a bottle. You can get gas bottles in stainless steel and even fibreglass! A big shop stocking up the cupboards. We found some old drinks in one of the bilge compartments, they expired in 2018 so they have been there a while.

Got a free dinghy! Eliza & Clint were only our neighbours for a couple of nights but he said to us casually “I might leave my dinghy with you guys, is that okay?” Here we are a couple days later with a note on our boat and a dinghy hanging out the back. Talk about trusting, we only had one 10min conversation with him. They have a mooring they are renting for a few months just off the marina and they have a house back in Yeppoon. While needing to head back he wants to leave the dinghy with us rather than a public dock where it is safer. We give him a call and he says to use it and take it out with us while we head around the islands.

Bed is ready for mum! Here is a boat tour.

Hopefully this video works.