A good day in the sun

It’s been a good day for us, not least thanks to some decent sun, a pleasant interlude in the constantly recurring rain and gales that have been the leitmotif of this winter. It had become apparent last night that we would be lucky to get through to Monday without overfilling the toilet tank and that today was the best of the possible three days to go across to the service wharf and pump out.

In fact, by the time we’d had breakfast, it was looking quite reasonable, so we set off pronto. There was still enough wind to make life interesting and I was glad of Lyndon’s help when we got to the wharf; he took first our centre line and then the stern line as we reversed down the side of the wharf.

I’d got a token ready to use on the pump out machine, but when I pressed the red button to clear the controls before putting it in, the pump started all by itself. Indeed, it was in a strange mood, with the red stop button starting the pump and the white pause button stopping it, all without benefit of tokens.

Josh came over from the office to serve us some diesel but couldn’t offer any explanation as to what the pump was up to. In the end I paid for the pump out in the office along with the diesel.

Getting back off the wharf involved a bit of skilled shafting as the wind was blowing us the wrong way. Sheila used the long shaft to get the bow well across whilst I deployed the short cabin shaft to move the stern away from the side. Applying a decent bit of power got us on our way without touching anything. I was particularly pleased that when we got back to Grebe pontoon, our teamwork got us back on our finger without touching The Black Pearl, Geoff’s boat tied alongside us.

Bow thruster, who needs a bow thruster?

/wahaha

After lunch and a well deserved rest, we took a walk in the rising wind to Betty’s Farm to stock up on meat for the week and then spent the remainder of the afternoon chilling in the boat.

I’ve taken a couple more shots of the Boardwalk end frames. The first gives a sense of how long it will be and the second of its height in contrast to the Midland Chandlers building behind it.

When finished it’s certainly going to dominate this end of the marina, though since it will be timber clad it should be in keeping. Some of our fellow moorers are complaining about it; this is a bit odd of them since the original plans not only involved the Boardwalk but a “Lighthouse” on the end which would have been even higher.

It’s been no secret and every prospective moorer has been told about it. Heigh ho, if they really don’t like it, other marinas are available...