Pegasos

So excited!  Today we move onto our boat. And it's not the one I posted on Facebook.
It's Pegasos, a Sea-Runner Trimaran.




It all happened quite quickly. We had the huge disappointment of nearly buying a very nice but unusable leaking boat.

Then a desperate scramble to roll back the payment, which had already been converted into Aussie dollars and was well on its way to the seller. Luckily we had not used a bank for managing the foreign exchange transactions but instead used an agency Currency Partners (http://currencypartners.co.za). And they were brilliant. For anyone wanting to move money out of South Africa, I can't recommend them highly enough.

We went back into boat hunting mode, and new on the market was one of my all time favorite designs, a Jim Brown designed center cockpit SeaRunner Trimaran, the 37 foot version. And beyond what I can afford, but anyway ....

So we moved fast and now it's ours. And in a few hours it will be our home. 

More pics will follow in the next blog ...

A huge disapointment

We didn't buy Indian Summer after all. It turns out that it has a serious problem, a rotten leaky hull!

There was quite a thick growth of barnacles and algae on the hull and so we had the boat hauled out of the water  to scrape and paint the bottom and for a closer inspection of the undersides, a procedure we thought would be a simple routine.


Maneuvering into position to be lifted out of the water.

Up she goes ...

With the owners ..

 

Pressure wash to remove the loose muck.  

At first it all looked good. 

 

After a few hours of  hard labour scraping barnacles and old paint by hand, we noticed a drip building up along a small hairline crack below the engine bilge.  One of the boatyard workers came over and said "Oh!  that's much more serious than it looks" and took out his car keys, scraped a bit and out popped a bit of metal followed by bucket-loads of water. 

 Yikes!  Indian Summer had been slowly sinking!

After a few minutes of watching this stream of water in dumbstruck horror, it got even worse. The water was followed by oil, thick black dirty smelly engine oil!  Now we had an environmental disaster as the slick slowly oozed towards the Brisbane bay. Oops!  Panic!  Dashed off to find the boatyard manager and he quickly energised his oil spill disaster kit. We managed to contain it.

Aluminium can be the best material for boats and it can be the worst. It's strong and doesn't rust like steel and doesn't absorb water like fiberglass and it doesn't rot like wood and it can last forever.


However there's a recipe for turning Aluminium to powder.  First you'll need a few bits of copper or lead. A few coins and a couple of lost fishing sinkers and bits of wire will do. Scatter these loosely on top of the Aluminium. Cover everything with a low oxygen electrolyte. Bilge-water capped with a layer of oil works really well.  Then apply a trace electric current, a few poorly insulated wires touching anywhere on the Aluminium does the trick. Sit back and watch the destructive magic of electrolysis.

Unfortunately Indian Summer had experienced that combination of  neglect.


The repairs will be very difficult and very expensive. And not for me.  

Indian Summer

Woo Hoo!!  We have a boat .... 

Indian Summer  is a Ben Lexcen designed 38 foot  Aluminum hull  retractable-keel sloop.

And in a weeks time she'll be ours.  These pics are from the advert 

Exploring Brisbane

We've been in Brisbane for just over a week now and we still don't have our own boat. Riding the city ferry is the only boating we're doing.The CBD is built on a river, 13 km up from the coast.

The City center's been decorated for Buddha's birthday.
 

I don't really get the connection between Buddha and Brisbane. But anyway, being a bit confused is all part of being a tourist. Soon after this we went into local pub to get something a little more Australian. Had a rather nice local Queensland lager. Marcelle's came with a fly in it. Can't get more Australian than that!


Brisbane is a very livable place: clean, safe, efficient and sunny. There's an artificial beach complete with sand and bikinis in the middle of the city.

So far we only seen two yachts that have taken our fancy.

Number two on our list is this green Roberts 36.

And number one on our list is "Indian Summer",  a 38 foot Aluminum yacht.  And so we've made an offer!

And so, while anxiously waiting to hear if our offer has been accepted  we took a walk in a local park.

It's a very pretty forest, although I will never get  used to seeing gum trees and  Rooikranz-like shrubs being treated as special indigenous vegetation.

The vegetation is all very luxuriant here. It's warm and wet year round and everything grows really well. This is bamboo!

To Brisbane

After just a few days in Sydney we took a flight to Brisbane on Tigerair, the local super discount airline.

We're now at about the same latitude as Northern Natal. The Great Barrier Reef starts about 200 km further North.


Brisbane is home to some two-and-a-half-million people and a heck of a lot of yachts. This is where we plan to buy our boat.

This one turned out to be a lemon ....  Looked great online

This one was rather nice inside. But for various reasons it would not be practical. There's no place to sleep for starters.

After a few days of viewing boats up and down the coast we took a day off  yacht-shopping to visit a Zoo of local animals.


Kookaburra ....

Weird giant lizard ...

Lots of cute Koalas ....

 And of course a 'roo 

 

Sydney

Sunday 2 April

Really excited to be in AUSTRALIA!

Was a long, loooong flight.  Eleven and a half flippen hours. Eight time zones crossed. But it's over now.  Screeching tot in row 55 forgiven. Quantas scrambled eggs forgotten - well almost forgotten.

Arrival was a breeze. Barely paused for customs and passport control. SIM card and funny looking money acquired in just a few minutes.

And it wasn't much longer before we got settled into our AirBnb room. Our host (and taxi driver) Michael is a friendly Filipino-Australian. Sydney is a  very cosmopolitan city and full of immigrants. This house is full of catholic icons, cats and cosmetics, the latter probably another of Michael's sideline businesses. It's all a bit challenging for Marcelle's super sensitive nose.

Too late for touristy excursions today so we took a stroll around the local supermarket looking at funny brands while comparing prices to home. About the only thing not  cheaper in pick'n'pay , and most things are vastly cheaper back home, is leg of lamb ready to be roasted.  So another must-have item on the list of boat selection criteria is an oven or an outdoor weber style barbie.
   
Monday

Was wet and cold today, but not enough so to dampen our spirits, so after brekkies we took a ride on Sydney's marvelous Metro train to the city center to check out the tourist highlights:

Tuesday


Another day of playing tourist in the rain. Opera house close up ....

First boating experience in Australia - a local ferry ride