catch up

Picking up from the end of June – which is when I last posted on the blog! – we had a visit from friends Anna & her daughter Mali and they joined us on Lumiel for an afternoon, although we didn’t get out for a sail. I got busy in July and removed all the old anti skid that was peeling off and replaced it with nice new white anti skid. It ended up being a bit more of a mission than expected – boat work! – the gelcoat was pretty degraded under the old gel coat and I had to sand it all back then prime it with a couple of coats of epoxy before carefully cutting out new pieces from the sheets I had ordered. It did end up coming up pretty good and certainly makes the old girl look a lot better!

 

Mid July our dear friends Brian & Penny arrived for a visit, we didn’t have much boat time, but a great old catch up and lots of meals at Dave’s Beach Bar & Rick’s Bar & Grill! Brian continued the tradition of bringing an excellent bottle of rum for Mojitos on his annual visit!

The end of July, start of August led us into Garma time, and while we avoid the festival these days, its always nice to catch up with the old crew from the real Garmas in the early days. We had a lovely day sailing with the amazing Amy & her offsider, Ness, then Kade and Johhno joined us for drinks and dinner after the sail and a few days later we had a fantastic meal at the boat club with Chris & Biddy who invited some other very interesting people along. Finally we wrapped it up with a day of champagne sailing with Andrew and Di. The boat work for the month was making up new mooring bridles, a new skill learnt in splicing 8 strand plaited rope.

Mid August saw Sal & I in Darwin for a week or so, she had her annual check up with the oncologist and a few other appointments, everything went well and she got the all clear on everything. We stayed with our special friends, Putty & Sarah in their little hut in Nightcliff, looking over the Arafura sea. It was a magic time, lots of long chats, great meals and lazing around! We also caught up with Andrew & Di again on their way to Greece, at Hanumans with Putty & Sarah, Don Whyte & Belinda a couple of others as well as Kai who was in Darwin for trade school. I also picked up the VW Amarok I had bought in Melbourne earlier in the year, I dropped Sal at the airport and drove the ‘Rok home with a load of gear for various people in the tray!

So that brings us thru to September, Dave and I beached Lumiel to change out the port side sail drive prop shaft, we had developed a small water leak into the sail drive and we are hoping this will resolve it. We took the opportunity to scrape her bum and get rid of 9 months growth, very pleased with how she came up. This was promptly followed by a crabbing expedition with Scotty who is leaving town after 15 years, and Danny, a mate who manages the Boat club campground.

The last week the Blue Fin Tuna have been in the bay, Danny & Emma caught a few and gave me one which we enjoyed as sashimi, including on Saturday when we took friends of Sal’s from her work, Christian & Claudine out for a sail – it was Christian’s b’day so we had to lay it on a bit! Kai also caught a good one, so I dry cured that for gravlax.

That us pretty well up to date! I think the only other exciting news is that Sal has announced she is retiring in February next year, so the adventures should accelerate going forward!

remember to subscribe if you want email notifications of updates, and click on the ‘i‘ at the top of the galleries if you want to see the captions for the images.