Four nights and three days… We got back to Kettering on Thursday afternoon and Anna, our housesitter, drove us home so that we could pick up our car.
We slept on the boat in the marina, but spent three very full days running back and forth between Kettering and Hobart doing laundry (seven loads!!!), reprovisioning, paying bills, touching base with business contacts and friends, frantically trying to get the garden back in shape, and, of course, fixing the boat problems that sent us home in the first place.
The good news is that the new fuel lift pump was a simple transplant and works a treat.
The other big job was repairing the cockpit VHF speaker – it’s an old model and parts are no longer available. After searching for a suitable driver for the speaker in electronics shops all over town (and even following a lead to look for old radios in the tip shop!) a slightly too small speaker was cleverly adapted to fit the housing, so now we have a functioning speaker again.
We didn’t want to be at home for too long, in case we found it hard to get started again on our trip. When we left Port Davey we decided to move to plan B – head up the east coast and aim to get to Melbourne to visit family. Then on Friday Victoria went into a five day lockdown! It looks like we may not get over the border this trip. Ok, plan C then. We’ll head up the east coast, enjoying our favourite haunts and see how far we get. Simple then. Only looking at the weather forecasts, there are strong north-easterlies forecast for Tuesday afternoon through at least the following weekend and the tides won’t allow us to comfortably transit the Denison canal before then anyway.
So tonight we’re on a KBC mooring in Quarantine Bay – just 25 min from our berth in Kettering, but at least we’re on our way again. Tomorrow we’ll try to get to Norfolk Bay where we’ll tuck into a cosy bay and hang off the pick (and hopefully not drag) until we can take the next step. Not quite the summer we originally had in mind, but we're looking forward to another month on the water and we’ll see what fun we can get up to.
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