Wednesday 25^th July

On Sunday Pete and I did different activities with various offspring.  I went to MONA with my three daughters, and we had a most wonderful time looking at the new exhibition – lots of stuff unearthed from the TMAG (Tas Museum and Art Gallery) and so beautifully curated it took my breath away.  Plus Picasso’s Weeping Woman, just casually hung on a wall, with no security cordons, no anxious guards.  We had NO children with us, other than Rose in a pouch.  She slept happily, waking occasionally to peer out at the world in great delight.  Hello!  I didn’t know you were here!  Oh wow what’s THAT!  She is, I told Katy, starting to develop a personality (she was born not very long ago…29^th Feb…) and Katy said, Yes, but a very limited personality so far. She has two moods – Happy, and Hungry.

In the meantime Pete was out on the river with James on 2XS.  The plan is for James and some friends to take the boat up to the Whitsundays, some time around March next year.  Then in April Pete and I can step gracefully onto a plane and fly OVER Bass Strait, and past the East Coast, ie past all the cold wind and weather…We can spend a bit of time in the gorgeous Whitsundays and then…sail north!  For this plan to succeed, 2XS has to be in tiptop condition, and so does James.  Pete through it would be a good idea to go out for a few hours, so that James could practise parking, ie getting 2XS in and out of its tight pen at the marina.

I got home about 3.00 and put a defrosting leg of lamb in the oven, not sure how many people were coming to eat it but fairly sure that it needed to start cooking.  About 4.30 in came a very despondent Pete…had he been having FUNFUNFUN out on the river?  Well no…They hadn’t got very far, and were just starting to drive around a buoy in the bay when…the steering stopped working, on the port side (I think.)  Much the same as our near-disastrous breakdown in Coff’s Harbour.  Poor Pete, poor James, poor 2XS.  They had to limp back into the marina, using the outboard from the tender strapped onto the back deck on a plank.  James drove the little engine, Pete drove the starboard steering, and they managed to get in, to the astonishment, said James, of all and sundry out for a Sunday walk on the Lindisfarne waterfront.

They cheered up later in the day when it was time to eat the roast – yes good thing I put it in, and good thing I held off on peeling the veg until I knew how many people were coming - along with Martin, Kate, Harry and Lizzie, who all, fortunately, were happy to watch Masterchef with Pete and me.  (So close to the final, couldn’t miss it…)

Yesterday Pete sent an email to our friend James Miedecke, who is now working on an engineering project in Borneo, so I will include what he wrote in case I got things wrong:

The bad news is....after travelling all the way back to Tassie, after our very successful sail drive repairs, I took son James out for a bit of manoeuvring on Sunday and the same problem has raised its bloody head.  Now need to have an exhaustive mechanical check, or perhaps a new sail drive. Muchos money involved there I tell you!!!

As they say, BOAT stands for…Bring Out Another Thousand…