Finally Away!
We picked up the boat on Thursday night. They slid the cradle down into the water on rails but it got stuck with the yacht sitting up about a metre too high. Then, the Marina people used their power boat with a 50HP outboard to ram the cradle on the other side to move it into deeper water. It would not budge so the ramming got more and more vigorous. Of course, it was on the other side of the boat so we could not see if they missed the cradle and hit the yacht.....Still, it slid into deeper water and no harm seemed to have been done.
We filled up with water and the second last lot of "stuff" and put Pastime of Sydney to sleep on her mooring for the night. Then, this morning, we loaded aboard the rest of the provisions and ourselves and set off for some test sailing (the first for months!) and putting things away. It was 1130 and finally we were on the boat, on the water and almost on our way!
There are gale warning out today but we hope to set off tomorrow (Saturday) for Coffs Harbour a couple of days sail up the Coast. This will shake out any cobwebs. There are already some pre-existing cobwebs because our wind instruments and anchor light are not working. Sigh! All stuff at the top of the mast and David has already spent a couple of hours up there with no luck. We will just have to do without wind instruments for the trip- this is a pain in a vessel driven by the wind but we have done it before. Everything else is working well, including a new, third reef, which we just recently added and only got to test today for the first time. David also finally has his own reading light- we have been promising it for about five years!
Well, it is early to bed for us tonight! More later.
All the best,
The Kerrs
