Day 73, Year 3: Happy Half-Birthday to Sam
Date: Monday, July 21, 2008
Weather: More of the Same Beautiful, Sunny Weather
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
That GRAND baby of ours is eighteen months old today. So Happy Half-birthday to Sam! When we arrived here in Darwin, there were some updated photos of Sam waiting for us to download from Picasa, so I have posted those with today’s log so you can see how much he has grown. What a beautiful little boy. I saw the Norwegian twins, Hedda and Marita, on my way into the Darwin Sailing Club this afternoon and made the mistake of saying, “Hello beautiful girls.” Obviously nine-year olds don’t want to
be called beautiful and the looks I got were not those of pleased little girls, but here in my log I can call my grandson beautiful, and Hedda and Marita as well. I still miss Sam so very much and would love nothing more than to be with him for his half-birthday, but maybe I can fly home for his second birthday in January. Or better yet, maybe he can fly to Thailand.
We started our day by having breakfast at the Skycity Casino with Donna, Gerry, and Klinton of Scot Free II. Klinton is Donna and Gerry’s son, mid-thirties, and flew in this week to crew with them through Indonesia. Mark did some sewing on Scot Free’s headsail day before yesterday, so they insisted on taking us out to breakfast. It was a nice break and got us halfway to town early in the morning. We took the bus the rest of the way to town after breakfast and did some more food shopping and picked
up the charts we had ordered. Then it was back to Windbird with heavily laden packs to put things away. We also made one other purchase today. David and Judy on Freebird had a Tahatsu 9-horsepower dinghy motor for sale. They really wanted a 15-horse motor as they are avid divers and find hauling the heavy tanks challenging with the smaller motor. We have been having a bit of trouble with our motor and had thought about buying a new one. Dave thought he was going to get $500 for the motor in
trade and that was more than we were willing to pay, but when we got back from town, David and Judy came through the Sailing Club with the new motor and the old one. They got a good deal on the new motor without a trade, and then we were able to buy their old motor at a price we could afford. Now we will have a back-up if our very old faithful conks out. You really can’t be out here with a dependable dinghy. It’s your only transportation to and from shore unless you want to row and with the
winds and currents we have been encountering, that is just not an option.
Tomorrow we spend five hours at a Rally briefing, so that just about takes care of Tuesday. Hopefully by the end of Wednesday, we will be ready to go. Ready or not, it is out of here on Saturday morning at 11 am.
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