Monday 30^th April

We have had our last night on the boat…the bed is stripped, there’s no going back!  Well not for a while.  Pete seems very sad to be leaving our cosy nest on the water but I think it is fine.  It is time, really – if we were still on holiday, it would be wonderful, living on the marina at Lindisfarne.  But I was happy back in West Hobart last night, staying in Pete’s lovely warm house, cooking in a BIG kitchen.

Just a few teensy glitches, for example…I found the coffee machine carefully stored behind a small heap of less-than-lovely pillows but there is one bit missing.  Just a tiny little insert for the thingummyjig which filters the coffee.  Small but essential.  It is totally missing in action… So I left poor Pete in a coffee-less house.

I really enjoyed being able to walk to work again.  The bus was fine, speedy and efficient, but…a nice long walk in the crisp wintery air is better.

Yesterday we talked to some people who are very experienced sailors.  Glenys and David had been very interested in our plans, last year, but I think that secretly they didn’t believe we would make it all the way, all 9,000-odd nautical miles up through the islands.  They told us that they tried to sail in that direction eighteen years ago, when their daughter was ten.  Their plan was to go to New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji, but they turned back in shocking wind and weather conditions. 

In Townsville they met some people who were leaving for the Louisiades, so they decided to tag along.  They had two months in this beautiful archipelago and had a most wonderful time.  Sadly they arrived at a time of severe drought in the region.  People were really suffering.  I showed Glenys photos of the beautiful red tomatoes Monica traded with us, on Bagaman Island, and she couldn’t believe it – they were having trouble growing so much as a few clumps of taro when she was there.  When we were in the islands, the locals were happily trading their tomatoes, bananas, crayfish for luxury items.  Well, staples like rice and soap, but they also wanted clothes, playing cards, magazines.  In drought time…what they wanted was water… The yachts with water makers filled containers for the poor wretched villagers, happy just to get a few extra drinks for their families.

Glenys if we had met Gulo (Jif Gulo!) on Bagaman and she was very happy to hear of their current prosperity.  Moses would have been about five years old, and he is now a family man of 23, busily trying to develop a little shop in his village.

Glenys and David’s beloved daughter, Anna, loved her sailing time as a young girl so much that as soon as she was old enough, she travelled the world, working on luxury yachts.  She is now based on a huge cruising yacht in the Mediterranean and Glenys, I think, wishes that they had encouraged her to work in a bank, or some other solid land-based enterprise, in Hobart…