Day 191, Year 2: Keeping Busy
Date: Thursday, November 1, 2007
Weather: Partly Sunny and Very Warm
Location: Bundaberg Port Marina, Australia
Outside, Windbird looks great, but inside she looks like a cyclone hit. We have the v-berth torn apart in readiness for getting under the cushions to sort out things we no longer need and to air out that part of the boat. So things stored on the v-berth are now in the main cabin piled here and there. Then I have been going through the accumulation of paperwork about the places we have visited this season. When I am finished, everything will be reorganized and ready to go when we return from
the US, but right now it is a mess. Mark took down all of the sails today, hauled them up to the grassy area in front of the marina complex, folded them neatly, and then took them to the canvas shop next door for repairs. We normally do our own repairs, but there are specific jobs to be done on each sail that need a bigger sewing machine than the one we have. Mark also got Windbird “dressed” for the Best Dressed Yacht competition coming up on Saturday. We have one string of signal flags and we
made another string of flags using the courtesy flags of all the countries we have visited during the voyage of Windbird. Tomorrow will be more of the same: cleaning and organizing, and hopefully by the end of the day, we will have the inside of the boat all back to normal. That’s probably optimistic, but I can always hope.
We have wireless internet on the boat here in the marina and today we received some pictures of our nine-month old grand baby Sam dressed as a penguin for Halloween. He just gets cuter and cuter. We started our day with a breakfast provided by the Burnett Heads shire. That is the political unit for this area. And then we ended our day with a Port-2-Port curry dinner. During the day we saw Idunne and Runae and their twin girls Hetta and Marita of Blue Marlin. They came in last night and went
through Customs and Quarantine this morning. We saw Jan and Christina of the yacht Christina tonight. They came in today, but had an unfortunate ending to their passage. While taking down the sails, they hit one of the large metal buoys in the bay just before entering the river. There is evidently considerable damage done to the boat. We were sad to hear about this, but they seem upbeat about it and say they will get the repairs done and continue. It seems that most of the boats in the rally
must be here now, so there are at least 112 people when we get together, plus the local folks organizing the rally, and some yachties who were not in the rally but join with us when we are together. It is quite a crowd.
We think the repairs we did on the dinghy yesterday are working which is a great relief. Tomorrow morning it is our turn to play boules. This is a form of bowling but on a lawn and with rules that resemble horse-shoes. There is a tournament among all the yachties. The Port-2-Port festivities include a luncheon sponsored by the marina and a seafood auction during the evening. None of us is quite sure how this will work, but soon we will see. The people of Bundaberg have been so very welcoming
and we are having a great time meeting other yachties from the rally. The fun just goes on and on. And somehow we will find time between all these activities to get the boat work done.
