A Ton of Boat Work & A Crew Member Trade In

Where the hell have the last couple of months gone??? It has been a hot minute since my last post (mainly due to lack of internet reception) and honestly so much but also so little has happened. We finally made it to Townsville and it felt like we were stuck there for a good 3 years.

Time flies when you’re having….. fun is the word here isn’t it?

Unfortunately this wasn’t entirely the case. Sooo I guess let’s start from the beginning…..

After my birthday we stopped by Gloucester Island. Even though we had a traumatic loss of an expensive fishing rod, the bay was surprisingly delightful.

Basically then it was smooth cruising all the way to Magnetic Island with a quick stop at Cape Upstart.

Wing-on-wing in gentle winds… Just dreamy.

We hooked a big Black King as we passed Maggie and before we knew it we were navigating the scarily shallow waters into the Townsville marina. We made it! Never did I ever imagine I would be sailing back into my hometown on my own boat.

And just like that, it was straight to work. We had the engine bracket to get fixed which then presented the opportunity for many, many, many (oh did I mention MANY?) more projects to be started.

It was pretty rubbish.

The work never seemed to end.

Days turned into weeks.

Fast forward nearly 2 months and just like that, the engine had a makeover with a shiny paint job, some expensive new hoses, new exhaust manifold and of course the good as new engine bracket to hold the damn thing up.

Nothing like a few weeks of boat work in beautiful weather to leave your souls and wallets empty.

But enough complaining! We obviously spent a lot of time with my family which was the best part about it all and we even squeezed in a little trip up to the rainforest.

Our final order of business in the marina was to deal with the unruly crew member. Poor Poly has put in a stella effort and on a lot of accounts has been a beast of a tender. Unfortunately the beast part is the problem. He is just so darn heavy that winching him on and off deck was becoming death defying. I don’t know how we got so lucky but the tender we always wanted came up on Gumtree in Cairns. Obviously it was a fair drive… BUT it was a great deal so no regrets!

So without further ado let me introduce Manuel our new PortaBote.

Super light, folds up like a surf board plus he rows like a dream! Another one bites the dust in the tender department but Mani really seems to fit the bill.

Hang on… Is that a tender or a surfboard??

I know what you’re thinking, we definitely have some issues when it comes to dinghies but third time’s a charm right?

So after what seemed like an eternity we were finally leaving the marina! It was time to explore Magnetic Island and wait for a good weather window to start heading south. Tell you what, any resemblance of sea legs we had developed were well and truely lost after our time on land.

So stumbling around like a couple of drunk toddlers we sailed over to Maggie.

Let the waiting game begin!

We hiked to pretty beaches, enjoyed the ease of island life, sat through some pretty uncomfortable winds and waited (not so patiently) for the south east trade winds to give us a break.

Magnetic Island really is beautiful and I could think of much worse places to be stuck. Balding and Radical Bays were definitely our faves!

It was nice to explore the island but I think we may have short attention spans. We had used up all our waiting quota at the marina. It wasn’t long before we crossed off everything we wanted to see on the island and were now itching to get a move on! Fingers and toes crossed for a break in the weather otherwise we might just lose our minds.

Until next time.