Life is what happens!

I have been constantly reminded just over the last few weeks of the saying “life is what happens when you are busy making other plans!”.  That is what it has felt like for us.

A few weeks back we got a call from the boss noting that she was coming up for approximately a week meaning we get to take a break and relax on REAO, nice.  We decided that we would bring the boat in for a hull scrapping and then head across to Maggie for the week (well why not eh!).  The time came, she arrived and we headed off for our mini adventure.  The first hint that something was out of kilter was when Craig couldn’t get the engine to start – hmmm not a good beginning.  He tried a few things, then a few more things, no luck, so we weren’t going to head away that day, no problems.

The next day saw Craig with his head down in the engine compartment. 

Now on REAO our engine has been dropped into a nice “tight” compartment below the main living area.  It is easy to get to as all you need to do is lift up the lid plus the sound proof lid and bingo there it is.  The fun begins however when you need to do any work on it and in this instance on the starter motor which is out of sight on the bottom of the engine. 

Admittedly for the first few hours it was amusing watching Craig having to use a mirror and flashlight plus contort his body to even see the starter motor let alone having to get his big manly hands and arms (plus tools) down and under the main engine to work on trying to get it out.  Fast forward a couple of days later and we were still at anchor and he was still trying to figure out how to get it out.  Yes we could have hired and gotten a professional out to have a look but you need to know that that is NOT how boaties work – a professional is definitely the very last option after all other avenues have been exhausted.   Our next brainwave was to dinghy over to some of our neighbouring boats and chat with them to see if anyone had any ideas.  Sure enough two old timers (Bob and Macca) were happy to come over, have a look and share their wisdom.  Unfortunately, they were unable to get any further forward than Craig had.  The next day Bob came back and between him and Craig over a couple of hours they finally managed to get the starter motor out – success!

Now that it was out Craig was able to run a few tests only to discover that it was working fine – whaddya know.  It turned out that it had been a poor connection between the starter motor and an earthing wire which he discovered through the tests (a loss of only 1.5volts meant the engine couldn’t start).  He was able to put in a new earthing wire, after a few more contortions and with the help of Bob they got the starter back into place and after a mere 7 days problem was solved.
Always something to do

While this had all been going on I had been keeping busy, doing small tasks around the boat, reading heaps of books, taking my walks and a couple of times when requested, heading in to help clean the lodge.  The last time I had gone in to help I hadn’t actually felt very well but decided to do it anyways.  As I was leaving the boss stopped me to have a little chat.  It seemed that her plan was to stay at the lodge to do some tidy up maintenance and now she was going to be there for anywhere from one to three months – this was good to know.

When I got back to the boat Craig and I briefly had a chat about it before I took myself to bed and the next morning woke up feeling completely under the weather.  I stayed in bed for another day before making the decision that I needed to go to the doctors, I wasn’t sleeping or eating because of the pain.  The doctor gave me some antibiotics and said if I wasn’t feeling better in a day or two to come back and they will run tests for Glandular Fever.  Back to bed I went and then two days later Craig had to help me back to the doctors as the antibiotics weren’t working and I was feeling miserable.  More money spent at the Doctors and they encouraged me to go and do some blood tests to check for GF.  In the meantime they kindly prescribed me some steroids which might help.  I discussed it with Craig and decided not to spend any more money by taking a blood test.  According to the doctor if it came back positive there was nothing they could do about it just encourage me to stay hydrated and get bed rest which I was doing already.  Thankfully the next day I felt a little better thanks to the steroids and Craig was able to set me up a bed upstairs so I could at least look around a little and even read.  I then spent the next week just resting, reading and letting my body recover.

During this period we continued to discuss our plans and what we were going to do.  Would we stay and hope it was closer to a month rather than three months before we could head back to the lodge or would we sail away?  After a few days deliberating over different options we have decided that we would stay.  I am getting called a couple of times a week to go help clean and there is still a couple of bigger tasks that we are needing done on the boat (getting fridge going and rigging looked at, both jobs needing to be done by professionals).  We have also decided that we really need a watermaker.  At this stage we are pretty self sufficient on REAO with our own power (solar and wind) plus have lots of room for food storage.  The only thing that we would potentially run into problems with is running out of fresh water, if we had a water maker on board that problem is gone.  So we will stay on while we have work and get those things done as well as continue to add to our savings. 

I realised that a couple of days ago was the one year anniversary of me starting work at the Yongala Lodge.  I never envisioned when I started that I would still be there now but that’s the beauty of our life now.  So for now its taking it day by day.  Enjoying our time, ticking off the endless boat tasks, reading heaps and walking.  The last few weeks have even bought us closer together (if that’s possible) and we are enjoying being in each others company 24/7 (of course it helps that I am an absolute delight) LOL.

 

We really don’t know what is around the corner and even though we may make plans we have to be flexible enough to change them, as I said at the beginning “life is what happens when you are busy making other plans”!