Geraldton
Tuesday April 20 - Friday 23 45nm, 8hrs
Up at the crack of dawn as usual, and ready for a boisterous sail back to Geraldton, which is exactly what we got…for eight hours! Sue and Florrie had asked for the heads up when we were leaving so they could jump onto our coveted mooring, so Colin radioed them at 0600hrs and they slipped in as we motored out.
I don’t mind rock and roll, but I prefer it in pubs and clubs than on the water. I think it’s fair to say three of us were pretty happy to arrive in Geraldton (Colin’s always had his own gauge of what ‘fair weather sailing’ is), but four of us was not enough to manage a smooth mooring in the Yacht Club pen. As Colin says, it’s a pretty poor reflection on the Department of Transport that they would build a sea wall that let’s swell wash in and out freely.
Once tied up, Fi and Lloyd went to get their car from the airport, and we later met at Skeetas for dinner. Here we were seated in front of a wide screen TV, where we finally got to see Wiebbe Hayes’ fort on an Abrolhos promo movie. Tick that one off the list.
Wednesday Colin uses Fi and Lloyd’s car to pick up a few essentials (new gas bottle, fishing supplies, battery charger cable) while they walk the waterfront. After bidding them farewell around 1030hrs, when they headed back to Perth, Colin and I wandered into town to do our washing. At $5 a load, prices have certainly escalated since the last time we were in a laundromat!
We decided to indulge ourselves and dined at Skeetas again.
Thursday, whilst waiting for new boat batteries to arrive from Perth, we head into town for more supplies – lightweight long-sleeved fishing shirts, bike pump and tube repair kit for the dinghy tyres, self-sealing tape to fix the water pump, shock cord to make a ‘mangle’ to keep the first mate happy (Colin the inventor). Around 1300hrs a burly man arrived with two 70kg batteries. I was extremely happy that he was doing the installation, not us. I hate to sweat, and it was a warm day. Colin assisted by winching the batteries down the companionway. The poor bloke normally carries them down! New batteries should mean longer holding power, and eliminate the risk of sudden and complete death at an inopportune moment, such as in the Kimberley during a glass off.
As we left the Yacht Club to reprovision, we were simultaneously amused and annoyed to see white cockatoos squawking in the rigging. Colin tried shooing them away by flapping a halyard so it undulated up and down the mast. This worked on the cockies on the side stays, but not the cheeky one swinging casually on the radio antenna. A man on the jetty said call the council as they can do thousands of dollars of damage to wind instruments. We don’t have wind instruments, but they did swing off some others’ anemometers (rotating instruments that measure wind speed). I was commenting how the birds were not easily scared off, and the man’s son piped up and said they were used to being shot at! We were glad we hadn’t called the council if that’s their solution. It did provide an answer to what the loud bangs were we’d been hearing the last two days. Nothing to do with Anzac Day as we’d surmised, but gas guns to scare off the cockies. The problem is apparently seasonal.
Click images to enlarge
I don’t mind rock and roll, but I prefer it in pubs and clubs than on the water. I think it’s fair to say three of us were pretty happy to arrive in Geraldton (Colin’s always had his own gauge of what ‘fair weather sailing’ is), but four of us was not enough to manage a smooth mooring in the Yacht Club pen. As Colin says, it’s a pretty poor reflection on the Department of Transport that they would build a sea wall that let’s swell wash in and out freely.
Once tied up, Fi and Lloyd went to get their car from the airport, and we later met at Skeetas for dinner. Here we were seated in front of a wide screen TV, where we finally got to see Wiebbe Hayes’ fort on an Abrolhos promo movie. Tick that one off the list.
Wednesday Colin uses Fi and Lloyd’s car to pick up a few essentials (new gas bottle, fishing supplies, battery charger cable) while they walk the waterfront. After bidding them farewell around 1030hrs, when they headed back to Perth, Colin and I wandered into town to do our washing. At $5 a load, prices have certainly escalated since the last time we were in a laundromat!
We decided to indulge ourselves and dined at Skeetas again.
Thursday, whilst waiting for new boat batteries to arrive from Perth, we head into town for more supplies – lightweight long-sleeved fishing shirts, bike pump and tube repair kit for the dinghy tyres, self-sealing tape to fix the water pump, shock cord to make a ‘mangle’ to keep the first mate happy (Colin the inventor). Around 1300hrs a burly man arrived with two 70kg batteries. I was extremely happy that he was doing the installation, not us. I hate to sweat, and it was a warm day. Colin assisted by winching the batteries down the companionway. The poor bloke normally carries them down! New batteries should mean longer holding power, and eliminate the risk of sudden and complete death at an inopportune moment, such as in the Kimberley during a glass off.
As we left the Yacht Club to reprovision, we were simultaneously amused and annoyed to see white cockatoos squawking in the rigging. Colin tried shooing them away by flapping a halyard so it undulated up and down the mast. This worked on the cockies on the side stays, but not the cheeky one swinging casually on the radio antenna. A man on the jetty said call the council as they can do thousands of dollars of damage to wind instruments. We don’t have wind instruments, but they did swing off some others’ anemometers (rotating instruments that measure wind speed). I was commenting how the birds were not easily scared off, and the man’s son piped up and said they were used to being shot at! We were glad we hadn’t called the council if that’s their solution. It did provide an answer to what the loud bangs were we’d been hearing the last two days. Nothing to do with Anzac Day as we’d surmised, but gas guns to scare off the cockies. The problem is apparently seasonal.
Click images to enlarge