Race Weekend at Keppel Bay Marina...

We've been having fun at this marina. It is the Club Marine Brisbane to Keppel Tropical Yacht Race weekend here and there are parties and lots of people continually coming and going. A number of yachts arrived yesterday including Wild Oats XI and Lahana (which is berthed not far from us, so made a nice portlight view this morning)...

Most of the race entrants are still on their way up and will finish later today, or early tomorrow. Some of them appear to be en-route to the Whitsundays for the Audi Hamilton Island Race Week...which we may just arrive for the tail end of (if the wind is right ;-). So all in all, a fun time to be around.

I got up early yesterday, and took a stroll around the harbour, which looked very pretty as the sun was coming up...

...extra points if you can spot Lucey Blue in the marina shot above.

We might head into town again today (I went for a small recce trip on the bus yesterday) and start doing some food shopping. We have a few more days here before we head north, possibly to Port Clinton and then the Percy Islands.

Have a good one!
Sam.

Blue lights and Bundy-licious Booty!

 We have been having a lovely time in Bundy, catching up with family, seeing the sights, doing the boat stuff...

The Bundaberg Port Marina is a short drive from town (through some beautiful cane fields), and has had pretty much everything we've needed. We rented a car from the marina for the week, and have buzzed about all over the place in that.

Yesterday we all went in to town to visit the Bundaberg Distillery Company, and do their site tour. My favourite bit was the huge tank of molasses...I think the guide said it held a couple of olympic swimming pools-worth when full. The kids liked checking out the bottling plant, and watching all the bottles buzz around and be filled and capped. I think Eric enjoyed the Bondstores the most...he took one look and then promptly fell fast asleep in the pouch. I guess six million dollars worth of rum will do that to a small boy (and that was just one barrel....!!!!!).

The adults got to test some of the 'goods' on the way out...I zeroed in on their Royal Liqueur which they said was only available on-site....delicious! It is Bundaberg Rum with coffee and chocolate flavours, and being a fan of things like Kahlua and Bailey's, it was very much my thing. I think I may have to stock-up on the way back through here ;-).

The motor boat next to us on the marina has some very nifty blue lights attached to her stern under the waterline. I took the kids over there last night with some bread and we threw it in for the little fish...a whole school of what were probably Butter-Bream quickly came out from underneath the pontoon and began a feeding frenzy on the bread, much to the delight of the kids...

I was able to tell what fish they were by using our newly aquired 'Grant's Guide to Fishes'. We had looked all over the place for this book prior to leaving Canberra, but came up short. Then, lo and behold.....I spied not one, but two copies in Dymocks, Bundaberg (I wasn't even looking for it at the time)....so we are all kitted up now, and ready to identify fish. Hooray!

We are planning to head out to Lady Musgrave Island tomorrow night, and once there will be out of email/phone range for at least a week, perhaps longer.

'See' you then :-).

Guess where we are...

Last night, after posting here. I jumped into bed...for a very short kip. Nick and I both got up at 11:40 pm, got dressed and sorted and upped anchor at midnight and motored up and out of the Great Sandy Strait and into Hervey Bay. We decided that we'd seen enough of Fraser Island for now, and will probably stop in there again on our way home late this year, or early next year.

It was fun motoring out at midnight. It was a very quiet night on the water (another reason we chose to up anchor with short notice), very little wind and no one else was silly enough to be out and about at that time of night. The moon was up...giving great visibility, and we only found one channel marker that was definitely NOT where it was marked as being. All the rest were where they should be, and flashing as they should flash (the various markers have different coloured lights on them (port, starboard, cardinal marks etc) and flash at different intervals, so you can easily tell which one you are looking at (when you compare them to the ones listed in your chart). We even had the current coming out with us, and it turned our 6 kts of boat speed into 8+ kts over the ground (such hoons)!

Out on Hervey Bay it was very peaceful sailing. I stayed up with Nick for a while, fed Eric and then went back to bed until about 6 am as we were approaching Bargara (where we called Nick's parents and made them come out onto their balcony so we could wave hello). We entered the Burnett River at 08:00, and we were all tied up at Bundaberg Port Marina by a little after 08:30. Gotta love a smooth night sail where no one chucks :-).

Today has been a quiet day here, just wandering around working out where everything is. Nick's parents stopped by to say hi then went into town and picked us up some fresh bread, chicken, Bonjela (the first class passenger is having a hard time with his erupting teeth...) and TWO peach blossom cakes. They are a different texture to the one I made with Emma's recipe, but still delicious. If I remember, I will take a pic tomorrow and show you what the store-bought version looks like.

ETA...this is a Peach Blossom cake from Lushus Cakes in Bundaberg...

I have a mountain of washing to do tomorrow (it is truly never ending), and Nick is going to have another try at fixing a leak on the dinghy as the patch he applied in Tin Can Bay is lifting up again :-(. We plan on staying here for about a week. In that time we hope to do the Distillery tour, have a look around at some of the places Nick remembers from when he stayed here as a child, then stock up on food, fuel, gas etc etc etc. I also have a list of random things we need to get for the boat...just bits and pieces we keep finding we need, but don't have on board (like a nail brush, a wooden spoon, another bean bag and some Aeroguard to name a few....). We also have to pick up a few parcels that we had directed to Nick's parents' place...stinger suits and Emily's NSW Distance Education packs for weeks 3 - 6 of term three.

Our next stop after this is Lady Musgrave Island, and I am really looking forward to getting there. I am hoping it will be warm enough to break out the hookah system we got at the Sydney International Boat Show last year. That is going to be LOTS of fun, and hopefully there will be plenty of pretty underwater pics coming this way as a result.

I'll leave you with one more pic taken at North White Cliffs...(there are more, but I am still not in the mood to fight with this Mac...so I am trying to take it easy, and not fry its little brain)...

... BTW, yes, she did survive this flight. It's not as high up as it looks ;-).

Bye bye for now...
:-)

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.

Tin Can Bay Wash Day

Today is wash day on Lucey Blue. Five loads of washing, all carted from our berth to the Marina ammenities block (one of the very furthest berths from the ammenities block of course) and back, then strung up across the foredeck...

But you can't really complain when the weather is gorgeous, sunny and a balmy 22 degrees (sorry to my fellow Canberrans and Sydneysiders, don't mean to rub it in ;-)...and you know you have this to look forward to again this evening...

We are also preparing for a possible day-trip to Fraser Island tomorrow with some friends from Canberra. Topping up fuel tanks, repairing the hole in the dinghy, tidying away accumulated 'stuff' like charts, tools etc. I may even break out some cake-making goodies later and try a Peach Blossom cake (recipe courtesy of Emma's Grandma...thanks Emma and Grandma!!).

The more we see and experience of Tin Can Bay, the more we like it. Such a relaxed little community, and such friendly people. It has been a real pleasure to stay here.

Hope your Monday has been a good one too.

Tranquil Tin Can Bay...

After a successful crossing of the Wide Bay Bar, which I think put on its very best behaviour for us, we meandered down the Tin Can Bay Inlet and found a berth at the Tin Can Bay Marina. Sitting on the sugar scoops with Ryan this afternoon, this was our view...

Well...our view wasn't crooked like that...but it was very tranquil!

Goodnight!

Bonjour from Beautiful Brisbane

 

We interrupt this period of non-transmission to bring you a community service announcement...
LUCEY BLUE IS IN BRISBANE! The Brisbane River at Kangaroo Point to be precise….and has been for almost a week :-)

Nick, Ryan and Nick's parents left Sydney in LB on Friday 10th June. Nick will fill you in on that somewhat eventful journey at some point soon (maybe). In the meantime, Emily, Eric and I stayed with my mum in Sydney for a week, then flew up to brissy on the 18th. We got REALLY lucky and completely missed any airport ash cloud chaos…which was nice because one adult travelling with a 7 year old, a 4 month old, a large hiking backpack (choc full), a large duffle bag (also choc full), a stroller, a car seat and two small carry-on bags….was no mean feat. But, with the help of mum, some lovely QANTAS staff, the helpful Budget rental car staff, and a very kind gentleman in Brisbane who dragged all of my baggage off the carousel for me (I had Eric in my pouch and could barely bend over, let alone remove baggage from the carousel)…we made it in one piece, tired, but all accounted for!

I never got a chance to wrap up our Bantry Bay stay, as well as a couple of other bits and bobs from Sydney...so here goes. One of the Bantry Bay highlights for the kids was, of course, the ice cream boat! YES…you read it right…the ice cream boat! Kinda like a Mr Whippy on the water, but with no Greensleeves playing. He zips around selling ice cream and coffee, there are actually a couple of them operating over summer, but in winter, we only saw this one. What a great idea! What a cool job!!

When they weren't scoffing ice cream, the kids were entertaining themselves drawing pictures in the abundant window condensation…

Another item being scoffed that weekend was some boat-baked chocolate brownies...these lasted all of about 15 minutes in my estimation ;-)

...and one small boy was only too happy to help out mum by licking the bowl absolutely, positively, spotlessly clean (the 5 year old...not the 4 month old ;-).

...baked in our shiny new SMEV 7000 oven, which was purchased for its gorilla...every boat needs a gorilla apparently, how else would a certain old salt make his beloved cheese on toast??

It was a fun weekend, but some of us also managed a spot of much needed shut-eye...

...and the whole thing was topped off with a wonderful, fantastical, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious trip to see Mary Poppins at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney!

Please don't mind my scruffy looking kids! We aren't really kitted out for a high-flying night-life here...and had to just make do with what we had that was clean :-).

Our newest crew member has arrived...

His name is Eric and we think he is pretty cute!

Fresh out of the oven, weighing in at 4020 g and 53 cm long...


Just four days old...

Big yawn...

Two weeks old...

First trip to Sydney to visit Lucey Blue...

The lovely staff at d'Albora Marina, The Spit (where we rent our swing mooring) found us a marina berth for a few nights...which made Eric's introduction to Lucey Blue a much smoother process!

...they also provide comfy makeshift strollers...just in case ;-).

Easter Long Weekend 2010

We had a pretty relaxing Easter weekend (and hope you did too). We went up to Sydney to spend the four day holiday on Lucey Blue. Lucky for us we got a relatively pleasant drive up....the traffic leaving Sydney looked bad from our perspective (it looked even worse for them as we returned home last night):


Lucey Blue is currently still on a d'Albora Marina swing mooring in beautiful Quakers Hat Bay in Middle Harbour, Sydney. This bay is very quiet and pretty, and was a nice place to spend the weekend.

Part of the marina package is a fast tender service out to the boat (check out the size of the outboard....PHOARRRrrrrrr)...


I love this ride...and so do the kids (although you can see me holding Ryan's hand...I get worried he'll blow right over the back of the boat)...


We had some jobs that needed doing before we could go anywhere on Lucey Blue this weekend. One of the jobs involved the steering. I'll post about that later though, because that'll be a technical post and I'll need Nick to vet it before I publish. I'd be likely to say something along the lines that this big brass bracket with two big wheelie things on it, was....wearing out, and this other brass arm thing in the engine locker had a big crack in it and Nick has to replace them both (after much ummmming and aaaaaaahhhing, too-ing and fro-ing, pondering of the Harken and Edson catalogues, and outlaying of mucho $$$).

The other job for the weekend was tying in the mended trampolines. They have been mended (patched and re-sewn)...to ensure that we don't have one of the kids disappearing through a gaping hole at some point. I had wanted new ones, but it was decided that they could be mended...

Lucey Blue looked really odd without them on, and it was surprising to me how much their absence affected the deck room. I felt like we'd lost half the boat:


Nick kept telling me the trampolines were going to take a long time to put back in...about 3 hours later, and one trampoline down...I finally believed him ;-)


I'm glad he has good balance!

...finally, near the end of the day...the task has been finished. Nice work! (the funniest thing was, as he finished the job, and leaned back to survey his handiwork, he says 'we might still replace these, make them look a bit nicer'...LOL!).


So now the kids are safe, and enjoying their trampolines again...






I'll leave it at that for now. Here is a pretty pic out our cabin aft hatch, sunrise on Easter Sunday:


Ciao!
Sam.