We had a blissful sail over to Queenscliff, if you forget about us dragging the trimaran away from the pier at Sandringham in a 30 knot wind only fo rme to end up hanging off the side of it like some recalcitrant water rat until M jumped aboard and started the (new) motor. (Don’t know whether the insurance is going to cough up for stolen motor yet, still have fingers crossed, which made it fairly difficult to sail.) Other than that, it was lovely. We pulled up in our normal spot near the spy bridge and hit the pub so I could get a shandy to cure my slight case of sea sickness.

Sitting in the beer garden of the pub, reading the newspaper, M was coralled by two small children.

“Excuse me, excuse me!” piped the little girl. “Are you a Wiggle?”

M slumped into his chair, apparently hoping to be turned to ash and blown asunder in a light passing breeze.

“A Wiggle! You a Wiggle!” insisted the littler boy.

“No,” said M gruffly, “I am not a Wiggle. Really. I never was a Wiggle.”

The little girl was unmoved. “Are you Jeff the Wiggle?”

“You look like a Wiggle,” her brother said. “Jeff?”

I was laughing so hard that I was immobilised, with silent tears of mirth plopping down the front of my t-shirt.

M shook his Wiggle-like head.

“I am not a Wiggle,” he said, with an air of weary resignation, “but if you get me a yellow skivvy, I’ll see what I can do.”

This was too much for the small children, who were being summoned by their parents. The parents had obviously spied my inelegant lack of control and thought it best to remove their offspring from the proximity of the tearful, shaking silent friend of the famous Wiggle.

Once the children had returned to the other side of the beer garden, where they remained with their eyes fixed on M, I began to calm down. M, however, began to wail.

“What is it? Is it my hair? I’ll cut my hair.”

“The Yellow Wiggle already has quite short hair.”

“Oh. Is it my face? Should I grow a beard? I have to do something. Does everyone think I’m a Wiggle?”

“M. You idiot. It’s everything. You are, for all intents and purposes, the Yellow Wiggle. Everyone under the age of eight in Australia will agree with me. Do you think you should be drinking beer? It might not be good for your image.”

M accompanied me mournfully back to the boat.

We ate cheese, a bottle of red and a pesto, rocket and tuna roll each for dinner (M was catering like a god). In the morning we headed off just after it got light, after scrambled eggs and cups of tea. Our new little motor was performing beautifully, although it had its own kind of quirks that we were just getting the hang of. There was almost too little wind to get out through the heads, so we motor sailed, waving to the webcam that Christian had told us was there, so they could see us at home. The water was flat as a tack. Bass Strait was almost glassy with big rolling swells. We were accompanied the whole way by the squarks of penguins - we occasionally saw some, but nothing like as many as we could hear all around us!

By the time we got to Cowes, the wind, that had been fading in and out all day, decided that it was time to pack up and go home. We motored from Cowes to Rhyll, where we pulled up on the beach and went in search of pumpkin cakes (as opposed to potato cakes/potato scallops) from the fish and chip shop. They weren’t as good as last time, being more grease than pumpkin, but we had a beer each, and then headed back to the boat. We motored around to the other side of Rhyll to try and escape the worst of the southerley wind that was predicted to come through during the night, convieniently forgetting to replenish our water supplies beforehand.

A lovely pesto, pasta and cherry tomato dinner. We listened to some ABC podcasts on my palm pilot, until the battery ran low (which took, oh, all of half an hour). I then tried something that has been on my mind since our last big sailing odyssey. I plugged my palm usb cable into its cigarette lighter extension (for car charging) and plugged that into a female cigarette plug which had two crocodile clips that I fastened to a wheelchair battery. It worked so beautifully that I was completely charmed. Will post a picture later.

M woke up late, so we didn’t get underway until about 7am, when we should have left at 6am. It was doubtful whether we were going to make it to Cannons Creek in time for high tide - the only time to get to the moorning. I sailed the first leg of the trip, coaxing Boat to about seven and half knots, to the envy of M. The wind was a little flakey. After about two hours or so, I could no longer keep my eyes open and headed down below for a sleep. My sleep was punctuated by dreams of dancing elephants who kept falling over. After I got up I found that M had had to do lots of jibes, as well as trying to plot navigation points on a chart. Freak. He could have just woken me up - but I think he enjoyed being a solo sailor and doing it tough.

Motored through Warneet, where a slew of boats had convieniently moored right in the middle of the channel - thank goodness we hadn’t had to navigate in the dark, it would have been a disaster. It was exciting to see lots of other trimarans around! We took a right, up Cannons Creek. M had me scampering like a monkey, organising all the stuff we were taking off the boat (everything) as we wouldn’t be back for at least a month and didn’t want anything left aboard to be stolen (unlikely, but possible). The tide was high enough for us to pull along side the little concrete dock at Seahaven (M’s recently discovered multihuul heaven) and unload all our stuff.

After we had got everything ashore, we attached a dinghy and motored out to the mooring. I hooked it with a boathook (first go - had never done it before!) and M secured us. We locked the boat up and said our goodbyes. M, me and new Tohatsu went ashore in the dinghy without mishap, and had cups of tea with the Multihull Men, before taking off in the Humber to Loch.