Hafskip

As life's pleasures go, food is second only to sex. Except for salami and fresh bread after a long day’s sailing. Now that's better than sex, but only if the salami is thickly sliced.

The trick therefore is to ensure one has sufficient preserved meat for a few months at sea!

So what do you do?...you buy a 3 kilo slab of the stuff and then try and work out where you can hang it without getting concussed when it swings through the cabin on a 30 degree heel. Unfortunately concussion is inevi...

 You know I wasn't aware of it until I attempted it but it appears I have a little salt water in my veins. Apparently our earliest known ancestor from Australia was a crew member on a passenger/cargo ship based in Sydney (he died in a rescue attempt at sea leaving behind a wife and 3 kids – the state offered one crown in compensation), and we also had a great, great grandfather who was a steam boat captain trading on the Murray......apparently even my father was a water baby....he designed ...

Thought it was time to take stock of all that has been achieved and that which remains to be done!

You may remember our exceptionally long list of things to do, check and buy…well somehow (almost magically) the list increased…. You see when you start with the ‘lets antifoul the boat’ point on the list there lies beneath it a range of sub categories and points that need to be attended to at the same time. Similarly the ‘let’s install additional solar panels and radar equipment’ ...

The weather’s been brackish the last few days….. not sure whether that’s a weather term but it’s appropriate for my current mood. The wind has been constant, grey skies and damp rather than wet….It’s not the kind of weather that inspires focussed and productive activity aimed at gearing us up for our journey… so I’ve been dabbling instead.

I’ve attempted a few things that need to be done…like removing the mouldy smell from the aft cupboard (yes we already have mould) and ...

Ever get one of those feelings that sits in your gut a little heavy….signalling something’s not quite right…. but you dismiss it…. Instead you assume it’s last night’s dinner, exhaustion, complacency or perhaps just your own inexperience causing you to doubt your intuition? But you realise at the end of it all, with inevitable muttering of “I knew it” that your intuition is not to be messed with in any way! Lesson learned I tell you.

Having been joined for the weekend by one ...

Over the last 4 months I’ve gone from well-paid and talented HR professional (even if I do say so myself) living in my own home with 2 horses, 2 dogs and fully maintained company car with a circle of close friends who shared my hobbies, to a completely ignorant, nautical dwelling, grotty yachty (common term for boat people not arriving illegally to Australian shores).

Instead of crawling out of bed, spending half an hour in the bathroom, straightening my hair and applying my face, then do...

We have wiring!! And it’s connected!! Our brand new and rather spectacular Lowrance broadband radar is up and running!!!

Sonar is connected as well and our new charts are locked and loaded. It’s a damn incredible piece of technology… the radar can be superimposed on charts, so not only can you see what’s out there, you can see where it is on a chart.

The display lets you split the screen and watch the sonar at the same time… so you get a very cool submarine ‘ping’ thing going ...

Well we’re free…. As much of the critical work that needed to be done while Hafskip was on hard stand has been done! 7 straight days of hard labour! Lost a lot of sweat and scratched a lot of mosquito and midge bites in the process but it does feel good to have had the chance to get underneath our boat and know her a little more intimately.

We had more that we would have liked to have finished but given how tricky it can be to sand, grind, drill, solder, thread wiring, mount stainless st...