Where Buoy Meets Gull - Whitsunday Adventure Day 3

We got to Airlie Beach before dark and so went around to see if we could find the place and check out the boat. We had a hard time doing that, as the gal who gave the directions to the place had obviously never driven there herself before, and the directions were ridiculous! But we did find it, and we talked to the people at Whitsunday Rent-a-yacht. The good news is that we WERE being provisioned, even though it was so last minute! Yay! The bad news is that when we asked about where to park, they told us that we had paid for valet parking - $100 for them to drive our car to "secure" parking and bring it back while we were gone for 6 days. Chris thought that was ridiculous, so we did some investigating and found that we could put it in the public lot within walking distance for a grand total of $18! I mean, after all, our car is NOT new or even nice! It's got a dented front end from when the motorcycle ran into us, it's dirty and just plain ordinary, but it runs great, so we keep it.

So after that, we went back and cancelled the valet parking, but we had to pay a cancellation fee of $25 because "they have already reserved that spot for you!" Ugh. This was just a small indication of how the company was going to try to nickel and dime us to death. We also found out that, although we had requested an 8:00 orientation THREE TIMES, they had us scheduled for noon and "couldn't" change it. NOT impressed.

This Jolly Swagman was camped outside our motel.

We found a fairly inexpensive motel with a special on, so that was fine. No visible cockroaches or anything, and we went out to a pub to eat. Then we wandered around the streets (correction, STREET) of Airlie Beach and we found a poker game! We spent a fun evening playing Texas Hold-Em. Chris made it to the final table, and I almost did, but that was a better way to spend our time rather than holing up in the motel room and watching cable TV,

Next day, after some brekkie and some last minute shopping, we got to the boat hire dock about 11:15 - hoping we could speed things up a bit, but no, actually, they didn't get around to dealing with us until about 12:45.

Whales are hard to take good photos of!

We had a faster than normal briefing because Chris convinced the guy (Mike) that he had done a bit of sailing before. We still had to go over all the charts and the danger areas, go over the boat and its switches and stuff, unpack all our provisioning, and then sail off with him to get the mainsail set before he hopped in his dinghy and left us to it. We didn’t get off until 3:00. We’re supposed to be anchored each day by 4:00, but they understood we weren’t going to make it on time that first day because of the late start. (You see, they don't REALLY want anyone in one of their boats out sailing after dark because there is obviously more chance of running into a reef that way!) We were anchored by 5:00, though, were greeted by two lovely whales, and celebrated with a bit of wine and a steak!

Since we only ordered partial provisioning from them, we had some of our own goodies to pack away as well. I thought it was funny that with their provisioning they gave us LOTS of fruit, and very few veggies. We got one green pepper, a couple of onions, lettuce and five potatoes! I would have liked a couple of zucchini or a head of broccoli or some snap peas. Potatoes are NOT the easiest thing to cook on a boat as they take a lot of time and gas – BUT…it’s not OUR gas this time, so we don’t care! Haha.

Chris went in for a dip to check out the anchor, and he said it’s VERY cold! I was happy to just sit in the cockpit and enjoy the sunset and watch the turtles stick their little heads up for a little recco. You can't tell by this photo, but the turtle is REALLY big! He's probably three feet long.

She’s a lovely little boat named Coco. (Sorry I didn't take ANY photos of her!) She’s fitted out below with fake teak laminate and white Naugahyde cushions. It’s very light and crisp! The bow V-berth is small – Chris’s legs have to stick out into space, and it would be VERY tight for two to sleep there. The aft cabin has is filled with a lovely large bed, but VERY claustrophobic as it is so low ceilinged. It’s under the cockpit, see? – so our bedroom roof is the cockpit floor. There is hardly enough room to bend your knees up - you wouldn't want to sit up suddenly in the night! The toilet is nice and new and white and clean, EXCEPT – we haven’t figured out how to run the shower pump yet, and since Chris showered after his swim, the floor is wet – so that’s quite uncomfortable. And, as usual on a boat, many things are a little awkward. For example, when you’re sitting on the toilet, you can’t QUITE open the cupboard where the toilet paper is kept because your knees are in the way. So if you don’t remember to open the cupboard before you sit, then you have to reach into this half-open, awkward space to grab what you can while the cupboard is digging into your thigh. There is a water leak, so the water pump runs almost constantly if we don’t turn it off (so we do!). And since there is a leak somewhere, the bilges keep filling up, so the bilge pumps run quite frequently unless we turn them off – so we DO! But we have to remember to run them once in a while so we don’t get the boat full of standing water!

We were SUPPOSED to be on this adventure with Larry and Connie, so we can thank them for the impetus that got us here, but we miss them terribly! Everything would have been just that much more fun with them around. They had to cut short their trip for a family emergency back in the states. We think about them every day and hope things are going as well as can be expected. However, I think we would have been hard pressed to figure out where to store the extra provisions if they were aboard, as this boat has not NEAR the storage capacity as our beloved Two By Sea. It’s true that I haven’t explored UNDER the seats in the dinette or under the bed, yet, but that’s because I don’t HAVE to – they are such difficult places to get to. (You don’t REALLY want to go tearing up the bed and lifting the mattress to get to your potatoes, now DO you?)

The dinghy is very nice – it is an inflatable, probably 10 feet long with a hard floor and a motor that starts first time EVERY time! That’s a lovely thing!

Chris is a little upset with the anchor set up on Coco, because it is impossible to bring the anchor up by hand! It will go DOWN o.k. but the only way you can bring it up is with this funny little remote control thingy that has to be plugged in at the anchor locker, and there is no manual override. Of course, you can’t STORE the thingy in the anchor locker on deck because it would quickly get useless with the salt water – so you have to go down below to get it. But the main reason he doesn’t like it is because what would happen if the batteries die when you’ve got the anchor half up, or if you lost the thing overboard, which would be quite easy to do, then where would you be? Well, obviously, wherever you had put the anchor down, because you couldn’t get it up again, now could you?

Some things that are quite different from what we’re used to – It’s a really nice refrigerator for a boat – much better than mine on Two By Sea, but it seems to be running ALL the time! On our boat, we turned it off for the majority of the time, and only had to run the engine 10 minutes twice a day to keep it topped up. They tell us we have to run the engine a minimum of two hours to keep things topped up! We finally turned the fridge off in the night because the compressor runs constantly and has a high-pitched whine to it! Also, the reason that we found out that Chris doesn’t quite fit in the V-berth is because there was absolutely not one BREATH of air in the aft cabin, and he couldn’t sleep. Of course, there are no fans in the coffin, and not even any 12-volt outlets too plug in a fan! At least the V-berth has a hatch! Well, to be fair, the coffin cabin DOES have a couple of windows, but they’re not directly over the sleeping area, so you don’t get much breeze. Anyway, after we turned off the fridge and he moved, we both slept fairly well, even though his feet had to stick out over the end. (Perhaps I should have slept there!) But it’s a lovely calm anchorage here at Sid Harbour.

Where Buoy Meets Gull - Whitsunday Adventure Day 2

Wednesday's adventures: So the next day we were on the road...Chris and I have been all up and down the Eastern Coast of Australia. We've been from WAY down south below Sydney all the way up to Rockhampton -several times! We've driven from Townsville to Airlie Beach and back. We've spent a day in Mackay (when we arrived by boat) on the bus. But the road from Rockhampton to Airlie Beach was virgin territory for us!

I am always amused by the roadside signs that encourage the drivers to take breaks and stay awake. These days there are some quite grisly ones - I'm not sure they ENCOURAGE you to take a break, more like they try to scare you into it. My favorite plain variety is the one that says, "Don't sleep and drive." That always cracks me up. Maybe it should say "Don't drive when sleepy." Actually, there IS one that says that. There is a new series of billboards that says "Trivia can keep you alert! Play trivia while you drive." Then they actually offer you trivia questions, such as - "What is Queensland's Floral Emblem?" and "What is the highest mountain in Queensland?" Then, quite a ways down the road, they provide the answers. (Cooktown orchid, which I knew and Mount Bartle Frere, which I've never heard of!)

Then there's another sign that says, "Keep playing trivia - it could save your life!" There are other GREAT BIG signs which says things like, "Still a long way to go, kids!" And I have NO idea what they're for!

Amongst the usual kangaroos and wallabies dead beside the road, I also saw a VERY large pig with it's legs up in the air in the classical cartoon pose, but sadly, further down the road, I saw a very small piggy. So are there wild boars running around North Queensland like in Hawaii, or were these domestic piggies? I also saw a bilby dead beside the road. But the most interesting "on the road" thing was this snake we saw crossing the road. It must have been about five feet long, and it was fawn colored, but the arresting thing was that it's head was up about a foot above the roadway and it was hooded! It was like it saw us coming and didn't like us and decided it was going to bite our car! It was so quick that, though at first I thought it was a snake, after we went past, I thought it might be a dead palm frond! But Chris assured me that he had looked in the rear-view mirror and saw it finish crossing the road and it was most assuredly a snake! We really have no idea what kind it was - and don't really know of any hooded Australian varieties.

Any help out there? Then again, maybe it WASn't an Australian variety, because about 100 meters after that, we passed a Reptile Park. Perhaps it escaped!

We came across a sign that said, "Leap - 500 meters". OK - so what's a leap? We figured it was some kind of escarpment that folks jump off - maybe into the water? But then, when we went the 500 meters, the sign said "Leap hire here". Now I'm REALLY confused! How can you HIRE a leap? What in the heck is going on here?

I have some other roadside questions, as well - Why do they have a sign for Sally Creek Overflow about 10 meters before they have the sign for Sally Creek? Who cares?

Who is Gentle Annie and why did she have a road named after her?

The countryside up there was VERY lush and lovely - it reminded me a lot of Hawaii (where I grew up) with the palm trees, the sugar cane, the greenness, and especially in the shape of its mountains.

OK - I think I've actually already WRITTEN the next two days adventures, so you won't have to wait too long, and we'll actually get into the sailing bit, so that's a good thing! Stay tuned.

BTW - I found a photo of the four of us when I downloaded the pics off my camera, so I thought I'd add that here:

Whitsunday Sailing - Where Buoy Meets Gull

I promised that I would get this up, soon, but I'm a little bummed because I had already typed up this first part SOMEWHERE, and now I can't find it ANYwhere! It's quite frustrating. But...I promised, so I'm putting up at least this first bit today. If you want to follow along as I go, then it's probably best for you to "subscribe" or whatever it is you do with blogs to get notification as to when I continue - OK?

These are our buddies, Connie and Larry - taken in 2009. I don't have a more recent photo and I didn't get ANY of them while they were here! Bummer. Maybe Larry will share some with me...hint hint!

2010. September

Tuesday’s adventures – setting off

The reason we are even ON this adventure is because our friends, Larry and Connie, came over from the States for a visit. THEY are sailors, and WE are sailors, but we’ve never sailed together. So we decided to contact Whitsunday Rent-a-yacht and hire a sailboat for a few days at the end of their trip. Unfortunately, Larry had a family emergency and they had to leave before the sail! Bummer! So we called the company and asked them if we could get our money back. Of course, they said no, as it was too close to the scheduled departure. BUT, they said, if they were somehow able to “sell” our time to someone else, then we would get our money back (minus the $100 processing fee.) So we encouraged them to sell the boat and went about our normal routine. We were scheduled to leave on Tuesday for a Thursday sail for six days and five nights. I emailed them on the weekend, but they responded that they had had no success yet. On Monday, one of them gave Chris a call and said they thought they had someone interested, but they had to pin down the details and we should get back to them on Tuesday. On Tuesday, about 10:00 I mentioned to Chris that perhaps he wanted to ring them. He said, “Actually, they told me to call in the afternoon.” We both assumed that we would NOT be going. So about noon I finally convinced him that it would be good to call, as it IS over 1000 kilometers to get up there!

They not only had NOT sold the boat, they were mystified as to why we would ever even think that they were going to! So we frantically rushed around the house, making "piles" of stuff that we thought we might want to take. Luckily, I had made some lists earlier. However, we had planned on being provisioned by their company, and now, they claimed it was too late for that - our departure was too imminent! You've GOT to be kidding me! That meant that not ONLY did I have to pack clothes and swim stuff and toiletries and entertainment but that I would have to plan and pack FOOD for six days! And I'm talking salt and pepper, and cooking oil, and EVERYTHING that you just take for granted to have on hand in your kitchen! THAT made me seriously depressed. I didn't want to deal with it. I rang back the company and whined at them, but the gal I spoke to was not sympathetic or helpful at all. She said she didn't know anything about it - they did all the provisioning on line. So when I hung up from her, I WENT on line, found the provisioning site, and ordered anyway! We did get a confirmation email, but under the section that said "details of your order" it was blank. Therefore, we really had no idea if we were being provisioned or not. There was no phone number on the website - I didn't want to call back the charter company and obviously, we couldn't sit around and wait for more emails. So we decided to stick some peanut butter and bread, some two-minute noodles, and a jar of my favorite garlic salt into a bag. We would make more lists on the way in case we had to do some last minute shopping. We threw everything into bags and backpacks and hustled out the door, hoping we hadn't forgotten anything REALLY important.

We wanted to get quite a bit of road under our tires, but we had had a late start. So we made it all the way to Benaraby, after the turnoff to Tannum Sands and before the town of Calliope - niether of which are bustling metropolises. However, our GPS (Sheila - named after the iconic Aussie Lassie) lied to us about the motels available, and we were lucky to actually FIND one - on our own - without Sheila's help. (Side note: Sheila is GREAT in the States, but over here, either the chip we have is WAY too old, or Aussies just aren't that accurate about their addresses - we've had MUCHO problemos!)

The hotel would even cook us up some dinner to be served in the room! That's the way Aussie motels in the bush do it, because they KNOW that there's no restaurants around! So we had a pretty good night's sleep and off again early in the morning! Chris actually asked to be woken up at 6:00 a.m. - which is quite a sacrifice for my late sleeper - so you KNOW we still had a long way to go - at least 10 hours!

OK - that's all I can handle for today. More soon.

Could it get any worse?

It was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. I think I'll move to Australia.

No wait. I'm already IN Australia and it's contributing!

I wake up to a miserable, cold, rainy day. I'm already feeling just slightly better than miserable myself as I am just recovering from strep throat. I think I will console myself by having my coffee in the hot tub on the patio. We are out of coffee.

I fix myself a cup of hot tea, a poor substitute, and head to the hot tub. When I open the cover, I am greeted by a cloudy stench of yucky,yellow water, like something has gotten up inside there and died. No way could I put my naked body in that! I will have to drain it. Whilst only in my towel I work out the arrangements of hose and nozzles and manage to get it draining, though I get slightly wet in the process, because it's a miserable, cold, rainy day, and now I'm feeling just a little more miserable myself. And stinky. It's a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

I decide to go in and drink my tea with my facebook friends to console myself. I can't shower because the water tank is just outside our bedroom window and if the pump is running, it will wake up Chris. (I normally don't even flush the toilet unless it's absolutely necessary.) My robe is in the bedroom. So I bundle up in the only sweater I can find - from the dirty clothes basket in the laundry room. It smells like something has crawled up inside it and died, but at least I'm warmer. I can't find my favorite fuzzy slippers. I have to settle for my least favorite cloth slippers that I try to avoid because I once wore them continuously when I had athlete's foot, and they make my toes itch just to think about it.

I sit down at the computer and take a sip. My tea is cold. I get up to re-heat it and then try again at the computer. The internet is down. I restart the machine, just in case, but that doesn't work either. There will be no facebook this morning. No online comfort, no mindless computer games, no blogging. It is a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

What will I do with my morning? I decide to work on a craft project my "challenge leader" has assigned but that I don't really want to do . I sort of feel obligated to do it because I'm the president of the craft group. I have to lead by example, right? So I gather up my supplies and head to the living room. I will work on my project while watching TV to make it more fun. But it's Sunday morning. Early. Too early for even the old movies to be on. The only thing on is cartoons, TV evangelists, Spanish news and motocross races. Ugh. How can this day get any more horrible?

Aha! I will watch a chick flick I got at the video store that Chris is not the least bit interested in.

The Traveling Pants - part two. Never mind that I can't remember what any of the characters did in part one - it will be entertaining and take my mind off my miseries. I get the video in and set to hit play and go for breakfast. The kitchen is a disaster area. There are still dishes left from yesterday (I've been sick, remember?) There are no clean spoons. The refrigerator smells like something has crawled up inside of it and died. I grab some yogurt and close it quickly. The counters are a mess and as I clear a space, for my bowl I notice an interesting wrapper and a small round box. I realize that last night, Chris ate a WHOLE ROUND of Brie without even offering me a bite! I am furious. I can't believe how rude and selfish that is. I am fuming, seething, irate, incensed, and very mad. How can he be so thoughtless?

I take my cereal and my yogurt and a dirty spoon back into the living room and arrange my craft supplies around me. I notice out the window my favorite parrot is sitting wetly on the empty bird feeder. Just because I am miserable, doesn't mean my bird friends have to be. So I get up to fill the bird feeders. We're out of bird seed. Great. Let's just all be cold, wet and miserable together.

Depressed even further, I settle back down push play on the DVD. The movie is cute and mindless, but I can't turn the volume up as loudly as I would like (I'm deaf, ya know) because it would wake up Chris. So I turn on the subtitles, and therefore, I either miss a line and have to keep back-tracking, or I don't get much of my project accomplished. Both. The DVD must be scratched because the movie skips. Big chunks of the story line are missing as I have to jump forward to make the movie watchable. I throw down the clicker in disgust. This day can't get much more terrible.

Just about now I feel the urge to take a dump. I look for my book to take to the bathroom, as it may be long one. My book is in the bedroom. At this point, I am so irritated and wretched that I feel like slamming into the bedroom and waking up Chris to GET my book (and my robe and my fuzzy slippers - and take a shower!) But I resist and go to the toilet bookless. It smells like something has crawled up inside of ME and died! Maybe it's the antibiotics I've been taking. I don't linger (and I DO flush!) I guess it's a good thing I don't have my book.

I go back to the living room and try flipping the channels to find something to watch. By now I'm assaulted with cartoons, reruns of Desperate Housewives, Chinese news, and rock videos.

Chris gets up (around 11:00!) and comes in to give me a kiss. I am icy. He asks me if I'm mad. I say yes. He asks me if I'm mad at HIM. I say yes. He asks what he has done? I sort of hate to hit him with a rant first thing in the morning, (well, true, it's almost noon, but it's the first thing in HIS morning) but he is asking for it, so I let him have it. Besides, I am already miserable, might as well have some company. Sorry, he says. But not as if he means it. Not as if it's important. Not as if it will make me feel any better. Just once, and dully. Sorry.

Aargh! It's a terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day!

He goes to check on the internet news whilst I sit seething on the couch and he finds that the internet is down. He fixes it! He tries to be nice to me all day to make up for his part in my terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. Things get slightly better. I get to spend some time on line, I actually got a good start on my project, and Chris is being nice to me. And now that Chris is up, I can take a bath instead of a shower. Maybe I won't have to move to Australia after all.

But now the empty hot tub is looming. I procrastinate cleaning it as it is still wet, cold and miserable out there. But I know that the longer I put it off, the longer it will be before I have that comforting hot water to slide into. I sit around in my bath towel, knowing that I'll have to go climb in there to clean it out and why bother getting my clothes wet? Finally, just around dusk, I gather up my supplies, spend an hour out there, finish wiping it down and stick the hose in to refill it. Then I go in to make dinner. I actually remembered to take something out of the freezer so I'm not scrambling around at the last minute. And I'm fixing "Make your own" pizzas - from Turkish bread and tomato paste and all our favorite toppings. I only burn them a little, but they ARE comfort food and they help. Then, after dinner, I get to watch "The X Factor" which is entertaining, then "Bones" and "Castle" and I actually FINISH my craft project and start on another! Things are looking up.

It's bedtime. I kiss Chris and head for the bedroom, where I hear the continuous sound of the water pump running. OH MY GOD! I have left the water running in the hot tub for FIVE HOURS! THIS is a HUGE disaster, because, as you know already, we are on TANK water and I have been draining it for FIVE HOURS! I run outside in my nightgown and in the dark, grab the hose out of the tub, which instantly wriggles away from me and sprays me, absolutely drenching my nightgown with cold water! I manage to grab it and close the nozzle. Then, since I'm already wet, I might as well splash the excess water out of the hot tub so I can at least close the lid. I am using my arms like blades, sloshing the water out of the tub until the level goes down far enough to close the lid. Then I go in. I have ended this day like I started it. Cold, wet and miserable. And now guilty into the bargain. It has been a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. I'm definitely moving to Australia.