Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in!!



(SouthPort - Manly Marina)

After leaving Southport our next home was round the back of Stradbroke island. A great spot, albeit a blowy one.
Our onshore neighbours for the week were a troop of youngsters - small wooden sail boats, and neatly rowed tents. We never found out, but best guess would be: a school trip, a Christian group, or most likely Sea Scouts. Anyway, despite the less than ideal conditions, they seemed to make the most of it and enjoy themselves on shore. Same couldn’t really be said for us: boatbound, wind howling in the rigging and waves ‘ass slapping’ the transom. After 8 long torturous days, we were able to get away - an exit necessitated by a dead starter battery that needs replacing.
This entailed: anchoring some way away from the mangrove entrance to Redlands City Marina (yes… the one I said I wouldn’t choose to go back to), a tender drive in, a hot walk into town, a visit to Supercheap Auto, and then an Uber back to the tender with what must surely be the heaviest battery ever invented.
Anyway, despite the short saga to get the battery, it was fitted and working without issue - a delightfully unexpected, outcome.
From that short detour, we headed over to Peel Island, a picturesque long strip of sand, which Chez kayaked to. There we strolled and enjoyed the beach - managed to fill a shopping bags worth of rubbish. The bay filled up and gave us a blowy night (sleepless for Chez), and a reset of the anchor the next morning after a slow but definite drag.
I’m writing this back at the scout camp (Blaksleys beach) - but some weeks later.
From Peel Island we headed to the quiet anchorage at Myora for more blowy weather and a shoreline filled with shallows and mangroves. From there, round the corner to Dunwich to fill up the water and get some fish and chips. It’s been a somewhat tiresome start to the season - the cyclones not getting the message that their season is over.
Swathes of details are missing.
Storms galore, howling wind, and a slow creeping realisation from both of us that we’ve had enough.
This all culminated one wet afternoon, in a tight buoyed channel, a tight turn, heavy rain, low visibility, high wind and a ferry turning up at exactly the wrong time - the perfect storm so to speak.
Chez weeping, heaving, stomach cramping and close to hysterical was the full stop on this 8 year adventure neither of us wanted.
But hey: you don’t always get happy endings in stories do you.
I’m writing this a couple of months later - laying on the bunk in the main cabin. Chez next to me. We’re waiting - as we’ve done so many times over the last 8 years - waiting this time for a gentleman called Ivan to ring me from his bank and tell me the funds have gone through for the purchase of our boat!
Both a bit teary today - it’s definitely been a wild ride!
A dolphin with a damaged dorsal fin has punctuated these last few weeks - turning up at relevant moments to say hi: as we hauled out for the survey, and as we waited for Ivan … it’s all been very strange with the amount of coincidences…
He paid the initial deposit, then our French mate Jerome on Nemo (Who we'd met in the Caribbean and across the Pacific) turned up with a Jeanneau SO from 2006 ( That's a decade newer than our boat and has an asking price $20K less than Serenity Now's new owner is just about to pay… shiiit!!
Thankfully they never met - and both we and the new owner seem very happy with the deal that was struck.
Then Julie Perry threw us a real curveball… offering us a supporting/crewing passage from Preveza to Gibraltar…

OMG!

”Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in!!”
(Micheal Corleone).

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