Day 5 of ? – What the Hell am I Doing Here?

So what exactly am I doing on this trip? The answer might surprise you.

Here’s the deal: My aunt Diana and uncle Ross have a fortyish foot (twelve metre) catamaran that is currently parked in a boating lot in a place called Burraneer Bay (just at the bottom edge of Sydney Australia). Here’s the view from the back of the boat at sunrise.

No filter

Their ship is called One White Tree and it’s awesome. It’s a catamaran which means it has two huge pontoons on either side and between them there’s an indoor part (kitchen, dining room) and an outdoor space (patio table / driver’s seat at the back and viewing platform at the front). The sail pole is in the middle and there’s a tiny raft that hangs of the back (like the shuttle craft on the Star Trek Enterprise).

As for what I’ll be doing, I’m told the work will involve a lot of “heavy lifting”. See, I’m more of a carrier than a lifter so when I found out I’d be carrying *and* lifting I got quite upset.

My first task was to clean the barnacles off the bottom of the ship. With an ice scraper. I got the right pontoon and Ross took the left one. After three days of scraping I’m mostly done my side. There’s this one part (the bottom) that you can’t reach from the surface so you have to dive UNDER the boat and then scrape for a few minutes then come up for air. It’s really dangerous work and there isn’t even any hazard pay.

My other main responsibility is I’m the ship’s project manager (self-appointed). We’re going to be driving it over to New Zealand and there’s a shitload of work we need to get done on her before we leave.

1. Remove the barnacles
2. Get the freezer fixed
3. Replace the batteries in the E-Purb
4. Prepare a tonne of food
5. Purchase supplies (food, diesel)
6. Test the ship’s batteries and (depending on the results, have some replaced)
7. Check the sacrificial anodes
8. Go for test sail
9. Measure the tension on the rigging
10. Test the single sideband radio, set up the digital comms system
11. Repair zipper for the sail pack

I’m looking forward to striking things off the list!

[Note I purposefully tried not to use any proper boating terms in this post – mostly to to try and get some hate clicks from real boat people who actually know what they’re talking about. It was just this one time, Rick. From now on I’m going to try and use the right starboard words.]