Friday 20^th January

Actually it is still Thursday….We have got very dirty at the Gold Coast City Marina shipyard.  Pete and Steve, our extremely helpful mechanic, have turned various shades of tomato and beetroot red as they struggled down the hatches with various engine parts.  And I got all manner of rust and grime coating me from head to toe, from close encounters with the rusty old anchorchain.  First I had to pull it out of its locker, and then I had to remove its remarkable dreadlocks.  How can an anchor chain get so very twisty? 

Eventually we got the bikes out – their first time off their bunk since Espiritu Santo!  They needed their tyres pumped up, and mine has disconnected and discarded its gear indicator, but other than that, they are in prime condition.  Well, they were in OK condition… Steve took one look at us trying to pump up the tyres, and led us off to his workshop, where he filled them to capacity with his compressor.  Then he got out his anti-rust squirty bottle and carefully went over the chains and gears so now indeed they are ticketyboo.  So lovely to ride again!

Pete has a new gypsy (anchor winch) from the gold Coast offshoot of Muir Engineering, a short bike ride away, and a new guide thingy for the chain – glorious and shiny – to glide down, but nothing is all that simple… One of the stainless steel bolts has sheared off, exactly in the position where the new gypsy has to be screwed on.  I am, I am sure you are surprised to hear, no help at all.  I stand around poking my finger at it and saying, “Are you sure we can’t squirt it with Steve’s grease gun thingy and just, ummmm, unbolt it?”  My next helpful act was to get out the binoculars and to trill away with great enthusiasm because, on a big pylons right near the boat, sits a small sea hawk with a fish which I saw it catch with its very own talons.  And on another pylon under the trees is…a great big sea eagle fluffing its wings in the sun!  I have now left poor Pete alone with his shiny new things and a cordless drill, with which he is trying to McGuyver a solution.

Friday

If I am tired, Pete is EXHAUSTED.  He worked away like a galley slave from morning until the end of the day.  Wonderful Steve, the mechanic, stayed on to help with removing the old anchor chain and winch (gypsy) and getting the new one installed.

Pete did manage to drill out the stainless steel screw, while I lay on the couch with my book and a big painkiller dissolving on a glass of water.  (I had hurt my back hauling the rusty old chain; my strong painkiller from Vanuatu worked a treat, even if it made me very dopey and useless.)  By the end of the day, everything was in place.  Michael, from Muirs Engineering, and Steve, were wreathed in smiles, as well they might be after all of the effort expended.  The new chain is a thing of beauty, Australian made, strong and gleaming, as yet unpolluted with mud, weed, rust, crustiness. 

And what of the old rusty chain, I hear you cry?  Michael form muirs was prepared to take it away in a big oil drum, to be taken to the scrap heap.  But… Waste not Want Not is the Headlam motto.  Think how useful this chain will be, on the farm!  I had retired from chain-hauling duties, injured in the cause, by the end of the day, so Steve and Pete lugged it out of the water and put it in Michael’s oil drum on the rear deck.  It looks just lovely…

We stayed tied up to the wharf at the marina; we were much too tired to move, and they very kindly turned a blind eye and didn’t charge us or shoo us away.  A big green dredge turned up at a bit after 6am this morning, and very politely waited for us to untie and move off.  We cruised back out of the Couran River and we are now anchored in a lovely little bay behind the Spit, nestled up close to the back door of Sea World, with the gleaming spires of Surfers Paradise as our backdrop.  Right next to the boat is a sheltered little beach, with toddlers frolicking, dogs, well dogs are dogpaddling, horses being exercised in the shallows withe bikini-clad teenage girls happily astride.  We have plans of taking the bikes ashore and doing some energetic things, maybe riding into Surfers, but for the moment, the couches are very attractive…