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.

More of Ugly Bob

 More Bob pictures. I'm heading back to Australia soon and Bob is far from finished. He'll have to wait in storage until I get back.

Chines epoxied

Back hatch, seat hatches

Epoxy and fiberglass cloth drying

Bow

Sail by Brian Shilland of Shilland Sails in Sydney, Australia

Motivation

Slivers, Scabs, and a Cranky Biker

I have been hesitant to write this one. I have been working on a project and I'm starting to see a sliver of a possibility that I might actually finish it. I am building a sailboat. It's a very small sailboat though still big enough to gridlock my dad's workshop.  I am using the plans designed by John Welsford of New Zealand. He designs and sells several different wooden boat models. This one is called Houdini. Alex of Oz ordered the plans from John of NZ, they were sent from the North American office in Texas and arrived in a very large cylinder in Alaska. The boat is 14 feet long and six feet wide and will have one mast and a single mainsail. I started calling it Bob early on. As he comes along Ugly Bob has started to stick. 

 

Model Bob from back at the beginning.

An individual interior frame.

Frames aligned before mounting on the jig.

The first of about five stringers to break. This one snapped and hit me in the ribs.

Temporary interior frames to hold it all in place.

Decking and paneling.

The whole bottom is on now and I'm waiting for the epoxy to arrive in the mail.

Maps

I like maps. It occurred to me that I haven't actually posted any. Briefly, these are the routes of my bike trips. The United States took a little under six months in 2012, and New Zealand was only five weeks in late 2014.

 

For the most part, the blue marks were places I found interesting or noteworthy. Even with the sparsity of markers between Sand Diego and Dallas, I did enjoy most of it. There just wasn't much out there.

  

The red marks are the places I would have liked to reach. I ran out of time and wasn't able to explore the bottom half of the South Island. That leaves something for next time.

Back in Alaska-small update

I made it home for Christmas in December. In mid January I was offered a job a City Hall and took it. It's nice to be back working. All the traveling drains the savings account pretty quick. I am already making plans to head out again. There is more of the ocean to be explored. Robert Service wrote a poem called "Wanderlust" and it comes to mind fairly often these days.

I am training for another marathon. The last one was pretty slow, so I am trying to scape off the extra hour that really shouldn't have been there. About eight weeks left. I ran 17 miles yesterday with a couple friends. My knees are showing their age plus a few years. I have a few more long runs and lots of shorter ones on my schedule over the next two months.

Nome Sunset January 2016

Spring hit Nome about a month early this year. The ice is rotten and is starting to break off. Almost all the snow is gone and dust covers everything. Warmer weather makes running quite a bit easier. I've dropped about five pounds of cold weather gear. Running in wind pants, several top layers, and a face mask is always challenging.

The Ozzy Novel

Alex and I ran the Melbourne marathon. It was my third and by far worst (that's what I get for hardly training) and Alex's 30-somethingith. Alex finished in about four and a half hours and I waddled in a bit after. The race ended in the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG.) I pretended I was a cricket player as I ran around the last few hundred meters of the race inside of the stadium. My usual knee pains didn't show up at at all, but a new hip injury decided to make itself known. The last 10 kilometers (6ish miles) was a combination of painful jogging, power-walking, slow limping, and sitting on the curb stretching body parts as the paramedics swooped in. They are good people ready to help anyone looking distressed. No assistance needed by me, but I'm sure I looked like I was dying. I had no problem with the heat or the sun. The race organizers handed out tiny bottles of high SPF sun block at the race exposition and one fit perfectly in the key pocket of my running shorts. Neck and ears protected.

After running the Melbourne Marathon 10 times a runner has the option to join the "Spartans." The Spartans wear various colored shirts indicating that they have run the race 10, 15, 20... times. There are currently nine runners who have completed all 38 marathons. They wear gold and are known as the Legends. Alex wears the blue of a 10-year runner. In another year or two he graduates to the green of a 15-year runner. I have nine races to go to wear the blue. In the meantime I have joined the Sydney Striders, a long distance running club. It was fun to cheer on and be cheered by people in matching singlets.

 

 After the race Alex and I drove back to Sydney via Eden, packed the boat, and waited for a weather window to head south. While waiting another year snuck up on me and Hilary (Alex's partner) made a German chocolate cake for me for my 28th birthday.

Once the weather was favorable, Alex and I sailed south on October 29th. It took two days and one night to sail the Might Miss Berri (www.berrimilla.com/wordpress) to Eden. It was an extremely mild 40 hours on board and we motored nearly the entire way. Wind picked up in the last 12 hours or so and made for a gentle sail into Eden at Twofold Bay. 

Wildlife: The only seals I have ever seen look like giant baked potatoes basking in the sun on the sea ice in Alaska. I don't know what type they were, but on the boat trip south a group of three or four seals followed behind and alongside the boat swimming like dolphins through the waves. It was incredible to see baked potatoes demonstrating their agility.

We moored in Eden for a few days and waited for another weather window to sprint south to Hobart in Tasmania. Good northerly winds are not regular in south-east Australia so we worked with what we could get. We left on a gray morning and motored directly into the wind and rolling swells for three hours before we decided to turn back and wait for more comfortable seas. The next afternoon we tried again. We motored directly into the wind for about four hours with very little ocean swell, so the ride was much smoother. Off of Green cape the wind change that we expected finally arrived and we were able to put up the sails and turn off the engine. Green cape mildly protrudes as a rocky point, visible and easily avoidable -when traveling from the north. When approaching from the coast line from the south, Green cape is a deep lip to a bowl known as Disaster Bay. Early square-rigger ships could only sail 90 degrees off the wind, while modern sailboats can sail at 45 degrees. So for a old ship to be following the coastline with the wind at at least a right angle, there are very few option for evasive action in when a massive coastline and an hooked point block any escape. There is a memorial grave yard with the names of ships and sailors in the National Park boarding the bay.

We sailed for a few more hours, all the while the seas building, the wind and waves coming at us straight from the east at 25+ knots, and me with a aching head from being pitched head-first into the window above the galley. No bruising, but very tender. Alex stayed on concussion watch for a few days after. With everything going wrong and the seas and winds getting stronger, we turned back again. It was a full 14 hour round trip and neither of us got any sleep. It was late and pouring rain when we got back to Eden. After that we gave up on the idea of Hobart. Another day or two of waiting and we caught the next southerly back to Sydney.

The trip north took two full days and nights. We did our best to avoid the southern-flowing East Australia Current, sailed on much rougher seas than the trip south, and stayed close to the coastline for favorable tides. Hugging the coast took more navigating. My first night watch on the way back involved passing between the coast and an island in the pitch black of a cloudy night. It was eerie. The electronic chart gave our currently location, but all I could see of any sign of land was the lighthouse of the island and a few house lights along the coast. I am discovering that it is nearly impossible to determine distance of a light in the dark. Light houses miles away look like half a mile. In daylight the three or four mile gap between the coast and island would have been of no concern. Not being able to see either forces trust on an electronic that has not been 100% reliable. The chart program runs on laptop in the cabin and the computer has been known to crash or take a nap on occasion. Not so good.

By the next day the sea swell was building and the wind was picking up. By mid day we had 20+ knots and swells that seemed impossibly big for so close to shore. Over the next 24 hours we changed sail size several times, went back and forth on the different auto pilots, and did some hand-steering. Alex estimated the biggest swells were between six and eight meters. Most were in the three to four meter range. The boat would drop to the trough of a wave and all I could see of the world around was a wave in front and wave behind. When we rose back to the top I could see breaking waves for miles around on all sides. Some of the breaking waves were a little scary. Berrimilla is a good boat and has been through some incredible weather. I know she can handle the waves, but the newbie Alaskan is always a little on edge. 25+ knot winds for the rest of the trip to Sydney. Off of Point Perpendicular the waves were steeper and choppier than most places, but that was short-lived. We passed by the South Head lighthouse around 7am on November 8th and we tied up to the dock just a few minutes before 8am.

The ground was rocking for the rest of the day. Another good night's sleep and we are back to cleaning out the boat and figuring out what to do and where to go next.

Moose and Fire and Bears. Oh, my.

Back in Alaska! Via airplane and not the expected route. I left Australia about 10 days before my visa ran out. With all paperwork in order, I have been approved to reenter in October! Another adventure is cuing in the wings. The ocean isn't going anywhere. We just need to work around her moods.

This morning a thought crossed my mind. "I wonder how many people carry bear spray to get to their own front door." Lately I have been sharing the path to my cabin on the hill with several sets of moose. There is one adult cow with a very small calf, a full-antlered bull, and a young cow. At this time of year the mother with the calf is most dangerous, although I really would not want to surprise or be surprised by any of them. My neighbor two doors down warned me that the black bears are out and roaming the hillside as well. Bears. They are the reason most people in the area are devoid of compost piles. I have yet to have a bear sighting on my hillside. I hope the presence of moose mean that their predators are not in the area.

I left my hillside cabin last September and had no idea I would be gone until June. The paths were almost completely over-grown and the elderberry bushes grew to above the roof line. I spend the better part of the day digging my cabin out of the foliage. When I left I had no electricity, water, or much of a kitchen. I still don't have electricity or water, but the kitchen is coming together. It is relatively easy to get by without electricity when it is light 24 hours a day and I haul in water a few liters at a time and add it to a big water jug as I need it. I like food, so the kitchenette has been patched together pretty quickly. Up until about a week ago I had been using a one-burner Coleman stove for cooking. I was cooking (outside) when one of the gaskets failed and spewed gas. It immediately caught fire and the whole thing, including cooking pot and my dinner went up in flames. Because the stove had been acting funny for the past few days I kept the extinguisher close by whenever the stove was on. Now I have white powder all over my deck, woodpile, stairs, yard, and front door. The extinguisher was one of the first things I bought when I got back from Oz. Within a few days of buying it I went back to buy a second. Best $25 I've ever spent.