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Archive Category: mysmallboat
A Full Day
Saturday, 11 September 2004
The local paper, that arrives on Thursdays when the rubbish gets collected, contained marvellous bounty. There was a Suzuki 3.5hp outboard motor advertised for $150 - just what I need for Oomoo - so this morning we went and checked it out. You don’t need a license for anything up to 4 horsepower, so this was perfect. The guy who was selling it seemed very nice and honest - let this be a warning. We had a look at the motor, watched him start it up - and didn’t blink when he said “I’ll just put the cowling back on it now it’s running.” The cowling (I learnt) is the lid that sits on top of the motor. Later, after we’d laid out the money and congratulated ourselves on a good buy, we realised he’d done this because there was some corrosion that lets water leak through. Bastard. So now we are weighing our options - I am erring towards turning up at his place and starting a sit-in and refusing to leave until he gives me at least $50 so I can get it fixed. Gah.
Next on the agenda was another advertisement in the paper - one that made M gasp and his small eye water. There was a Sailfish for sale. For $100. We took one look and snapped it up (we shall be living on rice for the next fortnight) - and in doing so got Oomoo completely fitted out with all the bits and pieces that would have cost us untold millions if we’d bought them at a chandlery. Also, it saved M from building a mast and boom - he is very thankful. For pictures, see mysmallboat.com I spent the rest of the day putting in plants and painting stumps grey. Beth’s Shade of Charcoal, actually.
Red Whine & Sandpaper
Thursday, 16 September 2004
M & J drank two of those litre bottles of red wine last night! Chris and I stuck to a couple of beers and stayed up to watch it all fall apart 
This morning I let the cats out of their nighttime quarters, rescued a little dragonfly with a wet wing from the only drop of water in the kitchen sink and shorted out the safety switch on the house by trying to boil the kettle without any water. M is outside back to sanding Oomoo. He checked the website last night and was truly horrified at what we have spent so far. I tried to explain that we would never have been able to buy a little boat outright, so paying for it in dribs and drabs is actually the best (and only) way for us to do it. I don’t understand how he’s standing, let alone sanding, after his efforts last night. He hasn’t even had breakfast yet. I’m off to make a pot of tea.
Getting Around the Issue
Tuesday, 12 October 2004
I have just updated mysmallboat.com (my internet connection here is so fast it makes me weep) and I went to check the site’s email - which is a gmail address. That’s when I realised that they’ve finally done it. They have blocked all major webmail sites. This has been ‘in place’ since February - but hasn’t actually worked until now. So then, of course I had to spend the next 20 minutes figuring out how to get around it. I played around with different proxy settings and then found this site - and after plowing through a mix of helpful suggestions and self-righteous pronouncements, I hit paydirt. I can get to gmail without being blocked by using https://gmail.google.com/ - it’s the ’s’ in the http that apparently makes it too hard for the proxy server to deal with. Chalk one up to me - a small victory against the system.
And we sail, upon the sea…
Monday, 29 November 2004
Yesterday we took the day off. It was time to see if Oomoo - the little restored boat from the Tip - could actually sail. Read all about it here.
It was a lovely day. I packed some grapes, a garlic twist, two apricot bars and two cans of beer - gently cooled on some frozen peas. We nibbled as we sailed, and I steered like an authentic seadog. Woof!
The Recap
Sunday, 19 December 2004
On Friday I got matching bruises at the top of each shinbone, courtesy of the trailer bouncing up on to my legs. Great. That, and the heat, kind of finished off any plans we had of sailing Oomoo into the blue. Instead we contented ourselves with a swim. Lately I’ve been snorkling and remembering how nice it is to see under water without salt stinging the eyes.
Yesterday we had been going to conquer the Mary River from River Heads to Maryborough, but the tide wasn’t on our side. Instead we created our own smaller scale epic, by sailing around the Urangan Pier. You can read about it here.
There is something about sailing that makes you very tired once you’ve finished. However, we weren’t allowed to indulge our tiredness. We had an engagement. Yes, for the first time since this time last year (when we didn’t attend and M bravely went over and said we were too tired, which was true, and we’d only had half an hours warning that we were invited) we were asked to ‘Christmas Drinks’ over the road. M toyed with the idea of pulling out, but I turned into Queen of Etiquette and said that, after last years effort, we couldn’t possibly not go. So we went along. And actually had a bit of fun. There was a pool table and many nibblies. We even met a nice couple who knew who Spiderbait were. I had to give M a muttered lecture about saying the word ‘mofo’ around small children under six and restrain him from drinking my beer, but all in all, it was a nice night out - and it was lovely to just be able to walk back over the road and be inside our own house!
Valentines Day 2005
Monday, 14 February 2005
M and I, after our weekend plans were blown to hell, decided to have a grand day out and explore Childers. We’d only ever driven through it, but after reading an article about the town in the Australian a few weeks ago, we were keen to check it out. Of course, valentiney things had to happen first. I picked up M’s present from the frame shop - on my great organisation of our stuff in storage, I had found a little painting that I’d bought M about three years ago of the Boathouse Cafe in Daylesford. It was just on a bit of matte board, and I couldn’t believe it had survived the move up north. I got it framed properly (amazing - as I am the person who just likes to shove things in any old frame) and M was genuinely delighted! Points for me! My excitement of the day was picking up my brand new, most special toy, that M had ordered last week. A little 3.5 Tohatsu outboard motor for Oomoo! Brand new and, most startling of all, with a two year warranty. It is so rare that M and I buy anything new ever, that having a BRAND NEW motor is just a bit bizarre.
We drove through to Childers, which is very picturesque. The town seems to be making a real effort to attract touristy people and backpackers. M and I raided about three op-shops; he scored a purple shirt, and I got a dress - huzzah! We sampled a few cafes and drove around the back streets, oohing and aahing at the houses. The houses themselves are mostly Queenslanders (my favourite) but for the most part, they haven’t been tarted up. They were all just very neat and looked like they were cared for. After a few hours, we drove to Woodgate - another gorgeous place, right on the water. It’s very odd though - it’s about a 20km drive to get to it, and there is just a shop, a pub, a restaurant and a bowls club (we did find a small supermarket too). Woodgate is long and narrow; and still has quite a lot of old fibro weekenders that I spent my time drooling over, when I wasn’t cooing at all the kangaroos that jump around the streets. There were, of course, the inevitable ‘new homes’ beginning to creep in between the old ones, but there weren’t too many complete monstrosities. It would be a great place to have a holiday house - the beach is beautiful.
Motoring On Beelbi Creek
Friday, 18 February 2005
Today we tried out the new outboard motor. We need to run it in at low speeds, and take it in for a service after ten hours of use. It got a bit too hot in the boat - Oomoo needs a bimini.
Oomoo Does Burrum
Sunday, 27 February 2005
…we spent today exploring the Burrum River, for 11 nautical miles! M’s hat flew into the weir (to the left) and I was going to dive in and get it, but it sank.
Camping Trip
Tuesday, 8 March 2005
My relative quiet on the weekend was due to my absence. M and I drove to Elliot Heads, about 20km out of Bundaberg, and camped a couple of nights. It was very last minute, as you will see from our van packing:
But once we’d unpacked and sorted it all out, our campsite was admirable. The caravan park is fantastic, and there weren’t many people there, so we had our pick of spots. When we turned up, hot and tired from two hours in the van, the manager said take your pick of sites, and don’t worry about paying now, go and have a swim and we’ll sort it out tomorrow - lovely. The first thing I did on Sunday morning was sneak out of bed, wander the one minute walk to the beach, and jump in.
This is me, cruising in Oomoo near the mouth of the Elliot River.
We navigated for about 5km downstream, and saw multitudes of soldier crabs, long legged water birds and the occastional stinray the size of a doormat.
Last Sunday.
Friday, 8 April 2005
“OK,” said M, standing in front of me as I shuttle toward the bathroom, rubber gloved in the middle of cleaning. “You need to relax. Relax. I am going to make you relax. I’m going to Take You Prawning. I will prawn and you can read.”
Thirty minutes later, armed with boat, thermos of tea, my book, hat and other paraphernalia we are bobbing along, out at sea, motoring through rolling waves toward the entrance to Eli Creek. M assures me There Will Be Prawns.
“When I was there last time a guy was throwing his cast net into a deep part of the creek. He called it the Prawn Hole. He reckons they all hang out there. So that’s where we’ll go first.”
I nod, enjoying the ride, but remind myself to look at the horizon at all times. There is a moment of queasiness as I look down to rummage in the waterproof barrel to find M’s GPS, which prompts me to keep looking shoreward while feeling blindly for the rectangular shape of the Garmin 12. The queasiness passes.
We make it to the creek, and there are a few moments of panic as we try to find the deepest path through the very shallow mouth; a few people fishing on the bank look as if they are placing bets on whether we’ll run aground. We don’t. M starts to grin as we motor toward the lushly prawn filled waters. He dips his fingers over the side and looks knowing. I raise my eyebrows. M explains, with the air of one who has a natural affinity for all things prawn, that when the saltiness of the sea water begins to be slightly diluted by the fresh water of the creek, that is where one finds things of prawnly goodness.
We round a bend.
“Is that the Prawn Hole?” I ask, pointing toward a man throwing a net from his boat into the middle of the creek.
M’s face drops.
“Bugger,” he mutters steering the boat into the bank, “That’s the same guy. The guy that was here last time!”
“Maybe he never left?” I offer placatingly.
“Whatever. I’ll throw the net here and see what we get.”
I reach for my book, readying myself for the relaxing part of the outing. The creek laps against the side of the boat, and the sound of the other net is like rice falling on water. Startlingly, it doesn’t last.
Sunday on the Mary River
Sunday, 24 April 2005
Today we took Oomoo on the Mary River, and tied up near Muddy Waters Cafe for a coffee and a nibble. The houses from the river are sublime, with lawns that run down almost to the water. The current was very strong…
The Juxtaposition
Wednesday, 25 May 2005
Today is cold and windy. I’ve been getting text messages from an ebullient M.
Am doing 4 knots. Just crossed sandbank near pier.
Oomoo is on his first island! I am eating an or ange.
Have to tack out v.far. Just used chart and compass. Bit scary. All good tho!
I am eaten by the desire to get back to my cats, boat, house and boy. Can hardly believe I can sit here in the office talking to M while he stands on a small island in Queensland. It’s too weird. At least he has to suffer sometimes - we’re very short on money and M has been out of both coffee and milk for three days, and he is also making 32 tables for his sisters new restaurant. He just has to concentrate on not making them too beautiful and taking too long on them
Un-Masted
Saturday, 28 May 2005
Woke up to the phone this morning to Very Bad News. (The weird thing was, my illness had hit its peak, and I was unable to vocalise my horror - my voice had gone!) M had taken Oomoo on a Grand Adventure - sailing to Fraser Island. He’d awoken at five in the morning and launched just as the sun was coming up; everything was prepared - he had sandwiches, a thermos of tea, the whole bit. The day was perfect for sailing. Just out near Woody Island a little freak gust came along and there was a sound like a pistol shot. The mast had snapped. Poor M got a very big shock - when you’re sailing, it’s particularly peaceful, so to have a bit of the boat break with such a loud noise is a scary thing! It was very lucky that M had our faithful Toey (Tohatsu) outboard motor along for the trip. We had spoken on the phone the night before, and M had said he was thinking about taking the motor on the voyage;
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said grandly, “People have been sailing for years without needing a motor on their little sailboat. Tristan Jones wouldn’t have taken a motor with him!”
“Maybe,” said M, cautiously, “I’ll see what the weather’s doing.”
…and so we left it. Although this is a stark illustration of how he never listens to a thing I say it served him well on this occasion. He limped to Round Island - which is a little island off Urangan, where he had a soothing cup of tea and bound the mast with some rope. Poor little Oomoo. On closer examination, the mast may be able to be fixed, but it is still not ideal, as one needs to have confidence in ones mast - so we will be keeping an eye out for another wooden one (as I have forbidden the purchase of a metal one - it will lower the tone).
As I wasn’t on the spot for the drama and because I am feeling rather divorced from proceedings up north, I spent time over the weekend doing some updates to the My Small Boat site, with more to follow this week.
Day of Leisure
Saturday, 25 June 2005
I had my doubts about M imposing ‘Day of Leisure’ on a Saturday. There was so much to do, and it seemed to me that it would be better to make Sunday a leisure day. Wrong. We got up and had a big banana porridge breakfast, endless tea, and then all got in the Humber-with-one-indicator with Oomoo behind on the trailer. We headed down to Toogoom (the best place in Hervey Bay, which will be trashed by developers very soon, and rendered irretrievably crap) and on to the bridge over Beelbi Creek, where we launched.
It was a beautiful day. We motored down to the fishing spot, where Rick, the guest, instantly caught a couple of mo-fo bream. Three minutes later, the tide turned, and there were no more bites! We persevered for a bit, but then continued exploring. Our path blocked by a fallen tree across the creek, we tied up and had another sustained fishing attempt, while my Dad disappeared, catlike, into the surrounding jungle (via the logs).
Meanwhile, we continued to try and catch fish. Finally, with great stealth and daring, I hooked another big bream, while Rick pulled in another one a few minutes later. One big fish each seemed to be quite perfect, so we put the next one that I caught back into the creek, and began motoring back toward the car bridge. We took Oomoo ashore and headed into Toogoom proper - settling down with chips and beer at the pub (where the food has gone downhill in the past six months, but the chips are still safe, though oily). I had two stubbies of VB in shandy form, as I was designated driver. After a short walk around to the beach to say goodbye to our favourite swimming spot, I engaged in some trepidacious trailer-backing, and we took off in the direction of home.
Rick, enthused by his Grand Day Out, insisted on stopping to buy a couple of bottles of white wine, and a bottle of whiskey (a recipe for next-morning hell, in my humble opinion). We continued on towards home, but I was getting anxious. The Humber now had only one headlight and no indicators at all. At the pinnacle of bad timing, as I drove toward our turnoff, a police car came out of a side street and settled in behind me. As I’d passed him as he was waiting to turn, he’d had a good view of my headlight-uno. He let me sweat for about four minutes as he trailed me, before putting on his lights. Dad, M and Rick all gave me varying instructions, while I gripped the wheel - the only thought in my head being
‘How do I pull over without indicating?! Goddamnit and bugger.’
M, who can’t help himself, was instructing me how to behave. I was trying to ignore him, while internally freaking out about the two stubbies of VB I’d drunk just an hour or so ago.
The policeman came to the door…
“D’you know you’ve only got one headlight?”
“Yes,” I squeaked, softly. Too softly.
“Sorry?”
“Yes. I realised back at the supermarket. I tried my high beams, but they’re gone too. I think it’s a fuse. I can fix them when I get home…”
“Right. Can I see your license please.”
It wasn’t a question. I fumbled with my purse and handed it to him. He noted my Victorian plates and address.
“You living up here?”
“I’m leaving for Melbourne on Monday,” I said truthfully.
He unwrapped a breathalyzer thingy.
“Have you had anything to drink today?”
My stomach dropped.
“Ah, I had a few drinks at lunchtime.”
This was when M, beside me in the passenger seat, decided to ‘lighten the moment’.
“I bet she’s at about .016!”
I heard small thudding sounds as my Dad and Rick simultaneously hit him surreptitiously in the back of the head.
“Just blow into this until I tell you stop.”
I blew. It beeped. He examined the results. I sweated, trying to remember to breathe.
“When did you say you had those drinks?”
Oh god.
“Over lunch.”
“Must have been a late lunch…”
“Well, yeah. Probably around two thirty, three o’clock? Why? Am I over?”
A pause. The Humber was still.
“Nah. You’re .018 - make sure you get that headlight fixed.”
“Thank you,” I squeaked, trying to sound even more freaked out than I actually was, in an effort to excuse what I was about to do…
I pulled out and had to instantly turn left down the road towards home. Of course, I couldn’t indicate, and had to just hope that he thought I was a blonde, scared Victorian who was too flustered to remember such minor details.
In the car, once we’d got around the corner without incident, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief, and M got some bollocking about his attempts to bond with the policeman. The drive home was further fraught with lack of indicators (and the fact I was pulling a trailer didn’t help either). Finally we made it home - where I had a large glass of white wine, to stop my quaking. M cooked up the fish like the gourmet he is, and we feasted our way through fish, rice and salad. I stuck with the rest of the Coopers, while the others (particularly M and Rick) quaffed white wine and whiskey in equal quantities. Ugh. Both of them paid the next morning.
Red. Oomoo.
Sunday, 27 November 2005
This morning, I decided it was time to add another shade to my hair. Now I have achieved neapolitan ice-cream status. Three shades. Although here you can only see the latest one. Then I had lunch with my mother, who gave me a bottle of Light Blue, some chai tea and some earrings. Woo! My fave perfume of the moment! Thank you to Small Brother for passing on my texted perfume request!
Then M and I took Oomoo for a sail. OMG… it was far more windy than we’d thought. We only stayed out for about 45 minutes, tacking backwards and forwards as kite-surfers whizzed by. It was a little hairy, as the mast was bending like a banana. But it survived. I got completely soaked. Oomoo needed a complete hose-out when we made it back…
Kill Kill Kill
Friday, 17 March 2006
Some complete c*** has stolen my our little Tohatsu outboard motor. We are waiting to see if it’s going to be covered by insurance. It really, really sucks because:
1) we never buy anything new, always secondhand, and this was pretty much our only brand new (and thus expensive) thing, and…
2) the trimaran is now stuck where it is, and even if we do find the trailer (secondhand - of course) we’ve been searching for, we won’t be able to get the trimaran on it without a motor.
ARGH! When they said it was going to be a bad month, I didn’t realise quite how bad - although, of course, it is only a motor, and we can probably get another. Have to keep it all in perspective, which sort of easier than normal as one of our friends has been very ill in intensive care. She is now much better, and far more important than a motor. But it does, however, still suck. And the police haven’t been hugely helpful and are (kind of understandably) very short on boat knowledge - e.g. “So it weighs as much as, um, a dog?” ARGH!!
Paint it Dulux LaMarque
Friday, 29 September 2006
I think M and I had sleeping sickness last night. Went to bed before 11pm and woke up at 11am! I spent the rest of the day at ShedLand, sanding bits and pieces and painting the interior of Oomoo. Being unused to physical work of late, I am now feeling totally buggered. Back to bed.
Out in the Small Red Boat
Wednesday, 24 January 2007
After M and I got back from the Great Humber Rescue on Monday afternoon, we had energetic plans to do some work on the boat and the caravan. But the weather was too gorgeous, and I voted to take out Oomoo for a trip to the top of Cannons Creek. Poor little red boat has not been out since last April on our grand trip away, and although M and I have both done some fixing up and painting work on him, he had been languishing under the canvas cover.
M made me launch Moo myself, in the hope that it would embolden me to take solo expeditions - however, I think I need a few more practices before I do the whole getting-the-boat-off-the-trailer thing myself. Either that or pull my finger out and learn how to back a trailer. Anyway. We headed off upstream and into the southern most salt water mangroves in Australia.
We noodled in amongst the trees, with our heads at the height of the paddocks that were all around us. It was so odd! We were obviously going through people’s property, but you would have had to look hard to see us, as the red of the boat was below the height of the banks. It was very shallow. We doubled back on ourselves after a while and took a different turning. I had anticipated that we might be sort of near home, but it was still quite bizarre to look across and see the back windows of the trailer only two paddocks away!
Unfortunately we didn’t find an easy little launching point that would save us having to drive out of the property that we’re living on, but it was interesting to follow the water as far as it went at high tide. The farms that the waterway travels through are all basically denuded-for-grazing dust bowls, which is unfortunate. M and I mused on the trees we could plant if we won Powerball and bought one of them. We drank lime cordial from our thermos, ate apples and took turns rowing back down the creek - the lack of outboard motor noise was very soothing.
It was still sunny, so went and hung out on the trimaran and M made me tea as I lazed on the trampoline with the newspaper. A good reward for enduring my generator pulley dramas, and a nice day out for the small red boat.
