Liz and I attended the Island Cruising Association Webpage cruising preparation seminar last weekend in Newcastle. John and Lyn really did a great job at addressing the varied levels of experience. We had decided to sail up to Newcastle for the weekend and were joined by our good friend Evan for the Sydney - Newcastle leg. It was an early start at 4am and Liz was amazed how beautiful Sydney harbour was at this early hour. We were the only moving vessel on the harbour. It was mainly a good motor sail the whole way in both direction. Passage time was 9 hours dock to dock both ways, and average of 7.5 knots. Not bad!
When we started this journey of planning for the trip I knew we were in for a busy time and a steep learning curve for Liz in particular. The seminar was a fabulous forum to exchange ideas, provide the assurance we needed regarding gear on board, addressed any questions that had remained unanswered, met some wonderful people with similar dreams and above all cemented our decision to set sail! This year has not been without it's challenges and whilst we strive each day to find the balance between "normal" life and preparing the boat we don't always get it right. Liz feels the guilt a lot more than I do as she tries to balance the time between boat duties and looking after the kids happiness (must be mothers guilt kicking in). Whereas I have remained focused on making sure we are ticking off items from the mammoth "to do" list. Liz put together a spreadsheet a few weeks back which gave her visibility of what had to be achieved in a short period of time. I had been thinking about all of this for a while and slowly ticking things off in my head however it was the first time Liz was able to visualise the list and anyone who knows Liz knows what followed:
STRESS followed by more STRESS
Having said she also works best under pressure and we have been in overdrive ever since! It's amazing how much can be achieved when you have the "oh shit" moment and D Day is only 6 weeks away!
We will post some images of our recent boat projects in the near future.
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