Ania is off visiting friends in Australia, leaving me with all the fun jobs. Cruising is defined as ‘fixing boats in beautiful locations’ and whilst the Gold Coast isn’t as beautiful as many, its not a bad place to hang out.

I’m not sure it was intentional, but the new crew is missing out on the ‘fun’ parts of cruising. It’s impossible, I would suggest, to fully immerse oneself into the cruising lifestyle without fixing at least one toilet. So whilst Ania is surfing on the south coast of Australia, I’m replacing toilet hose on her toilet! The other ‘fun’ job is hull scrubbing. Whilst the hulls are actually pretty good, the barnacles in Newcastle did a proper job on the props. They’re now considerably better!

New to Duplicat this season is an inflatable Stand-up Paddleboard. My first attempt saw me swim a couple of times, but I’m slowly getting used to being on it. Managed 2kms yesterday but prefer flat water. Not sure I’m going to reach the point of surfing down waves - maybe the crew will do that!

The rest of the prep for leaving in May continues fine. We’ll have to do some big provisioning of tins etc before we leave, and also work out how to claim back some of the GST on the goodies! Australia is far more of a pain in this respect than New Zealand (which makes it very easy by providing a form which allows a business not to charge the GST in the first place!). We can only claim for things bought in the 60 days before we leave.

In the meantime a few more boats are arriving in the area. I saw Geniet Lewe arriving as I was heading back to the ‘Mall’ anchorage. It was nice to see them again and I hope to catch up with them over the next couple of weeks. Glamma Puss is near by and Jim and I are off to see a footie game in a couple of days - meeting Mark from Fruit Salid on the way. It’s been something I wanted to see, and Jim is a big fan. The bonus is that the game we’re off to see is at the Gabba!