So enroute now for hopefully last MRI & the end of the doctor shuffle, we're now paid up until the 2nd of June & then we're back out to sea, woo hoo! We are still undecided, but we'll probably go north for awhile & then meander down for cyclone season at Fraser Island or hey go to Louisades!! We've both been busy, skipper setting up Starlink, running bigger cables, making bracket etc as another alternative to our Iridium Go. Sorting engines & spares etc & had to polish out all the a/foul ingrained after slip. I've made another outboard cover this one for Ziggy & Tessa & their new dinghy!

Well happy days & hip hip hooray, we are in the water & back at the marina with skipper currently hosing off the black antifoul, dirt & dust, inground into our beautiful deck! We have decided to give Oyster White Alltex No 5 a try, it seems to reflect the light better & appears to do a better job repelling barnacles, we shall see. So with days of rain & then 10 days of 35kn SE we couldn't go back in until the wind dropped off ergo 20 days & $4,500 later, we're back. We met new yachties on the slip "Beyond Outrageous Reloaded" Shell & Tony, so we had company the whole time watching each other work!

Well happy days on the slip, bonus is, the first few days had a lot of heat build up, then down came the rain, so we got held up a bit with that & now have had a lovely cool breeze blowing straight on us as we work, realistically Rod doing most of it! We were fortunate in Rod locating in the give away section in the marina a 6mth old A/C with a note saying it rattled so clever skipper pulled it apart & got it going for a cool cabin jury rigged for exhaust & drainage into the heads sullage (our 4 A/C's are salt water cooled so no good on the hard)! Weather is going pear shaped later in the week, blowing big time so we won't be back in the water until mid next week, unfortunately planned to be done pre my surgery but not happening now so pressure off to do the job in a hurry!

Fortnight update, we seem to be constantly on the go of late. We had Rods cousin Kelly & her lovely friend Barb come for a visit for a few days after driving up from down south. We also had a couple of visits from our friend Wayne up from Bundaberg, & we got to yell at the telly & watch Power v Pies game, we lost again! We "au revoired" our friends from "Starfish" Rick & Kerry as they've sailed off up north to Darwin, we may or not join them, insurance looks to be approx. $9000 for that trip, Cape Tribulation is now the cut off for insurance, now considered "Remote" so incurs extra fees. We are now waiting on our new alternator to be re-jigged so we can go "woo hoo" around to the slip next week for ANNUAL slip. We also had a lovely surprise visit from our Bowen friends, John & Ann, great to catch up, albeit a quick one.

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.