A member of the South-East Queensland Slashers.
"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."
-- Oscar Wilde
[ 10 most recent entries ]
4:21pm - Tuesday, 25th July 2006
The Fearsome Angle Grinders
mode: public
mood: bouncy
An angle grinder is a very useful tool, with which you can do cut, grind, remove paint, smooth corners, and I'm sure there are other uses I am as yet unfamiliar. What sticks in my head is that it will hurt, maim, and perhaps kill you without a moment's notice. And yet I have to use one just about every day.
"The angle grinder's the most dangerous tool you can use," tells me just about every bloke in the boat yard. "The four-inch," for they all name them by inch size, despite Australia being metric," is the least, and the nine-inch, that's a man-killer."
( Read more... )
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4:32pm - Wednesday, 5th July 2006
The River, The Job, and The City
mode: public
I had vowed to leave Mackay. As soon as my yacht was back in the water I was going to head out the rivermouth and straight on up the coast, not to be found anywhere in the area until after the northerlies arrived -- and perhaps not even then. I found myself having to wait out strong winds instead. Leaving the Pioneer River with strong winds is written and said everywhere to be only for the brave, and so I waited at anchor while my boat sailed between tide and wind, jerking at the rode.
Ben, my boyfriend, left for Brisbane, and the strong winds continued on -- desisting only a couple of days before his arrival. I decided to stay so we could sail up the coast together. He had moved on board, having sold his catamaran the month before.
Early that morning I was to be found ashore, singing as I waited for the familiar sign of my father's van to appear around the corner and for Ben to alight. We were to leave the next day, weather most favourable, and I was looking forward to sailing again, even if I hadn't two coins to rub together. I'd once again closed my bank account, having negative funds at time of closure due to bank fees.
"Your father just offered me work in the boatyard," said Ben after the greetings were over. "It's good pay ..."
( Read more... )
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1:53pm - Saturday, 20th May 2006
a different kind of pressure
mode: public
I worked for one week too many on Coral Trekker. For months before that last day every time we left harbour I would think that it wasn't long until Friday -- my afternoon off. The day would wear on and I'd think that it wasn't long until bedtime, that a sleep would make it all better -- tomorrow is another day, another day closer to freedom. As soon as I'd washed that last dish I would roll out my swag and try to usher passengers off to bed so that I could all the more quickly face the new day.
That last week wasn't like that, for all that I knew that when we pulled into the marina berth six days' hence it would be the last. A heavy pressure lay on my chest that morning. Even the thought that it was only six sleeps until the end did not work, although I rolled out my swag with the vague hope that in the morning the pressure would be gone.
( But it didn't. )
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1:24pm - Thursday, 18th May 2006
The Histrionic Boat Yard
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"We've got 60 knots of wind," said my father's SMS. "You'd better get back here."
Ben and I were in northern NSW on a car trip, and had just arrived in Ballina when this message came through. Sixty knots of wind and Cyclone Larry wasn't due to hit the coast until the next day! If the wind was that bad already it meant that the cyclone trajectory had changed and it was heading towards Mackay.
A follow-up message changed things; my father, Phil, had merely been exaggerating. There would be sixty knots the following morning, when the cyclone itself would hit the coast up near Townsville. Where our vessels were kept was at the end of the storm warning.
That night there were messages and calls from yachties all over Australia; people in Tasmania seeing if our vessels were all right, folks in the Whitsundays ringing to say that they were in the thick of things, winds rising and seas rolling on in high.
One guy in Shute Harbour, where our vessels had been for months while working on charter boats, couldn't move despite being open to the south-easterly, the worst quarter for the winds to be coming from with a cyclone. The seas were rolling in there, and as his engine wasn't working he had to sit it out, anchoring his trimaran as best he could and going ashore to see how it turned out. When the storm subsided there were yachts to be found on the rocks, in the mangroves, and boat bits floating all over the harbour.
( Mackay's weather and boat work. )
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2:25pm - Thursday, 27th April 2006
Conjure, the National Science Fiction Convention
mode: public
My stomach churned with nervousness as the train neared Roma Street, the train station nearest to the convention hotel for Conjure, this year's National Science Fiction convention; the one I was to be Fan Guest of Honour at. I'd gotten an e-mail from the convenor only the day before, telling me that there were five panels I was to be on as well as put in a presence at the opening and closing ceremony.
The first panel was only minutes after I was going to arrive, the next right after, and then came the opening ceremony. At ordinary conventions where I don't have to be on panels I get nervous and twitchy; this time I just about squeezed off Ben's hand, he whom I had dragged along with me to experience all things science fictiony.
I need not have worried. The first panel was on fanzines and whether they would survive, and as I suspected there weren't too many present. I didn't prepare for this or any subsequent, but for none need I have worried, as the other panellists were all too keen to fill in any silent spots -- not that there were any -- all by themselves. Bill Wright was staunch -- as were half of our audience of five -- that fanzines were only deemed so if they were paper, and Eric Lindsay was just as keen that electronic fanzines are as viable. Had I said anything it would have been to agree with Eric, but as it was I drank water and looked at Eric blankly when he suggested that a one-off if I wrote a fanzine on my sail would be art, not a fanzine.
( And the rest! )
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11:26am - Monday, 3rd April 2006
two weeks in Tasmania
mode: public
The airport was full of people when we arrived at Launceston, all waiting to halloo arrivals. They were out in the open air -- it looked most strange, used as I am to bigger terminals, all closed in. The luggage came out on a bunch of carriages behind a little vehicle. No continuous belt! How quaint, how strange! There were our luggage, two big boxes on the last carriage. We waited until everyone had finished the mad rush for their bag before dragging them off and outside.
Propping the boxes against the wall, I dug into mine and pulled out my trusty swiss Army knife, tore into the box, and so began assembly of our bicycles. It wasn't long until dark, and our night's destination still was some distance away.
I toddled off to fill our water bottles and came back to find Ben talking to a cabbie.
"Nothing at Evandale," said the cabbie. "You can camp there -- at the primary school. Take the first left when you hit the post office and keep going. You'll see it."
Bikes set, we headed on to historic town Evandale of the penny farthing races -- our first night's camp.
( After a long silence, the two weeks in Tasmania. Over 8,000 words worth. )
[ 6 seedlings | plant a seed ]
12:43pm - Friday, 16th December 2005
the busker
mode: public
There is great musical talent to be had hereabouts; a couple of months ago a musical regatta of sailing vessels was had in Double Bay, a seldom-visited anchorage just north of Airlie. I have gone to music parties a couple of times, where most had guitars and sang -- or at least plonked away on a bush bass.
On board Trekker -- the captain used to play professionally and gets out his guitar every so often. The deckhand who joined us this week was once lead in a grunge rock band for fifteen years before he found a love of tallships.
These are all people having fun; there is one man I know of, however, who plays for a living, busking on the main street of Airlie.
My first acquaintance of Ron wasn't on the streetside; I met him at a public BBQ one afternoon, when my brother contributed food to his evening meal.
"I went to Lifeline," said Rob, "and they gave me all this meat." 'All' was right -- certainly the charity knows what kind of food to give to the homeless to store unrefrigerated in this clime.
Homeless he was -- or, if homelessnesss is a state of mind as well as being, he was not homeless at all. And in his state of mind, the whole world is his home.
( His various homes. )
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4:26pm - Friday, 25th November 2005
in the rigging and in the water
mode: public
"They can probably hear you laughing all the way in Cid Harbour," said Ben shortly after he began working on Coral Trekker. We were in Tongue Bay, the other side of Whitsunday Island.
Last week we were once more in Tongue Bay, at the top of Whitehaven Beach, when I climbed the rigging after the skipper told me to put a cork in it. Being up there is excellent; the view at the best of times is beyond par, and that night there was a full moon and clear sky.
I lay on the end of the yard, hanging on with a leg, and listened to music on my iPod, callously abandoning Ben to wash the dishes. When he came up to find me he was understandably cranky. It didn't last long. One comment, and then I was laughing.
Nearby was a charter vessel crewed by some friends of mine. She heard me laughing and began laughing as well -- and I could not stop laughing, louder and louder. Soon the whole anchorage was full of boats laughing. One man began singing. A-wim-oh-weh.
I laughed until I was weak and nearly fell off the t'gallant; only Ben hanging onto me kept me on the rigging. They probably did hear me in Cid Harbour that night.
( Sometimes quiet is nice ... )
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5:34pm - Friday, 4th November 2005
canoodling in the Whitsundays
mode: public
Three days off, and what do you do with them? Return to the islands you make your living in, naturally. It's either that or end up in the bar every evening, drinking it up, and so when Ben mentioned he was going out for an overnighter in his catamaran, I chose to go with him.
Being out there on a different boat made all the difference. Places I normally shrug my shoulders for because of their familiarity became new again -- and sailing in a little catamaran, slipping across the waves, was a novelty.
Coral Trekker needs gale force winds to make her go; under a comfortable wind speed she'll do the fastness of a knot, maybe, and it would take you half the trip to get to the islands.
We often get the complaint we don't sail enough in her.
Off we went in La Luna. She's a delightful little cat; phenomenally fast and responsive. We sailed almost straight off the beach he had her in, and weaved in and around anchored yachts at will. And there I'd thought my yacht was responsive; she makes mine own feel like a lump of lead.
That she's low in the water and open made me want to swim more. I spent half the time swimming or snoozing in the reflected sun, where normally I eschew the water and sit in the shade.
Two days of that and my skin is ever more so tanned. The difference between regularly exposed parts of me and the unexposed is striking now.
( And ... another difference. )
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11:53pm - Sunday, 23rd October 2005
unexpected excitements in an otherwise dull day
mode: public
Ben and I were on the wheelhouse of Trekker one night, finishing off our drinks outside of the view of the customers, when I looked over the aft. There was a dinghy not very far away, going with the tide.
"That's not our tender floating away, is it?" I asked.
We looked again, and hopped on down to deck level. I kept an eye on it the whole time, and that's when I noticed the red glow.
"Wait, Bob's --"
Ben jumped in after the tender before I could finish saying that Bob was smoking his cigarette in the dinghy. I could hear their voices after he finished swimming his way to the rescue.
( Unnecessary rescues and the necessary ones. )
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