Brisbane, Australia
Around the world with the Aqualunies
Jonathan & Gabrielle Lyne
Sat 8 Oct 2011 06:48
We returned to Aqualuna two days ago having visited Antonia in Beijing where we were treated like royalty at the 'Opposite House Hotel' where she works as an Events Manager. After three days there we moved into her apartment, very Chinese and very small, she shares with another friend and they have made it and are still making it very comfortable, she gave us the most wonderful time meeting all her friends and seeing parts of Beijing we would not have otherwise got to see, it is great fun to hear her chat away in Mandarin to the Taxi driver and joke.
Now, after quite a long journey to get here, we are back on the yacht. The lovely part is that we had somebody, Peter, to look after her and keep her clean whilst we were away and so we came back to scrubbed decks, polished steel, polished hull and dusted and hoovered below, just wonderful not having the hassle of doing all that along with jet lag and settling back in. The Royal Yacht Squadron Queensland, in Manly, Brisbane, has a very, very professional boat yard and they have looked after Aqualuna very well indeed in all aspects. We highly recommend them if anybody needs anything done to their yacht and they are coming this way or after crossing the Pacific. You can contact us on our email address if you need to know more. We had her out of the water for a bottom scrub and to look at the anodes, the copper has managed to keep the majority of barnacles at bay and weed free, the prop was also painted and faired very well. We think we have an electrical problem with the bow thruster which is going to be looked at on Monday. Her new boom is installed along with what Selden say is a stronger goose neck so hopefully that will fair better than it did when we crossed the Atlantic and had to have new bolts made for it.
We are meeting up with Rob and Maggie Law tonight for dinner in Brisbane. The weather at the moment is not being too kind, very wet and thundery so we plan to set sail for the Whitsundays at the end of the week where we will be having Jo and Simon Davies and David and Jenny Saunders joining us over the weekend of the 29/30th October on Hamilton Island for about 10 days.