Monday 25th August 2014
Well it's Monday and we are still here, :-( :-( Lots of sad faces here.
Yeap we have set a new date as Wednesday, just maybe we may get out of here on that one.
We are so so close to leaving, the last few days have been a frantic scramble to get everything done.
All the provisioning is done, well as much as possible, I actually emptied three separate grocery stores of a lot of their items, I don't think Darwin knew what hit them.
I'm quite certain we can not fit another thing on board, I actually think we may just have to paint a new waterline on this here vessel.
After storing it all which took like forever, I have started a major clean up, and man does it need it, we have a fine dust over everything, the wind has been blowing everyday and it's almost a constant battle to keep the dust out, that and no rain has really left the boat very dirty.
As I'm slowly going through one cabin at a time, The Captain has been busy as well.
The Captain is actually the star on here at the moment, or maybe I should be calling him The Doctor, he has fixed the water maker, after a lengthy delicate operation of pulling the pump apart, and with a bag of spare parts and reading a Manual on his laptop, very carefully separating all the bits, swapping old for new, mopping is brow several times me assisting in my nurses uniform haha...(not really) It all went back together perfect,
He puts it all back into place switches it on and it's thumping away brilliantly job well done Doc.
But the list just does not seem to end, the generator is still playing up, so it looks like we will have to get a mechanic out to have a look at it today if possible.
The next big thing was the main engine, it needed the belts replaced, and a oil change and top up and all that guy stuff, I have no idea about anything in this department.
On Friday Marion had ran him around to find new belts we did have spares on board which he took with him, but wanted to get just a size smaller.
So yesterday in this stinking heat he gets down and dirty in the bilges and takes off the old belts goes to put the new belts on and they are too big, yeap even the spare ones were huge, so much for having spare parts I would hate to see what would have happen out in the middle of the ocean if we had needed to change them.
So another trip into town today for new belts and hopefully that will be fixed today as well.
We also have two working bilge pumps once again which is a nice feeling, and we may have worked out our problem with our depth sounder, after many failed attempts at contacting our Lake Macquarie guru on Raymarine products, Jason finally got back to us this morning, he thinks the main problem is there is growth on the sensors, which is fine for some, but it means The Captain has to go overboard and clean them, yeah I hear you and I can tell you I am not real happy about this at all.
But we have a mental amount of little fish swimming around the boat at the moment so that's always a good sign, if there are little fish around, most likely there are no big fish or crocs around, well I hope so anyway.
We also caught up with Marion and Warren and the kids and shouted them out for lunch at the local club, it was the only thing we could think of to repay them for all their help over the last several weeks, once again thanks guys, we could not have done what we needed to get done without your help and thanks for a lovely afternoon, just relaxing and getting us off this boat for awhile, even if we were so relaxed that we both needed a nana nap, when we got back on board...haha
So the work continues, we are making water as fast as possible so I can give the decks a bit of a scrub and do some last minute washing, change our appointment with customs so we can clear out tomorrow and then we have 24 hours to leave Australia, oh man we sure have mixed feelings about leaving.
Well tomorrow is another day.