Addendum to Critters

1) A friend in the house. She's a huntsman and keeps the bugs away.

2) This WAS my bed.

Bob's Brother and Strange Critters

Way back in February, I went to the Hobart Wooden Boat Festival. There were square-rigged ships, dinghy kits, and lots of home-made boats on display. I had heard that a certain boat and its builder were going to be at the festival so mostly I made the journey to find them. Peter Deck lives a bit north of Hobart and brought in his own home-build, 14-foot, lug-rigged Houdini! It was a complete example of Ugly Bob! Alex met Peter last year after looking for Australian builders of the John Welsford boad designs. They met and Alex connected Peter and me. At the festival, the small boats were scattered throughout a large parking lot. I recognized the Houdini from half a block away and went right over to Peter. We talked boaty stuff for a while and he let me climb into Dexterity and look in hatches, under floorboards, and wiggle everything that moved. There were one or two details of the design that neither of us understood and we were relieved that we had come to the same conclusion and made similar modifications. Peter has taken the time to make a beautiful Houdini, where Ugly Bob is more of a rough cutout. Bob will sail just fine and will likely have to put up with rougher waters and greener sailors. The only modification I made that no one else seems to have done (Peter or builders from online forums) is widening the forward hatch. I found that by making the hatch two inches (5cm) wider, I could fit my shoulders through and work on the inside. One of the few advantages to being a (relatively) small builder is having one or two more sizing options on boat hatches, window cutouts, and water tanks. (John, owner of the BAB/Excentrique was very excited that I fit head-first into the water tank to make repairs rather than needing cut a larger hole in the lid.) I left Ugly Bob unfinished in Alaska and I am constantly annoyed by the thought of an unfinished project. Now that I have met Dexterity, Bob has some craftsmanship to look forward to.

Peter, me, and Dexterity

On a completely unrelated note: I met my first echidna. (ek-id-na) It's like a giant hedgehog.

Welcome!

Hi Mike and Wilma!

Tasmania and the BAB

I have been in Tasmania since mid February, helping a friend with his boat. Excentrique is a 51-foot Beneteau sailboat who broke her mooring during high winds two years ago and sailed herself from Kettering to Bruny Island where she decided to take a rest on the rocks. Though she was immediately missed, she was left to her vacation for a week. By the time her transport home was organized, she had over indulged in her new-found freedom and in her island tanning rotation, she wore holes into both sides of her hull and needed a lift home.

Excentrique sat on a hard stand for a year before the previous owner and insurance company came to a resolution; after which she was auctioned off and bought in part by my friend John. John has been been working on the restoration for over a year and asked if I'd be in the area and able to help speed up the progress. I immediately began calling her BAB (Big-Ass Boat.) After two months of full-time toil, BAB is close to going back in the water.

Aft interior. Floor removed, dust from fiberglass sanding.

I've been fiberglassing, painting, cleaning, epoxy/resin/gluing, bolting, rigging, and plumbing. All but the electrical work. Wires and buzzy electrical things is the big black hole in my building/restoration knowledge.

New engine and bench installed.

Holes patched and new paint.

Throughout the weeks I have had opportunities to wander Tasmania. My favorite trip was a run to Cape Pillar. Alex came down from Sydney to help on the boat for a couple weeks and we decided to condense a two-day hike into a one-day run. From the campsite at Fortescue Bay to Cape Pillar and back is 30 kilometers/18 miles. We made it out in 2.5 hours and back in just over three hours. Off the end of the cape is the famous Tasman island. Alex has sailed past and between the cape and island many times. This is the first time either of us has seen it from land. My goal now is to see it from the water.

Tasman island with Cape Pillar on the left.

Tasman island from Cape Pillar.

I am heading back to the mainland at the end of April and hope to do more sailing in the coming months.

Urban Exploration

Sunday in Sydney is $2.50 public transportation day. This includes bus, train, and ferry. So each Sunday I wander out into the world and ride to far and distant corners of the city that are generally an expensive transit. This past Sunday I decided to go waterfall hunting. I took a bus, ferry, then walked a few kilometers to get to Spring Cove, a small beach near Manly.

Collins Falls were dry; still a very good beach find. I'll bring my swimming gear next time.

Some of the local architecture along the ferry ride back.

Boats and Blue-Tongues

Over the past several weeks I have been sailing on the harbo(u)r and working with Alex to get Berrimilla III seaworthy. She's currently set up for short day trips in fair weather. Our goal is to attach the wind vane (wind-guided auto pilot) as soon as possible and make the inside more comfortable for longer voyages. Alex and I stayed on BIII overnight on New Years to watch the fireworks over Sydney Harbor and found several vacancies in cabin comfort. Alex's partner, Hilary, made lee cloths for the bunks, which we tested for the first time. The bunks are usually filled with tool boxes, cooking equipment, and random extra boat parts when they're not being used by people. On a gusty sail a couple weeks back, one of the tool boxes fell to the floor, popped open, and spilt washers and nuts into the depths of the bilge. Thus, lee cloths became a priority.

We bunk the same as in Berrimilla II, Alex lives to port (left side) and I take up residence to starboard. Storage and cooking areas are still being sorted. Alex removed the toilet long ago and now has a portable self-contained toilet. The compartment previously housing the loo is being converted into shelves for storage by yours truly. The cooking area is my next project. (Or Alex's depending who gets there first.) At the moment, there is a functional stove and a teapot. The difficulty we found was the absence of a food preparation surface and utensil storage. I have been using the engine box for food preparation and all the utensils, cups, and bowls are tossed in a jumble under the sink. It's an on-going project.

Yesterday Unchi the cat brought home a present. He captured and brought home a live blue-tongue lizard. A full-grown lizard lives in the back yard and is about half the size of the cat. Yesterday's prize was a live baby which the cat released into a pile of boat equipment in the middle of the living room. It was about six inches long. Alex chased off the cat while I caught the lizard and released it outside. It seemed unharmed, but was scared and gnawed on my finger. The only defense of a blue-tongue lizard is just that; his blue tongue. By displaying it, he pretends he is poisonous and cannot be eaten. Sadly, the cat does not speak Australian fauna, so harmless lizards are occasionally brought home.

Blue-Tongue Lizard after release

Adult Blue-Tongue who lives by the pool. It's a little over a foot long.

First Month Back in Oz

I flew into Melbourne on October 14th then ran the Melbourne marathon with Alex on the 16th. We both finished, Alex's time much better than mine. I scored my personal worst at 5:29:somethingratherseconds. All was going well until about kilometer 30 (out of 42.2), then my old hip ache decided to show up. Back in Sydney a doctor said it is my IT (iliotibial) band: overstressed and tense. So ice, anti-inflamatories, and rest for a bit. I'm compromising by working on a faster 5k for a while.

After the race Alex and I went on a road trip! We drove north from Melbourne to the Oodnadatta Track and Lake Eyre, then west to Coober Pedy, south to Port Augusta, then east back to Sydney. The trip was about nine days and we covered over 2000 miles.

Starting in Melbourne and ending back in Sydney via Lake Eyre

During my bicycle trip across the US I covered just over 4000 miles. I took the long way across by covering three sides of the country instead of straight across. A road trip like this brings the size of Australia into perspective. The map looks like a little trip around the corner, but there were several days of driving through desert with just a few wild animals and no standing water anywhere. The landscape varied and changed quickly. Fruit fields turned into low desert shrubs as soon as we left the Murray river irrigation area. Two days later we were on a washboard dirt road passing between big orange sand dunes.

We traveled for several days on dirt roads and camped with the flies at night. Australia is famous for their flies and we found them en masse on the banks of Lake Eyre.

Alex and his fly friends

Lake Eyre rarely has water. When it does fill animals from all around arrive, breed, and leave. Then the lake dries back into a salt bed and awaits the next rain. It is usually three or four years between rainfalls significant enough to fill the lake and call in the critters. It was dry at the time Alex and I visited. We walked out on the salt bed and explored the crystallized rocks and bugs.

Alex on Lake Eyre

Beetle on the lake

The Alaskan avoiding sunburn

The drive back to Sydney was uneventful. We crossed back through the low desert shrubs, fruit fields, over the Blue Mountains, then into the suburbs of the big city.

Over the past few weeks I have been exploring Sydney all over again. I have also been doing boat work with with Alex and since I'm on a work visa I have been job searching. That is a blog in its own. It's a whole new experience being on the other side of the statement, "...foreigners taking away our jobs..." The "backpackers," as we are known are young, highly educated, and an entirely exploitable foreign workforce. For example: fruit-picking. Minimum wage is around $17/hour. That wouldn't be so bad except most farms offer mandatory room and board, which they deduct from wages, plus a required deposit for said room and board before work even begins. So in the end, a fruit-picker working a 40-hour week, with the (pending parliament approval) 32% backpackers income tax, ~$200 for room and board leaves us workers with about $260/week. That's about $6.50/hour and it's perfectly legal. This is in Australian dollars, so it comes to just under $4.90 in US dollars. Sadly, the United States is guilty of very much the same.

Alex sold his sailboat Berrimilla II a while back and last week we helped the new owner move her onto a new mooring up the Paramatta river. A friend of Alex's in the Ukraine was following the trip up river on one of the Sydney web cams and sent us pictures of BII and Alex's new/old sailboat BIII as we convoyed up river.

Berrimilla2 and Berrimilla3 heading up river

The weather is beautiful and Alex's cat is still cranky.