Month: February 2010

(posted by Marge)

Land ho!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 and a half days later we’re here. Despite some mild setbacks in speed on the last night thanks to the leaky radiator, we slapped a bandaid on her and kept on trucking! We arrived at the entrance to the Brisbane harbor around sunset last night only to realize we had another 40+ miles winding in and out, up and down the harbor/river before we hit the customs dock. Pulled in about 3 in the morning. Its now a little after 7 and the customs officials have already come and gone. Waiting on quarantine and soon Trevor and Alli will be here as well. Got some packing to do here onboard, pick up the rental car, say a very bittersweet goodbye to Dosia, and we’re off. Stay tuned into the blog as we attempt to get lost on land and thanks for following us along!

Oh silly me. What does a new radiator cap cost these days? Ten bucks? I wouldn’t know. I don’t have one on board. I have a used one that came off the exhaust manifold when I first got the boat. I decided to bring it along as a spare. I put it in a ziploc and tucked it away in a hole and there it sat unused for 4 years of sailing. On to the irony…

I’m sitting in the companionway on nightwatch, shift one (8-11pm), watching an episode of “Breaking Bad” on the iPod when I get a big whiff of coolant. “Hmmm…that’s odd. We’ve been motoring for hours and I haven’t smelled any coolant before,” I said to myself. Having learned that when an odd noise, or vibration, or smell occurs on a boat there’s probably something that needs immediate attention, I went on the hunt. Opening the engine room I notice a splatter of green towards the back of the engine. Uh-oh I think, a leaky hose. Access to the major components of the cooling system on Dosia is through the starboard cockpit locker so I closed up the engine room door and headed outside. Upon opening my shiny, newly painted, bright white cockpit locker I was greeted by what looked like a green explosion on top of my battery box immediately beneath the engine’s cooling expansion tank. Great. Why is there coolant leaking/spraying out around the cap? Throttle back, engine off. After 13,000 some miles on Dosia, 96 miles from the finish line, a radiator cap that has never given me a single problem decides to bust and my only spare is an older, rusty, slightly less leaky one. It is functioning enough to give me 1500 rpm’s with an occasional spit and dribble so I can’t complain. But I can sit and wonder how something so small can know exactly the right time to break. We were on schedule to make it into Brisbane mid afternoon tomorrow with plenty of time to check in and get legal before the weekend. Now, at our measly 5 knot pace, we’re hoping for a night arrival tomorrow. Boats are freakin hilarious.

(posted by Marge)

Birds have become an intriguing species since I started doing passages. Here we are hundreds and hundreds of miles from any solid piece of land and there they are just flying around. I mean…what the heck are they doing way out here!?! It baffles the ever living tarnation out of me. I can’t make the assumption that there’s not a whole lot to see on the big open blue cause things are probably totally different from their perspective. I bet if we had the view they did then passages might be a little more interesting. Nonetheless, don’t they get tired? Don’t they get bored? Aren’t there plenty of fish to feed on right next to a coast where they can go take a load off and eat their meal perched on a palm tree? I just don’t get it…

Still their company is welcomed as long as they aren’t taking a different kind of load off on our boat, if you get what I’m saying. They dive in and out around the sails and before you know it they are as bored watching us as we are watching them and off they go. If only we could communicate, I bet they’d have some pretty intriguing stories to tell…

And on that note, day 6 of mission “Delivery to Trev & Alli” went well. We spent the day enjoying some pretty awesome weather and we can definitely feel the difference in the temperatures between here and New Zealand. I spent the afternoon cutting out recipes from what I like to call “sophisticated and intelligent reading material,” otherwise known to Drew as “trashy, celebrity, gossip magazines.” Sometimes I wonder whether my love for them is equal to, less than, or far greater than the loathing he feels for them. We are currently in the process of drawing up a bargain deal stating if I am never to purchase another gossip magazine that one day we will in turn purchase a king size bed. Something I desperately want so, naturally, Drew has no interest in having one . A deal must be reached. That IS how you get what you want in a relationship, right?

Drew whipped up a stir fry for dinner last night that was so good it’d make you want to slap somebody. We’ve had to back our watches and clocks up two hours in order to coincide sunrise and sunset with night watches. Hopefully only 4 more of those as we greet day 7 with 364 miles to go!

(posted by Marge)

You know those times where you sit down to write an email, a blog post, what have you, and just feel like nothing you have to say is going to come out interesting? That’s how I felt yesterday. Not a whole lot to tell. The passage continues to go well and we, along with our parents, are grateful. Yesterday we posted our best day yet and from 8 PM Saturday to 8 PM Sunday we covered 167 miles. That’s good. Real good. Two great days of sailing have left us in a good position. Granted we keep up speed there is a possibility we may be able to pull in on Friday but lessons learned from all passages prior, you never get your hopes up too much…

Today was the epitome of laziness as we had our first rain of the trip. Cooped up inside for most of the day, I snuggled into my little nook in the pilot berth while Drew vegged out on the couch. We watched several movies in hopes of passing the time and as always, the motion of the boat rocked us gently in and out of quick cat naps. Pre made lasagna did the trick for din din although I haven’t felt exceptionally well today so Drew took down most of it. Constant teeth issues continue to plug at me on a daily basis and despite the nagging I try my best to keep it amongst my teeth and not let the annoyance spill out in the form of me taking it out on poor Drew. Another lesson to be learned…procrastination when it comes to your teeth does not in fact pay off in the long run.

As my boat monkey snoozes next to me, I’m watching the GPS, while keeping a lookout on the horizon for any traffic, and we have 520 nautical miles to go, HOPEFULLY, 7 more night watches a piece. We’ll keep plugging along!