Jetsetting

I just could not let March slip by without updating you all. The delay has been a combination of busyness, procrastination and the fact that for the last three weeks, I’ve only had the use of one hand which makes typing a bit difficult. 

 More details on that here.  

Brisbane by boat at night!

Hanging by the pool with my madre!

February started with me playing ‘mum’ for 3 weeks for our niece and nephew while their mum was away in Thailand. The day after Mint got home, my mum arrived with my grandma and Aunt. My Nannie turned 80 in January and this was the final big family celebration for her since my Mum and Aunt were unable to get to Australia from the US and UK respectively for her actual birthday. They had been celebrating up in Ayr for the week prior to coming down to Brisbane and had many little celebrations with Nannie’s sister, cousins and other family and friends. We had a big brunch picnic party with lots more family in Brisbane when they got down here. Aside from the party, we had a lovely week shopping, relaxing, eating, drinking and just enjoying being together. It was so much fun to play tourist/tour guide in the city that I have called home for the past five years! My darling sister was greatly missed for all of this fun girly time! (It’s her birthday today! Happy birthday Jodes!) 

The end of a day's shopping!

I am so lucky to have the best family that I love spending time with. 

Can’t. 

Get. 

Enough! 

Ever! 

We spent a couple of days in the sunshine coast hinterland before my Mum and I went down to Adelaide for the weekend to hang out with my dad’s side of the family. We had a lovely weekend in Adelaide: quality downtime with my grandparents, walks around their beautiful neighbourhood, wonderful gatherings of cousins and of course, delicious food and wine. We are so spoiled.

South Australia is so unconventionally gorgeous!

Mum left Adelaide to head back home….tear! and I headed back up to Brisbane where I rendezvoused with my Nannie again. The next morning we took off for Townsville for a couple of days. More family and relaxation! We then headed down to Ayr for a couple of days where we had more amazing times. My Nannie is amazingly independent and uses her ipad like a pro but things like running updates and troubleshooting are a bit beyond her scope. I happily spent many hours updating the various technology that my Nannie and great-aunt have.

>>If anyone has spare time and is looking for a volunteer project – helping older people, who haven’t had the advantage of growing up with technology, learn to use their gadgets and how to maintain them would be a great project.<<

Baron Falls - Before the wet!

From Ayr I hopped on a bus to Cairns for a few days with my friends Mia and Jase. It was so refreshing to get to have some girl time with a friend full of daytrips, night markets, an overnight in Port Douglas and much, much more.

Overlooking Townsville and Magnetic Island from Castle Hill

All this excitement served as a great distraction to save me from sitting at home and pining for Bryce.   

I had so much fun but I was quite ready to head up to PNG.

View leaving town!

Crossing things off the list

While we have the time we are trying desperately to cross some of the big things off of the never ending to-do list. Bryce's brother is a cabinetmaker by trade and we have enlisted him to do some work on the boat for us. Some of the jobs we are trying to get done are:

- Expand our bed. Our bed is currently an awkward double/single and is not long enough for us. In order to fit, Bryce needs to sleep diagonally which leaves me with not much space. Sleep is really important to us so we are going to get some more space and new mattresses. It's going to be amazing.

- Install some more cupboards and add shelves to our large hanging locker. We have three hanging lockers and really don't need them all. The plan is to keep the two smaller ones and reinvent the space in the larger one. 

- Reinforce our table. It's a bit wobbly and as it is now we fear what would happen if someone fell into it. 

- Install some sort of apparatus to keep our floorboards and storage spaces closed in the unlikely event we overturn.

-Reorganize the entire boat. This is actually my job! Since we discovered the location of our autopilot compass under the mast, we need to move all of our tools and metal spares away from there.  Given that we also have the mounted compass in the cockpit to avoid, that really limits our options. 

The organising is my favourite part. I love it! It takes awhile and in the process the boat becomes a disaster as the  contents of one cupboard are cleared out to make way for the contents of another. It took me awhile but I've just realised that the constraints of living on land don't apply on water. The cupboards in the galley are pretty awkward and I've never been happy with storing things in them. Two of them have the slant of hull, one of them has the hoses from the sinks cutting through it and another is so amazingly large but it has the smallest opening so in order to get to something in the back, everything else has to come out. Today I discovered that I don't have to keep the conventional kitchen things in the galley! The awkward hard to reach spaces have now become the super efficiently organised home for all of our small to medium-sized spares. There are LOTS of them on a boat.