The weather is
right. The tide is high for leaving.
The
car and the motorcycle have been sold. The storage unit has been emptied and
all nonessential items purged. All the
other sails and equipment have been repatriated and stowed down tight aboard
“Rogues Scholarship”, our 57 foot cutter rigged sloop. It has been over two
years that she has quietly been tugging at her mooring lines here in Southeast
Queensland, (OZ). The auxiliary rudder has been hung on the transom after very
little debate. “We’re only going up the coast”, “We only need it on long
passages”… “You won’t want to do it at sea if something does go wrong”… enough
said!
We’ve
been to the Pediatrician, the GP, and the Travel Doctor for last minute tire-
kicking and oil checks. As I write this
I’m in the middle of a four day course of oral immunization for Typhoid fever.
Our darling, diminutive, daughter Dylan Claire (now over six months old) is not
due now for any more shots for 6 months.
The
new chart plotter has been installed next to the radar in the cockpit within
easy view of the helm. It stands as a back up to our primary computer which is
a backup to the paper charts we never look at. The water tanks have been filled
and the lockers are bursting with canned this and that, bags of these and jars
of those. It’s not like there won’t be a super market where we’re going. It’s just that to get there you might have to
put the dinghy into crocodile infested waters, lower the outboard and fuel tank
onto it and drag it onto a beach, all the while keeping a weather eye out for
“Salties” just to have the opportunity to look for a bus to take you to town.
We realize just how lazy and scared we really are.
Liz has been reading, voraciously, about all
the anchorages up north through cruising guides and other peoples’ blogs who
have done it before. Apparently if you
Google the name of an anchorage in the Whitsundays, for example, five people
will have written everything about it on their travel blogs. These have been a great
sort of information, both reassuring and disquieting at the same time. It
appears that there are all manner of things out there that through stupidity or
ignorance can conspire to dismember you and/or cause a very painful death. (We
choose none of the above.) It is a great paradox that the seemingly calm,
beautiful white sand beaches of the North Queensland coast are infested with the
Australian Box jelly fish, Bull and Great white sharks, Crocodiles, Pythons and
last but not least the second most dangerous jellyfish species in
Australian waters , the Irukandji Jellyfish (Carukia barnesi). We will be playing Scrabble, reading books or
otherwise contemplating the beauty of Nature from the secure decks of our
sailing fortress.
Liz is understandably
anxious and concerned about taking our baby daughter out into the sometimes not
so friendly world. She has had a few pep
talks from other cruisers who have sailed with young ones, been there and done
that, which has helped put her at ease.
It’s always a daunting process for us to leave the security of the known
(marina) and venture out, off shore, into the unknown. She has diligently
studied Plan A , Plan B and even mapped out a Plan C just in case. True to form,
she knows everything about where we are going and has realistic expectations
about what we will encounter there. Any words of encouragement would certainly not
go unnoticed. Anything else … You can keep yer yap shut..
The
time has drawn nigh. The weather is
right. The tide is high for leaving,
Would
you please be quiet, Try not to cry, The Baby, she is sleeping…
