1^st December 2012

Happy New Year

Many platitudes come to mind but all I can really say – I hope it is another good year, full of new babies, good health, good cheer.

A 2XS moment – Things Which Stick

It has been brought to my attention more than once that…some things stick and some don’t on a boat.  I am sure that if I put something precious on the deck, securely fixed – my iphone, a $50 note, a photo of my beloved children – whatever it is which is beloved by me or by Pete would blow away, fall into the sea, never be seen again.  But if it is something I either don’t want or don’t care about – well, it sticks!  A yucky bit of paper towel, used to clean the BBQ – this not only stays around forever, it also blows right back up at you, out of its secure garbage bag, and floats daintily round the deck for weeks, looking yucky.  Likewise a used bandaid, tissue, fish scale.  Fish scales are remarkable – I hose them viciously off the deck into the sea, and there are always some to be found, on the deck, on the outdoor carpet, threatening to drift into our meals.  Yum!

When Nick and Steve were on 2XS, at the very beginning of our trip from Australia to New Caledonia, they tied a spare water bottle onto the railing, for emergency use.  For some reason, Nick stuffed a newspaper in, around the middle of the bottle, and tied it on tightly with string.  This newspaper has been drenched over and over, with sea water and rainwater.  The wind has howled around it and it has flapped and fluttered for many months.  And – it is still there!  Bedraggled and unreadable, but definitely surviving.  How could this be??  If it had been treasured documents, or a stash of $$$s, it would have dissolved and deteriorated long since.

A mystery of the sea!!

Wednesday 28^th December

We are staying at Highland Waters, a beautiful little lake, high up on the Central Plateau.  We are reunited with John Miedecke, last seen getting onto a small plane in Misima.  To my delight, John and Catherine helped me find my ‘lost’ photos from my camera, and they are now snugly downloaded onto my computer.  I will try, at some stage to download some onto this blog… next step!  It has been great fun, scrolling through and looking at our beautiful (hundreds!) of visitors in the South Pacific islands.  All those cheery cheeky children!

I don’t know if I have written about the death of my Kindle.  It has frozen up and cannot be moved, re-booted, turned on and off.  I was devastated – my Kindle was such an asset on 2XS, all those books, ready to be read, not taking up cabin space, keeping me contented and occupied.  Every now and then, since its untimely demise a week or so ago, I  would take it out of my computer case and gaze at it sadly.  Presumably it could have been fixed, but maybe fixing it would cost the same as a new electronic book reader.  I was still in a state of mild mourning and indecision when Christmas Day arrived.  And Santa aka Pete showed up with – better than I could ever have imagined - a brand new iPad!  Weehee!!  I am so thrilled with it; it is much better than my poor dead kindle.  Catherine has one, so she and John carefully held my hand while I got it all connected up, with the help of their wireless connection thingy.  I didn’t know it was possible to use the iPad as a Kindle, but within minutes Catherine had shown me the appropriate app.  I went to bed almost deliriously happy.  Not only are all of my Kindle books there, ready and waiting on my beautiful new little gadget, it is all better – technicolour book covers, so pretty.  And, best of all, the page is backlit so I can read in the dark with no need for a head torch or reading light.  I think Pete is pleased that I am so ecstatic with my present, but maybe he is a bit anxious that I will never speak to him again, and will be totally engrossed in the many wonderments of my ipad…

2XS tale - I don’t know if I mentioned that we had many hours of officialdom on 2XS when we arrived in Townsville.  Customs, Quarantine, Immigration.  They were all perfectly polite but much more interested in searching and questioning us than we would have expected.  For example, one of the Customs officials, a very attractive-looking young blonde woman, looked at me sharply and said, “Now, when you were in the islands, did anyone ask you to bring drugs into Australia?”  What a funny question…as if I would say, “Oh, yes, strange you should mention it but Mr X on Panapompom Island gave me a big plastic bag full of white powdery stuff – not sure if I remember where I put it…maybe in the toilet cistern?”  Ofcourse I didn’t say anything so frivolous, but I did say, “No certainly not!  Have you met Pete?  Nobody would dare ask him such a thing, he is very straight, and very honest!”  She looked at me with deep suspicion and snapped on some latex gloves.  (OH NO!!!)  “Well, I think I will go and swab all of the bunks and couches!” she said.  She was very welcome to swab away so long as she kept away from me with those gloved hands…

We had actually heard on the grapevine that there had been a very big drug haul in Bundaberg, off a yacht called Freedom Friday, which had been in the Port to Port Rally, including the Louisiades, a few weeks before we sailed across to Townsville from PNG.  Our merry band of officials wouldn’t tell us anything about it, but they were certainly all fired up and ready to find anything out of the ordinary on 2XS.  They didn’t even have the pleasure of confiscating much fresh food, because we had eaten or chucked everything.  The only thing they took was a packet of frozen mince.

As soon as we could, we googled the Big Drug Bust.  Freedom Friday had been under surveillance for about ten months.  They had about $30million worth of heroin, and even more millions of $$$s on board, and they were nabbed when some people came on board with suitcases to remove the loot.  There were photos of the main perpetrators, some fun-loving young party-people from Spain.  They had been life and soul of the rally festivities, and were photographed, dressed very appropriately in pirate costume and waving wildly at the camera, drinks held aloft.  They will probably spend life in prison…

Boxing Day

Much food, much family, good cheer...

A 2XS dinghy story

We heard a horrendous story the other day from one of our young sailing friends, Andy, from another yacht travelling around the islands of Vanuatu.  He and a group of friends had gone into shore in their tender, and were on their way back to their yacht when everything went wrong.  A big freak wave capsized their tender and everyone was tossed into the sea.  The emergency flares didn’t ignite; the VHF radio failed; all safety equipment was washed away; the boat didn’t float on the surface, it wallowed around under water; nobody from their yacht was looking out for them.  Various ropes and cables wound themselves wound themselves around poor Andy’s legs as he was trying to hold the baby aloft… yes they had a very small baby in the tender, with his distraught mother…The baby was passed from one person to another as they tried to get things sorted, but the poor little thing kept swallowing great gulps of ocean – the waves were by this time very big.  They eventually managed to get mother and baby more or less sitting on the upturned tender, with big waves threatening to heave them both back into the sea.  Andy and one of the other girls, Alana, decided to swim for help.  But the tide was running very strongly and they hardly made any progress at all.  As well as this, Andy had emptied the fuel containers, to try to create some sort of buoyancy support.  The fuel ran all over him and combined with the sea water to create some dreadful new compound – he was covered with what looks like acid burns.  Alana is a strong swimmer, and was very confident of her ability to reach the yacht.  Andy was not so sure; he too is a very strong fit swimmer, but he knows about the sea; Alana had only ever swum in rivers and pools.  He took with them a raft of coconuts which they had obtained on shore with a view to feasting rather than floating.  He could tell they weren’t really making any progress at all, and he was very much aware than they were a tempting and tasty target for the famous Sharks Of Malekula.  “I have such pale legs!” he told us.  “I knew they were flashing in the sea like a beacon!”  Fortunately this story has a happy ending; after two hours the yacht came to find them all; the swimmers and the floaters.  They are all very shaken and upset and they are going to try to instate better safety systems on their boat… But Andy said the whole way through, they kept laughing and keeping up morale; I am very impressed.

Saturday 24^th December

Merry Christmas to one and all…

And I so agree with Stephen Fry on Twitter, who is sick to death of all the Grumpy Old theme on TV…the latest being Grumpy Old Christmas: a whole lot of English people grumbling and whining away about the festive season.  Just shut up and enjoy it, he said.

2XS - Back in Australia we were once again treated to the night-time sound of the curlews, also known as Murder Birds, or Banshees.  They are lovely in the daytime, middle-sized, strange-looking wading birds, very tame and cheeky.  But at night-time…they make a sound worse than a brush-tail possum.  Shrieking and screaming, they fill the night with fear and dread.  From our marina berth in Townsville, we could hear party-time sounds from Jupiter’s Casino, just across the way.  I thought there were lots of girls having far too much fun; in fact - it was (mostly) the curlews, doing whatever curlews do at night which incites them to such cacophony.

Friday 23rd December

We only had two or three movie sessions for our village friends in the South Pacific islands.  I think if we manage to go back, I would make sure of taking a better thought-out selection for local consumption.  Dances With Wolves was very popular, but it is in fact much more violent than we remembered it being, and maybe there is something more gentle and pleasant.  Maybe some David Attenborough docos??  Any suggestions?

We talked on the radio to David, the skipper of Flamingo Park, the charter boat anchored near Willis Island, providing accommodation for the building contractors.  He, by the way, had been anchored here for sixty days and had not set foot on land even once, so strict are the regulations. So we were very lucky to have been able at least to stand in the shallows before being repelled back to 2XS.

David had spent some time in the islands recently.  He said he often showed movies on deck, on a large screen.  The most popular choice was – Disney cartoons, universally understood, no language required.  He made the mistake on one occasion of showing Jurassic Park to some of the island women who he had employed to clean the boat.  They were absolutely terrified.  Apart from anything else, their particular island was Jehovah’s Witness, and they don’t believe in dinosaurs; they had never heard of such a thing.

We met up with the Americans off the beautiful big yacht, Delos, from Seattle, in Vanuatu and the Solomons.  They too would show movies to villagers.  On windless nights they could project movies onto their big headsail, making a perfect movie screen.  The most popular movie, they said, was Iron Man.  Too funny!  I actually think the Christopher Reeve/Margot Kidder Superman might be a hit, come to think of it…

Thursday 22^nd December

More coffee, farewells, reunions, dinners, hospitable offspring…

Another 2S bit…

We received very stern advice re anti-malarial medication.  I don’t like taking antibiotics, not unless I have a major infection or disease.  I think – well it’s not just me thinking this, it is a widely-held belief – that they are vastly over-used in western countries, and that they are becoming ineffective because of this.  (Also…they have side effects to which I am prone and which I particularly dislike.)

I think I already wrote that, when we were in Port Vila, we went to buy some for Pete.  You can get this sort of medication over the counter, in Vanuatu.  I had decided not to take any, but the pharmacist, an expressionless Chinese woman, looked at me severely and said, flatly, “You have to take them.  You have no choice.”  So…I did.  (I am very obedient!)  We had a big plastic container of doxycycline on the tea & coffee shelf and it was my self-appointed task to dish out the drugs every night during dinner.  We hardly missed any, and were very diligent about swallowing them down with our pre-dinner G & Ts. 

So we didn’t get malaria… The funny thing is, we hardly saw any mosquitoes.  If there had been any, they would have been swarming around because every single living thing which had the ability or propensity to bite or sting loves to bite or sting our poor Pete.  He did get bitten, ofcourse, but only once or twice by mosquitoes.  So maybe we didn’t need to take our drugs after all.  But…maybe they were beneficial in another way, because we didn’t get any infections at all.  Infections spring forth at the least opportunity, in the tropics, especially in tropical water, fresh and salt.  We were very diligent about washing out any cuts or scrapes with diluted bleach (ouchy ouch) but we would have expected at least some of our wounds to blossom forth nastily.  But the doxycycline kept everything at bay.  We both started to develop a bit of Kerry’s painful eye infection (sorry Ann-Marie, my eye-phobic friend, I will not put in any further details,) but even that came and went without causing us any grief.

So…if you are travelling to malaria-prone countries, my advice is – take the drugs!

Monday 19th December

Another busybusy Hobart day

Some furniture moving, bed making, hunting for this and that in the basement of Pete’s house.  (Where ARE those single doonas?  Those pristine white towels??  That food processor, ancient but functional??) 

At the end of the day I met up with a dear friend in Salamanca and drank half a bottle of sparkling wine.  While I was showing her a videoclip of children dancing on 2XS on Ramata island in the Solomons, I saw – James Butler, our Tasmanian Hydro friend who spent some time with us in Honiara.  He was the very one who recommended us to go to Ramata in the first place…small small world!

A lovely woman I spoke to at the lunch in Bothwell yesterday told me of her time working as a galley girl on one of larger big tall ships in the 80s.  On one of their trips to New Caledonia they had very violent stormy weather and were diverted to New Zealand.  One of the poor paying passengers, whose dream it had been to travel on a tall ship, was dreadfully ill.  She just wanted, as I can understand, to DIE.  They had to set two people on guard to watch her at all times otherwise she would have hurled herself into the surging sea!!  Oh hell!

(Where are we staying?  Well we are sharing ourselves – ahem – around our family, inflicting ourselves upon this set of offspring or that, willy-nilly… At the moment we are with James and Bronwen in Mt Stuart.  Tomorrow is another day!)

Sunday 18^th December

So lovely to be home

So busy to be home…

We have spent a couple of wonderful nights at Katy and Jeff’s, with the darling small children, all full of fun and cleverness and love.

Yesterday we went to a fabulous 70^th birthday party near Bothwell, in a marquee on the lawns of a beautiful old house.  There were about 130 guests – I knew four; Pete knew one hundred and twenty four.  Pete did very well remembering people from the snows of yesterday; I did very well getting to know a whole new tribe.

After the lunch, I drove us to Sendace, the lovely little Headlam farm on Meadowbank Lake.  James had left the caravan set up for us but we arrived there after dark, around 10.00pm (it was a long long lunch…) and Pete and I had an entertaining time traipsing to and fro with long connecting cords to get electricity from the pump station.

The caravan was very cosy, notwithstanding the slight list to the left.  I had a moment of deep shame when I burst into tears at the sight of a quite small and young huntsman spider roaming the walls.  (Oh not so brave…)

We drove into Ouse for a hearty breakfast at the roadhouse, then went back to drench sheep and chase them around into different paddocks according to…well according to the colour of the wool and the state of their shorn-ness.  (I think…) 

All a long world away from Sailing2XS!  Bronwen and I did have some boat-y time cleaning James’s little runabout.  It has been stored in a farm shed and has provided boundless merry entertainment for a generation of possums, which have pooed, scratched, tumbled and rioted amongst the fittings.  We armed ourselves with hoses and buckets of soapy water and – improvement!

Back to Tales of Our South Pacific

The South Pacific islands, and sometimes the villages on larger islands, seem to have been dealt out amongst the religions like a pack of cards.  They all co-exist quite amicably, and, what seems more remarkable to us, is that they have kept a lot of their ancient beliefs very comfortably alongside whatever brand of Christianity has come their way – Catholics, Seventh Day Adventists, Church of Christ, Anglicans, Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the whole gamut of quirky brands and beliefs.  They still absolutely believe in black magic, in appeasing their local gods of nature, in all manner of superstition and tradition.

Come to think of it, even small villages would sometimes have more than one religion happening at once.  Sunday services would occur simultaneously, with the congregations singing, in their beautiful harmonies, at each end of the village, more or less in competition.  Pete and I think that Christianity is so successful in the islands because the people just love to sing.  Services usually last two hours or more, and 75% of the time is spent in Hallelujah!  Praise the Lord! in glorious harmony.  The sermons are all along the same lines – be kind to one another!  Or so we gathered… We sat through a few services, conducted by very lively and animated young Father Keith, or Father Eustace, mostly in local tribal language, or in Pidgin, and be kind to one another seemed to be the main theme.  Fair enough, couldn’t agree more!

Friday 16^th December

Back (briefly) in Tasmania, safe in the bosom of our families…

I still have a few sailing the South Pacific stories…

Panapompom

When we were cruising around the beautiful Louisiades, Rachel and I were very taken with the sound of an island we could see on the map – Panapompom.  How cute is that for a name!  It wasn’t on our route, and we were a bit sad not to go somewhere so whimsical and magical.

On our last evening in the bay at Bagaman Island, we had a visit from Sam, one of our passengers to and from Bugoiya.  Sam, probably the oldest of our crew, had been very reticent and circumspect on the trip, but on our last day, he came to visit, bearing gifts – tomatoes and a pawpaw – and sat on deck drinking a very sweet hot chocolate drink.  He was very happy and entertained Rachel and me with his wordplay jokes.  “What letters are there in the moon?” he asked, eyes bright.  We did all the usual things – “M-O-O-N?”  “T-H-E-M-O-O-N?” and let him come to his punchline – “C-O-D!  You have to look at the moon all though the month, and you will see those letters!”  He was so very pleased with himself; he reminded me very much of my “granny” Angus aged 9; this is just the sort of joke he would invent.  It was actually very clever of Sam; he has hardly had any schooling, but he can make spelling jokes in English.

We decided to ask him about Panapompom – what did this name mean?  “Oh,” he said, looking a bit grim.  “Panapompom is the name of a disease you get, where your legs swell up.”  (Elephantiasis, I reckon.)  “You get this disease,” he continued, “when you have been lying to your wife about having sex with another woman.  This is very common, on that island.” 

Oh.  So much for the romance of Panapompom!!

It was Sam who, later, let slip the common name for white people in the Louisiades.  We had never heard it; they would usually say, “Europeans,” or “your wantoks.”  But Sam let the cat out of the bag.  He was talking about carvings – he does very beautiful ones.  We asked if they were used for traditional purposes and he said, dismissively, “Oh no, they are just for selling to Dim-Dims.  Rachel and I turned questioning eyes on him: “To whom??” and he looked a bit sheepish.  “Um…you know…white people.  Dim-Dims.”  Somehow I don’t think it is a flattering epithet…

Wednesday 11^th December 12.50

We are now on the Gold Coast, living as housepests in Runaway Bay.  Cam, Pete’s lifelong friend, and Del, Pete’s lifelong cousin, are very kind and hospitable and are not making us feel like housepests at all.  But there are responsibilities and duties associated with being, well, housepests, and these do not include sneaking off to play on one’s computer, writing blogs and looking at emails.

We are now on board 2XS, in Sanctuary Cove Marina, cleaning, scrubbing, bleaching, de-moulding, tidying.  A massive job!  I have actually finished all of my tasks, well by my standards, I have… I am sitting, exhausted, and very happy, at my computer – at last!  Pete is under the boat in the tender, scrubbing away at all of the black slime and green grass and rusty bits growing around the hulls.  I am, as we speak, trying to entice him out with promises of a lovely seafood meal at nearby George’s paragon Restaurant…

I have possibly, in the past, been a bit critical of the Gold Coast.  It is all lovely, sparkling, new, impressive, but just not my sort of town.  I prefer more diversity, maybe, and feel more at home in cities with a bit of scunge and grunge.  I am, however, inordinately impressed with Sanctuary Cove.  It is just beautiful.  We drove in yesterday, through an avenue of immaculate trees, spaced just the right distance apart, with beautiful modern sculptures along the nature strip, suggesting, but not imitating, huge tropical flowers.  We passed a most glorious collection of houses on the shores of an artificial lake.  The house were all stark white and square, a bit Mediterranean, with lovely irregular lattice-work framing the front decks.  Elegant, graceful and serene.  Wow and wow again!

Our kind friends Tim and Sally Hadrill have lent us their ute.  “Yes please feel free to drive our uterus; it is a bit dodgy but quite safe,” said Tim.  And it is indeed a bit eccentric; for example every now and then a shrill little alarm goes off, alerting us to the fact that the handbrake is and that we should let it off IMMEDIATELY.  I have devised various stratagems to convince the ute that we are complying although, of course, the handbrake isn’t on at all.  (Some of my stratagems make Pete gasp and stretch his eyes, mind you, so maybe I should leave the handbrake entirely to its own devices.)  We left the ute here, under some shady green trees, amongst enormous yellow and orange tropical flowers, and went back to Runaway Bay with Cam, to get the boat from the Broadwater, where it had been anchored.

Wednesday 11^th December 2.50

Well golly and gosh – Pete appeared from under the boat, looking exhausted and hungry.  (And I might add, he should have been looking very pleased with himself – the hulls are squeaky clean and beautiful, no longer full of green, black, rust, slime.)  He agreed that yes! we should go to George’s Paragon Restaurant now now now!  And what a good idea that was – thank you Cam for the recommendation!  We had the most cheery Samoan waiter, with the hugest smile – “So nice to see you again!” he beamed.  (We didn’t have the heart to tell him we were, ummm, somebody else.)  I had barramundi with avocado, Pete had John Dory Meuniere.  And both of our meals were wonderful – perfectly cooked fish with delicious sauces, not overpowering, served with broccolini and rocket, and bowls of thinly sliced chips, which I TRIED not to eat.

Our last trip down from Brisbane to the Gold Coast was beautiful, and uneventful.  Except that – Pete saw another dugong!  He has gone from being Dugong Denier to Dugong Believer, if not Dugong Attenborough!  We wound our way through the maze of islands in the Broadwater, around Jumpinpin, and negotiated the many red, yellow and green markers with no great incident.  I was at the helm a lot of the way and managed OK, although I was, unaccountably, particularly tired and out of sorts.  I hope I didn’t convey any of this malaise to Pete, who was as happy and cheery as usual.  This has all passed, and now I am happy and feeling good again, even though I have been through another Haircut Ordeal…

Oh not kind of me… Del knew I wanted to get my hair cut and she kindly rang her local HairGirl, Vinnie, who travels with gear.  Vinnie arrived bright and early this morning, wielding scissors, and full of fresh medical ghastlinesses and a big abdominal scar to show me.  I am sure she has done a good job; my hair was just growing right down into my eyes and out of shape.  But of course it is always, for me, a stressful thing to have my hair cut… I prefer the dentist, at least there I can have gas and go into HappyWorld.  Pete had been on an excursion with Cam and arrived back in time to have his hair cut – by me, not Vinnie – with Cam’s electrical gadget.  We will both be tidy for Christmas!

Off back to Runaway Bay when Pete has packed his backpack… I hope we get there in time to have a swim in the lovely clean warm pool.  Very soothing, to be able to swim every day.  I have been missing my wonderful hours of snorkelling in tropical waters.  All those stingers and crocs in Queensland are very offputting!

Sunday 11^th December

Another huge great thunder storm is about to come crashing down upon our heads.  Not as much lighting as yesterday, in Mooloolabah, (yes I know I put too many OOs into this name yesterday…but I couldn’t help myself) but the sky is black and threatening and there are ominous rumblings.  We are safely tucked up in a marina in the Brisbane River, just near the Gateway Bridge.  We arrived about 2pm, and have just enough time to do our washing, have a shower, and catch up with Kerry. 

It was very interesting coming up the river – all industrial, with huge cranes and derricks, ships loading coal, oil, whatever.  We were very lucky that today happens to be Sunday and that it’s not very busy; otherwise we would have been playing dodgem cars again.

Our trip from Mooloolabah was wonderful.  The sea was silky smooth and calm, the wind blowing very faintly and not against us.  Not too far to go; all very dreamy.

Kerry has arrived and is having beer with Pete, listening to the thunder, and I am dashing back and forth to the laundry.  I am thrilled to bits because, for the first time ever, the washing facilities are FREE!  No having to find coins or tokens, and lots of them.  I am washing everything I can lay my hands on.

Tomorrow – the Gold Coast!

Saturday 10^th December 

So where are we?? Can I remember where we were, where we are??

Moolooloobah!  Town of many OOOOs!

We had a lovely evening with Anne and Alan Bray, yesterday.  We were expecting to invite them to a restaurant near the marina, but when Pete got in touch with Anne, she was adamant that she wanted us to come to dinner.  Nothing too much trouble - she would come and pick us up from the marina, and we could take a taxi back.  Lasagna and apple pie were there for our taking!  (Alan was on his way back from his bowls tournament.) 

Dinner was great fun.  Alan brought out a notebook with all of his Tasmanian students over the years, at Tas uni - my very own darling father has a similar ledger, of his students over the years… There was a very young Pete Headlam, in the 60s, with a blue pencil through his name – destined for Honours!  Pete and Alan happily went through names - Golly gosh!  Did he really?  Whatever happened to HER? etc etc while Anne and I happily created a salad to go with the lasagna and, well, chatted, with much laughter. 

(I had forgotten, by the way, that Bray Boys were at school with Harmsen Boys; Taroona High Happy Days.) 

The Bray news is – Anne and Alan are planning to sell their comfortable little Harvey Bay house, and are moving to Brisbane, to be closer to children and grandchildren, all in their late teens now.  Wynnum is their suburb of choice.  Anne said ,proudly, that her son said, “Mum, you need to be near us, in Wynnum.  Don’t think of buying anywhere further away!  I need to be able to drive to your place quickly, to wipe the drool off your chin!”  Anne and I shrieked with laughter – how nice to be so loved by our offspring!

Alan was very pleased to hear of my fishing exploits, and he very kindly gave me a shining new silver lure, with which to catch – BIG fish.

We slept VERY well, possibly thanks to the home-made Bray limoncello…

So this morning…early rising… I had the alarm set for 5.45 but, oh dear, we woke earlier and we were up and away away with rum by gum at a hideously early hour.

First – through the Sandy Straits, between Fraser Island and the mainland.  Easy-peasy! Pete had timed our move accurately and we went with the tide.  Nowhere near as difficult as last year, with a lot of stress involved in finding each green and red marker along the way.  We emerged at the other end around 10.00 and crossed the bar in fine style.  WEEHEE!  Well dozen Pete, yet again…

My log entries read: headsail up, headsail down, headsail up, headsail down, headsail up, headsail down.  But at last – the sea was with us, the wind was, gloriously, briefly NE instead of southerly.  It was a lovely day, from Urangan to Moolooloobah, but…very very long…

We cruised into the river at Moolooloobah at dusk.  It had been spectacular, the last hour, sailing into the city.  The sun was setting brightly on one side; on the other side were black BLACK clouds.  The high-rise buildings looked like magical fair castles in the fading light.  And then!  Thunderbolts and lightning very very frightening!!  Great forks of lightning were sparking down over the city.  Then HUGE thunderbolts. Wowsers!

We were planning on finding an anchorage in the Moolooloobah river; we really didn’t need a marina, tonight.  Quick in quick out. 

So…we eventually…it did take a long time…cruised into the river, between the retaining walls built up at the entrance.  And…Three?  Four?  No SIX fishing boats were coming out, coming RIGHT AT US.  Some of them had lights, fairy lights, Santa costumes… WTF?  All the way up the esplanade were people sitting expectantly, with folding chairs, picnic tables, gaiety abounding.  What did they want from us? We were tired, shabby, salty, NOT decorated and pretty.  It dawned on us…we were the avant garde of the Moolooloobah River Christmas parade!  Very soon we were in the midst of jaunty, pretty boats, with pretty people wearing Santa and Elf costumes.  I said to Pete, “Surely you have an elf-hat somewhere on board, with bobbles and sparkles?  Put it on RIGHT NOW!”  (He wasn’t listening to me, he was grinding his teeth and trying to wend his way between the festive Christmas boats to find an anchorage.)

In between this and that I had peeled and chopped and prepared dinner: a very delicious, I hoped, pasta dish with prawns, mushrooms, garlic, chili, creamy sauce.  Well…it all got interrupted with NEAR COLLISIONS and UPPINGS of ANCHOR…but in the end we did eat and drink and were merry.  My prawn thingy wasn’t as fabulous as I might have hoped…but we were VERY hungry and we ate our fill. And…guess what is for dinner tomorrow?? Left-overs!

The last of the Christmas boats has just gone past us.  Gangs of girls, in fairy-lit boats, saying, “Well, I’m like...and then he said…and I was like…whatever!”  Very brave, these last Christmas Boat Pageant survivors.  Because not long not after the event began, it started to – well rain is the wrong word. POUR!  TEEM!  DELUGE!!  Not for very long, but surely for long enough to clear the esplanade of happy spectators…

Now all is calm and all is well.  Not sure what time we are leaving in the morning but I suspect…EARLY!  I think we have two more days to get to the Gold Coast, where 2XS will be left for a few weeks while we…do other things!!

Friday 9^th December

A lovely day on the water…once again, the sea calm and blue (the current tugging us in the opposite direction but never mind…), the wind a gentle zephyr (still blown in the wrong direction but, once again, never mind…)

We left Burnett Heads at about seven and arrived here in Urangan, in Hervey Bay, at the very civilised hour of 4pm.  We are hoping to meet up with Anne and Alan Bray, who live hereabouts.  We spent an afternoon with them last year and very much enjoyed their company.  Alan was one of Pete’s lecturers at uni, back in the 60s.  Anne is a very lively woman, full of laughter and opinions.  I am looking forward to seeing her again.  She amused me very much last year, by telling me that she hadn’t wanted to meet me at all.  “I said to Alan, I’m not interested!  Pete has probably taken up with a FLOOZY!”  I said, “Well what makes you think I’m not?” and she, in her turn, found this very funny.

We couldn’t remember where the ablutions block was, although it isn’t very long since we were last here.  I wandered right past it and found a little late-afternoon market which made me very happy.  It was full of things you would never want to buy – bad art, knick-knacks, lurid fish sculptures, handbags made out of jeans bottoms - and the scent of patchouli and incense wafted through the air.  I went into the small chemist shop to buy some essentials, and was greeted by the most friendly pharmacist ever.  He was a plump, bouncy Korean Australian, with the broadest North Queensland accent imaginable.  As he was giving me my change, I asked him, idly, if he knew where the marina ablutions block was.  He was mortified that he didn’t know, and I had to do some fast talking to stop him from shutting up shop and bounding around the waterfront in search of toilets and showers for his customer.

Thursday 8^th December

So did we spend an idle day, sipping cups of tea and ambling around beautiful Seventeen Seventy while the forecast gale force winds lashed the coast?  Well no.

I woke at about 6.30 to find Pete bustling about, ready to GO GO GO!!  He had put a placatory cup of tea in the bedroom for me and said, cheerily, that the wind didn’t seem to be too bad at all and that we should go while the going was good.

And what happened??  Well we had the best day’s sailing since have been back in Australian waters… The sky was blue and full of puffy white clouds; the sea was azure in colour and gentle in demeanour.  And the wind…well it was still coming from the wrong direction, ie SE, but it was all very mild.  At about midday there was a special weather bulletin on the radio – cancelling the gale-force wind warning.

We did get to see 1770 from the coast, and it does look like a very pretty little holiday town, with thick lush bush, beautiful houses, rolling hills, dear little beaches.  As for the fearsome bar with its rolling, breaking waves – well it was fearsome yesterday.  Today – what bar?  Just smooth, mellow water and some marker buoys.

We are now, happily and uneventfully, attached to Orange arm of the Bundaberg Marina, at the mouth of the Burnett River.  Both fuel tanks are full, Pete is having a beer, and I am about to have a lovely shower.

All is well!  And tomorrow – another easy trip, to Urangan, in Hervey Bay.

Wednesday 7th December

Happy birthday to my darling mother!!

Wednesday 7th December 

Well yes we did up anchor and move, but only a few hundred metres or so down the creek, to get a more secure anchorage.  All was well and we got up reasonably cheerily at 4.45 to start our epic journey to Bundaberg.  It was many miles through the industrial port of Gladstone.  Many miles of coal mountains slag heaps, derricks and jetties and piers, and, as promised by our helpful denizens of Pacific Creek, a whole life-sized computer game’s worth of tugs, barges, container ships, ferries, all whizzing busily up and down across.  We got out of this are before7.15, which is, so the coast guard told us, when BUSINESS starts on the water.

We did have a moment of high drama – a Man Overboard simulation.  Pete was inside, making phone calls, and I was happily steering the boat along the shipping lane.  I could see a tug coming towards us, towing a large mysterious object (less mysterious when it got closer, just another thwacking great barge.)  It was horrid on the sea – icy rain with a strong wind driving it straight into my eyes.  I picked up the nearest Tilley hat – Pete’s, oh dear – and rammed it on my head to protect my eyes while I stuck my head out around the windscreen and looked at the tug.  The wind picked up velocity and WHOOSH off blew the hat.  It disappeared swiftly into the surging sea… I called Pete and he dropped the phone and ran out on a mission to Save The Hat.  I didn’t think there was much hope, but Pete turned the boat around and went backwards and forwards until I could reach it from the back steps.  Great relief all round!  And a great recommendation, yet again, for Tilley hats – they float!

(I didn’t lose his hat but I did lose his money… Yesterday Pete’s jeans were sopping wet, as was his big thick jumper so I hung them up on the line to flap around in the wind.  Better, I thought, than having them lying around inside going all festy.  What I didn’t know was that he had $200 in his pocket…alas and alack, the notes have vanished into the wind.)

Did we get to Bundaberg, I hear you cry.  Well no…it was really difficult out there, with a big swell, relentless cold rain, and high wind, all against us.  We both got very wet and tired.  The worst thing was looking at the chart, which is what you do, when you are on the helm.  Look at the chart, look out the (wet wet wet) windscreen, look left, look right, then stick your head out into the elements to get a proper glimpse of the conditions.  The chart has lots of information – depth, time, speed, course, this and that.  It also tells you how long your planned journey is going to take… When we left Gladstone, it said: 8hrs 35 minutes.  After an hour or two battling the elements it said; 9hrs 20 minutes.  And as time went by, it kept capriciously changing its mind.  Occasionally it would say: 7hrs 48 minutes, just to make our hearts leap with hope.  (Of course, it is NOT a capricious instrument.  It changes its mind because of wind and wave and tide and current.  That is why it is so disheartening – it is telling THE TRUTH.)  So there we were, with another nine, or eight, hours to get to Bundaberg.  Gettign wetter and more tired with each passing hour.  Pete muttered away, looked at books, charts, cruising guide, and then said, “Nope.  We’re getting out of this!” 

Our destination was Seventeen Seventy, on Round Hill Creek.  Alan Lucas says:

“It is the site of Captain Cook’s first landing on what would one day become Queensland.  It now boasts a a delightful little retirement and holiday center known as Seventeen Seventy.”

This answers the question I hadn’t asked yet: Why is Seventeen Seventy??  I am very pleased to be here.  I had heard about this little town, and sailed past it last year.  Now we have been forced to take shelter here, and it is indeed, as Herr Lucas says, a delightful little town.  It is much warmer here than out at sea.  Whither the cold icy rain??  It is very windy, but quite warm and sunny.  To get there we had to lurk around Round Hill Head, bouncing up and down in an uneasy manner, until the tide had come up a bit more.  This is because there is a bar to get into the bay here.  We are prepared for bars now and have a good technique.  (Well Pete has a good technique.  I stand encouragingly near the helm and tell him when waves are about to break behind us, or across at us.  And then I say WEEHEE as we surf majestically across the bar.)

Our anchorage is very pretty but very shallow.  It is possible we will wake up in the morning high and dry.  A good opportunity, says Pete, for me to get out and scrub the hulls, which are once again covered with thick green sea-lawn.  We are probably staying here in Seventeen Seventy tomorrow.  We have heard the weather forecast…oh deary me… Gale force winds, seas of more than seven metres… We are staying in 1770!  Strangely – no internet access!  So there wil be a BlogGap but not as big as the South Pacific BlogGaps.

Oh goodness - a tiny flicker of light on my Telstra Modem thingy!!  maybe it does work after all...

Tuesday 6th December

We left Yeppoon this morning at a very civilised time – 11.00.  No other boats were out on the water, but 2XS was on a mission – go south!  We actually had a very pleasant trip, and managed to go at a respectable speed, around 8 knots.  Our other recent days we have been battling against all manner of natural elements – wind, waves, tides, currents - and have hardly got above 5 knots. 

The water was all very shallow, even way out almost out of sight of land, and it was mostly still a muddy brown colour.  We went across a patch marked on the chart where the depth sounder indicated it was barely above 1 metre below the bottom of poor vulnerable 2XS.  Pete’s eyes were very wide as we crossed this large expanse of very shallow water, but all was well, we didn’t run aground or even have a moment of scraping or panic.

Snapshot: We are anchored, as firmly as possible, in Pacific Creek, in amongst the mangroves and the shrieking cicadas.  Pete is having a well-earned XXXX Gold and I am very happily sipping a cup of tea.  All is well.

This creek is very wide and shallow and it meanders around amongst the mangroves for a long way.  Alan Lucas, the author of our current bible, Cruising the Coral Coast, says, very sternly:

“Don’t swim here.  The existence of crocodiles is beyond doubt.”

He also says this creek is a nice safe anchorage in a cyclone, but that there are sandflies and mosquitoes.  As we made our way up, we came across an old wooden boat, Huon, moored in the middle of the creek.  A very excited woman came out and waved at us so we backed up for a chat.  She and her husband live on the boat, in the middle of nowhere.  I asked how she was.  “Look where we live!” she said, ecstatically waving her arms at the muddy water and the mangroves.  “Why wouldn’t we be well?”  Her husband, a more pragmatic character, came out and gave us advice on where to anchor and what awaits us at the end of The Narrows – a lively dodgem game of barges, boats, dredges, ferries and tugs coming in and out of Gladstone.  He works on shore, and is building 30 kilometres of roads – from where to where we didn’t dare to ask… We asked about Alan Lucas’s warning and he laughed heartily.  “No crocs,” he said.  The crayfisherman moored near him has been here eight years without a sighting.  “Crocs eat fish!” he shouted.  “And…there aren’t any fish in this creek.”  Not sure why not – it all looks very fertile and pleasant, for fish and for crocodiles.  He also told us they have never seen a mosquito, which is a good thing.  “But,” he added, “The sandflies are THIS big, and that’s between the eyes!”  We were invited to envisage sandflies as big as sparrows…

We are leaving at 5am to get through The Narrows with the right sort of tide.  Maybe we wil get to Bundaberg by nightfall.

Later in the day…ie 8.45 on 6^th December…

So where are we??  Sitting in a dodgy anchorage in Graham Creek, at the other end of The Narrows.

So what happened?  Well while I was sitting contentedly at the computer, in Pacific Creek, Pete was sipping his cold beer and muttering away about tide, wind, depth, times.  Every now and then I would make a soothing humming sound indicating assent or support or outrage, whatever seemed to be the required tone.  So imagine how startled I was when he suddenly leapt to his feet and said, “Right then, you agree, we’re off!”  It was by then about 4.00pm and his idea was that we would get to The Narrows an hour or so before high tide.  The rising water would then allow us through.  This had been the plan for the following morning, but he had decided that this made Wednesday an impossibly long day, with no possibility of getting to Bundaberg in daylight.

The Narrows weren’t all that narrow, really.  But…very shallow!  We held our collective breath as we watched the depth sounder…would we get stuck?  Would we run aground, ignominiously??  Well no…we managed to get through, following the jaunty red and green markers, until we got to Graham Creek.  It was quite dark by then and we were totally bamboozled.  Bright lights here and there, the electronic chart shrieking DANGEROUS TARGET every two or three seconds, icy sleety rain and high wind which made it very difficult to have a good look beyond the windscreen.  Pete did a wonderful job steering us up the creek, but even he was beginning to sound just a wee bit high-pitched…

My job was to try to look though the sleet for flashing beacons and landmarks (I wasn’t very good at this) as well as pressing the ACKNOWLEDGE button every two or three seconds to stop the DANGEROUS TARGET shrieking thing – I excelled at this complicated task.  (The DANGEROUS TARGET shrieking thing is one of our least favourite function of Pete’s very efficient, if eccentric, electronic chart system.  It activates whenever there is a boat nearby.  Thank you, we say, yes that’s great, we know now, we have seen it and identified it.  NOW SHUT UP!!  But…it doesn’t shut up…and here is no volume control so we are stuck with it.) 

Pete got us to our anchorage, and I managed to cook a meal in the midst of The Narrows.  I peeled the veggies on deck so I could try to look for flashing beacons etc, and then I popped up and down the stairs to prod and poke and stir.  Dinner was ready more than an hour before we were actually able to stop and eat it so maybe it wasn’t QUITE as delicious as it otherwise might have been.  But…we were so tired, and so hungry, by the time we stopped that we did a sterling job tucking into it.  (Lamb and rosemary sausages from Yeppoon, mashed potatoes with lots of cheese, stir fried green beans, onions, zucchini, mushrooms. In case you were wondering…)

Now I am going to set my trusty iPhone alarm for 4am…will write again from…Bundaberg!  But…maybe not… Pete is doing that muttering thing again.  He is standing staring at the chart screen, with a whole lot of depth numbers rolling off his tongue.  Maybe we have to up anchor and move again.  Thank goodness we are FULL of food, and a lovely shared bottle of red wine…

Welcome to the world another beautiful baby girl, to our Rachel’s sister Sophie and her partner, Cameron (?) – Eleanor Mary.  I have seen a photo and she is – wonderful!  All these lovely new babies this year…I wonder if they will meet in the future and do that 6-degrees of separation thing??  For example…Matilda and Elektra and Eleanor and Jemima??  Blessings to them all…

9.30 OH NO...Pete is upping anchor...what next???