Sunday 8^th January 2017

The first blog entry of the new year, and yes, I did have to go back and change 2016 to 2017 at the top! Should have it cracked by March...

So, it has been a quiet time since getting back from our trip to the outback.  On Christmas Eve we were invited to dinner at Nick and Susie’s where I fear we bored the pants off them about our recent trip.  I thought they were showing polite interest, but have more recently discovered that they really were interested and have now booked a similar trip for May, which is, of course, a much more sensible time of year to do it.

The rest of Christmas and New Year were very quiet, with just the two of us and at times, through the wonders of modern technology the various children and grandchildren.  All seemed to be happy with Santa’s efforts. 

Australia pretty much closes down over the long Christmas/New Year break, apart from the larger shops, and as we didn’t have much need of shops we used the time to start planning the rest of our time in Oz, and also think about our onward plans when the time comes to leave.  That is likely to be in July, from Cairns, and we will need to start making our way north up the coast as soon as the cyclone season comes close to an end. 

So a bit of forward planning is called for.  The boat needs to come out of the water to have her bottom cleaned and painted, some maintenance work done, and a survey carried out.  As she is over 20 years old, in fact a grand old lady of 25 now, her insurers require her most recent survey to be less than ten years old, which it will be in July.  So in order to keep her insured, we need to have a survey done and all recommendations carried out.  There is an excellent boatyard literally just round the corner, and as luck would have it they have a half-price offer on hardstanding during January.  This is mainly because it is so damn hot nobody can stand to work on their boats during this time, so the locals don’t want to know, but the timing suits us perfectly and we will just have to adjust our body clocks and get up at first light and do jobs before it gets too hot. (Hmmm...)

We are booked to haul out on the 17^th, Tuesday week, and the surveyor is booked for the 18^th.  We hope to be out for only a week, but as we all know, Murphy is often present at these times, so we will see.  For lots of reasons, including the fact that even at half price it is twice the price of the marina berth, we would like to be out of the water as short a time as possible.

In the meantime, we have hired a car for five days from tomorrow, and are off to spend a few days in the mountains, where it is generally 5 degrees cooler than here.  Hurrah!  So I am off to start packing.  Happy New Year everyone!