Our stay on the Brisbane River

We ended up staying two and a half, fun-filled weeks in sunny Brisbane, berthed at the Dockside Marina at Kangaroo Point.

It was in an awesome location...just around the river bend from Brisbane City...

...within sight of the Story Bridge, and only a 20 minute ferry ride to the Eagle Street wharf.

We were central to everything, a quick drive to various shopping facilities (including Whitworths) and had a couple of restaurants and corner stores within easy walking distance too.

Another highlight of our stay at the Dockside Marina was the visit of the Bread Fairy. One Staurday morning we woke to find three beautiful loaves of bread had been left on our sugar scoop...

We asked some of the other cruisers, and the marina manager, but we never did find out who the Brisbane River Bread Fairy was...whoever you are, thank you!

The only real downside to being at the Dockside, was the frequent ferry wash produced by the City Cats, that ran well in to the night. You'd be innocently walking about and quickly have to grab on to the nearest handhold as Lucey Blue started lurching all over the place after a Cat went by. Also, whenever I went ashore it'd feel like the ground was lurching about and I think I probably looked quite drunk on several occasions. HOWEVER, it would appear that living with this for two and a half weeks may have been just the ticket to preparing me for an ocean voyage free from puking. So THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU to the Brisbane City Cats!

While we were in Brisbane we got a bunch of odd jobs done on Lucey Blue. One day Nick discovered that the VHF antenna atop the mast was dangling at an unlikely angle...so up the mast he went, to find it had snapped off, and was hanging on by a thread...

Of course, if Dad got to climb up the mast, the kids had to as well, and I was dumfounded to see Emily clamber ALL the way to the top in a matter of minutes...

 Another job that got completed in Brisbane was the replacement of Lucey Blue's life lines and the attachment points.

They were probably 19 years old, and had fractures in them, so it was past time they got replaced. Nick measured them all up and got them cut to length by David Lambourne. We were very happy with the job he did.

This post is getting ridiculously large now...so I'll finish it here. Part two of our Brisbane River stay will follow shortly.