December 2007 Archives

It's been quite a year. We're in Hardys Bay, seeing the year out. Goodbye 2007.

The sun will come up again as normal tomorrow, reminding us to take life one day at the time.

After a brief shopping stop-over at Toronto, we anchored at Styles Point this afternoon. For the benefit of visitors: please check "Where is Te Moana".

We're looking forward to tomorrow's Barbie with Lawrie and Louise (and PC and Queisha) and on Saturday taking the Coomans clan for a sail.

We've had several attempts to get Jake to do "his business" on the boat. No, real dogs do it on land and he refuses point blank, so my job when cruising is to take him ashore mornings and nights. I won't recount here our attempts to get him to see the error of his ways, but I've secretly been very happy to have the excuse to step into the dinghy in the evening and early morning.

Apart from sailing itself, one of the real pleasures is waking early and watching the slow transformation from night to day. Hearing the birds wake up, watching the silver reflections on the water. Anyway, Jake woke me extra early this morning (ahem... 4.30 am). On returning to the boat, I got a chair out and just sat on the stern of the boat until sunrise. An genuine pleasure.

This morning on our way to Lake Macquarie we were followed (ahem... led) by a nice pod of dolphins for over half an hour. A few Mums with calves and a bunch of playful teenagers. Lying on the trampoline you can just about touch them and there is no doubt that they enjoy spectators. Catching the action with a camera is quite a challenge, though. So for the first fifteen minutes, I didn't even bother getting the camera. Too many times I've wasted valuable dolphin play time by staring through a lens and wishing they were more predictable. In stead I just enjoyed the action. But then, I couldn't help myself and got the camera out anyway.

This is the usual shot you get, showing where they had been:

Getting a shot of a dolphin out of the water is the aim of the game:

But I think this is the "keeper" for today, a bit "arty", but capturing some of the action:

We're just passing Barrenjoey as I write this. The forecast is for light southerly wind, so it will be motoring all the way. We're updating "Where is Te Moana" along the way.

We have decided to let the sea settle down a bit after yesterday's weather and have postponed our departure until tomorrow morning.

This weekend, we're off to Lake Macquarie. If you're interested in finding out where we are, check out the "Where is Te Moana" page.

I just read Nick Harvey's blog post about the Paris Boat show. The new Lagoon 400 looks good, perhaps I should stay at work for another 10 years so we can upgrade...

The real gem in Nick post was a link to this video showing the delivery to the show of a Lagoon 380 and a 440 through the streets of Paris at night. Just have a look at the ease with which the truck lifts the boats over the top of traffic signs with its nifty hydraulic trailer mounts! Enjoy...