A little light on, in a heavy sort of way..

Not much action on the blog front of late.. Xave & I have been 'working a few things out'.

It's funny. When we first starting living on our boat, it was surprising how many single blokes we met living on boats who had started off as part of a couple.

Indeed when we started telling people that we were planning to live on a boat, too many of them offered (?) the same sort of stories: "We had friends who lived on a boat. They're divorced now." etc etc.

So it's really not funny at all, and often a foregone conclusion I imagine.

We are over it. For the time being at least.

I for one, am sick of feeling grotty. Sick of leaving the boat looking like I live on a boat. I'm becoming lazy, bored, and intolerant, (yeah yeah, I know, MORE intolerant). Cast Iron Cookie is fine, but Roo feels anxious when we're sailing, and feels sick. Thank God Xave is keeping us all sane. The bloody shark we passed as we were heading out of Broken Bay was possibly the straw that broke the camels back.

So when our friends asked us if we wanted to look after their home and dogs in Watsons Bay until August, it only took a couple of days of tears of defeat (mine) to decide that we would be MAD not to....

My question to you is this. Should I stop writing these sporadic posts?

In one way, we still feel most definately 'adrift', and we are still 'family robinson'. But is there enough material in the eastern suburbs of Sydney for a bogan girl from Queenscliff to write about?.... Hmmm, I wonder..

Rock a bye baby.

... on the tree top.

In our case, at The Basin.

Yesterday, we farewelled our neighbours and went to the basin for a change of scenery, prior to heading back to Sydney. As expected we had a lovely time swimming in the lagoon, and dining in the sunset with the wallabies and goannas.

As evening closed in, we settled the kids, and Xave and I commented on pleasant it was to be gently rocked to sleep.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS.

We retired at 10pm, and that's when it all turned curly. The north-easterly swell built up, the wind dropped off, the current turned us side on to the swell, and well, lets put it this way, actually, if you like, lets do a little experiment:

1. Lie down on your back.
2. Now, roll to the right so that you are on your right hand side.
3. Now, roll back the other way to finish on your left hand side.
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3
5. Continue for 4 HOURS!

By 1am, Xave & I felt so delirious, that we dropped the mooring, and motored back to Palm Beach, where Xave promptly fell asleep in the calm water, and I, ironically, lay in bed completely wired from the excitement.

Ho hum.

Hot as Hell.

Have I written about the heat?

About the heat inside our steel box?

About the heat inside our dark blue steel box?

Struggling would be an understatement. Lately we've been checking the weather with tentative fingertips, not wanting to hit 'enter' and have a week of 30+ appear on the screen in front of us.

Now one might [rightly] think what's your problem, just jump into the water... and one would be right on the money, and we do, but our issue is not during the day -

It's in the still of the night.

Most evenings, it is a mill pond. There is not a breath of wind.

The other night was so stinking hot, and it went something like this:

10.00pm - kids and Xave finally fall asleep on deck
10.30pm - humidity soaks us through
10.31pm - I wake xave & we move kids into their cabin
12.00am - cooks cries out that she's hot
2.00am - cooks comes into our cabin to cuddle
2.01am - is she fricking kidding me?
2.10am - cooks and I go into the saloon
2.14am - I lie down on the couch
2.14am - she lies down on the other couch
2.15am - she lies down on the wooden floor
2.16am - she shuffles all over the floor for a bit
2.17am - I think I should have wrapped her in a mop outfit
2.18am - she comes to a stop on the floor in the companionway
2.20am - she is asleep
3.30am - I'm still on the couch, waiting for sleep
3.32am - roo calls out in his sleep that he's hot
3.33am - I start hating Xave that he is snoringly asleep
3.34am - I toy with the idea of waking him up
3.35am - roo stays asleep
3.36am - I don't wake Xave coz that would be truly wrong
3.37am - I admit to myself that I didn't wake up Xave b/c Roo stayed asleep not because it would have been wrong
4.00am - I turn on the light and start reading 'The Slap' (thanks M.C)
6.45am - Roo wakes for the day

12.00pm - We all drive west for 3 hours to the Jenolan Caves in the Blue Mountains where we stay for 2 days.

The caves were so so so cool and lovely and the chrystals were stunningly beautiful.

One tough Cookie.

Those that know Cooks, know that she has a bit of a 'thing' for creatures.

Spiders, ants, slaters, slugs, snails, beetles. Her creatures have been collected from the sea lately - fish, prawns, squids, crabs, pipefish, sea worm thingos....

and moon jellyfish.

Jellyfish must be her current favourites. She spends hours collecting them in her net, popping them in a bucket, unfortunately sometimes squishing them through her fingers.

Well apparently the moonies, have exacted their revenge.

They've called on their cousin, the blue bottle. ONE SOLITARY STINKING NASTY BLUE BOTTLE to do their dirty work.

Cooks was floating around the boat, in her floaties, minding her own business when they put their 'plan' into action. All of a sudden, Cooks started screaming and swimming back to us ferociously fast.

We had NO IDEA what had happened, as we were watching her the entire time.

The poor little mite had been stung all over her tummy, bum, chest, shoulder, wrist - she must have swum in a circle and wrapped the tentacle around her...

Lots of hot water, followed by copious treats, and she was fine.

Today she's covered in red dots (which were white raised dots after the sting). It really did do a number on her.
.. and today we're checking for them prior to jumping off the boat.

and Cooks, true to form, couldn't give a rat's arse. She's back in the water now, proud of her dots.

She is one tough Cookie!