Happy New Year everyone, hope this is a much better year for all of us!

We spent time at Christmas with Ben, Amie and our two grandsons, Lachlan and Robbie. It was great just to chill out and relax with them. Ben, Lachlan and Andrew set to making up one of Lachlan’s Christmas presents that Santa had brought him – a fantastic table tennis table and set. Unbelievably, they did even look at the instructions … once! After it had been set up all of us had turns with Lachlan until it got just a bit too hot to be outside and exerting ourselves after our lunch! Amie, Robbie and Sue were more sensible by staying inside in the cool (although they did come out to have some games with Lachlan).

Then we are back to doing maintenance on the boat. Sue is still looking for a job whilst Andrew has been trying to tick off some of the jobs on his ever expanding list (one gets taken off and two get put on!).

We discovered a leak in the salt water pipe for washing down the deck. When it had been installed there was a join in the pipe as the pipe went through the deck. That where the leak was. It had been leaking for a while but we hadn’t seen it as the deck is plywood coated in fibreglass. Water and plywood don’t like each other, so we ended up with a rotten patch in the deck. To make things worse the pipe was next to the anchor winch. Yes it has rotted the deck under the winch.

Now we are anchored in the Brisbane river. To fix the deck we have to remove the winch. This meant we had to tie the anchor chain securely to the bow. We then had to hope that there was no reason to have to haul anchor such as a Pylon catching the anchor or dragging anchor in a big storm.

Anyway, after four days of Sue constantly checking the weather and watching where we were in the river, I was able to repair the damage and remount the winch.

We now have new plywood and fibreglass deck at the bow. Also I have changed the piping so there isn’t a join as it goes through the deck.

There is always something to do or repair on the boat.

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