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.