Well woo hoo, I'm back on, yay! I think maybe that last whirly gig that we dodged & ended up in Auckland did a lot more damage than we heard about here! So as a catch up, I went to Perth for my Aunty Kaths funeral & saw quite a number of reli's I've not seen in, easy 20 odd years then after a weeks recovery from that we both flew to Brisbane with Rod heading down to assist Duet in having topsides painted & I went to Michelles to garden.

Well we have certainly had our fair share of rain recently & barometer is going down again with curly little system off in the Coral Sea, think it will miss us, looks like heading over to Auckland on the weekend, opposite direction to my heading on a plane to Perth to farewell my beautiful 95 yr old aunt. We had a lovely Australia day get together with friends & Skipper has been busily ticking items off our "to do" list, & finally have lovely doors over a little cupboard we have under the saloon table, end to end the chain, wired up new repeater plotter screen whilst I'm still sewing yet more covers, this time for instrument cover at helm to protect controls, compass etc & now repairing big cover over saloon that got torn in the last storm we just had.

An update on all things Double Bubble in Townsville with success at last being achieved on the drama of the anchor winch, the one thing we did not have was a reversing solenoid so this was ordered with the motor & was in fact too small for the motor, needless to say one very peeved skipper! I've been having some Emmett Technique treatment which is allowing some freer movement for my body, thank heavens. We are both continually busy, I'm back on the sewing machine, outboard covers are now the game with 1 down for Stu, & Ziggy's to commence. We've caught up with several couples & enjoyed a lovely Thai meal last night with Lisa & Stu, Lanise & Ty & the pups (we were on puppy sitting duties yesterday), & I did a few feet & hands.

Happy New Year folks, so glad that YIT appears to be working in 2023, thank you Mike. So lots have been going on, starting with great New Years gathering being enjoyed on the Bubble with another spontaneous night of hilarity with the return of Ziggy & Tess back to the marina with Pelargic from Cairns on Saturday night with Lisa & Stuart, all a bit quiet Sunday! The anchor winch drama continues with the people at Nilsons in NZ, we just got another motor today, same thing happening, drawing way too much yet a smaller motor @ 1200 watts, put ours back on @ 1400 watts, works perfectly (replacing ours because its 30 years old & we don't want the anchor winch to fail enroute to Darwin). I got booked in for a new knee op for 10th Feb & Bupa no longer covers it, so the waiting game for public hospital commences.