jayneandmarty.com

Back in May I wrote about how we’d decided to freshen the boat up a bit. This afternoon, six months later, I finally got around to one of the tasks on the list – carpet.

I don’t really know what inspired me to get busy and sort it out. I just felt like fiddling with the boat this afternoon.

I took the seats out of the boat, measured up … (2m wide floor + 2×50cm high sides) x 2.6m of length … and went to Clark Rubber to buy some marine carpet. I probably could have found some cheap stuff on eBay but I was in the mood to buy and fit carpet TODAY and couldn’t wait. No patience, I know.

I only got as far as cutting the carpet today – I started to do it with scissors but got a blister so looked a bit harder for a Stanley knife (and found one). I’ll continue during the week so that we can use the boat again next weekend if we want to. The pressure’s on!

** Update – the slideshow now includes shots of the floor carpet (as opposed to the carpet up the sides) all glued in and the seats back in place. I’ve also glued half the sides carpet but haven’t got photos yet. It’s looking really good – (a) I’m pleased with the result and (b) it was really cheap. Should have done it ages ago!

Jayne, Peter and I went fishing this morning and we all caught something!

We woke with the sparrows at 5.30am, chomped down some brekky, made a thermos of coffee, hitched the boat up and drove to the boat ramp. I’d planned for us to zoom off towards Limeburners Bay and the whiting at about 6.30 – they get up early, those fishies.

We’d packed the boat on Saturday so everything was speedy at the ramp – give her a quick start before putting in, then just unclip her, back the trailer down the ramp, undo the winch and roll her off the trailer.

It was dead calm when we left the harbour so I opened up the throttle and we whizzed north at 35mph to the bay we wanted to fish and were baited up and in the water in no time. Sadly the bay wasn’t playing our game, and we went biteless for half an hour before the wind started to get up a bit. This made us decide to move back towards the boat ramp where it was a bit more sheltered. Good move!

Before too long I had a big bite (which surprised all of us, as Jayne usually catches all the fish and has all the bites) and started carefully reeling it in. When it was about a metre from the surface it looked like a huge flathead, which was exciting, but we soon realised it was weird-looking ray. Still, it was big enough and we figured it was probably OK to eat so we kept it. In the bottom of the boat. We forgot a bucket.

Here it is in the net.

Almost as soon as it was in the boat Jayne’s rod went and she pulled in a flathead.

Then it was on for half an hour or so as we caught another three of the rays (which apparently are Banjo Sharks) and four more flathead, including a real beauty for Jayne.

Another Banjo

Jayne’s big flathead

Not long after our 9th fish it started raining, so we decided to head home.

Peter filleted the fish up back at home (the Banjos were a real bugger, he tells me) and we had them for tea with chips. The flatties were great (always are) but those Banjos are full of bones and fairly bland, so we’ll chuck ‘em back next time!

P.S. After wakeboarding with 5 people the other week and fishing today with 3 in the boat I’m seriously considering ditching the name “Muchacha” and going with the one that was second on our shortlist: Tight Squeeze.

I’m moving webhosts at the moment so the blog will look a bit strange for a few days until I’ve decided what to do with the design. Everything should still work OK, though!Things didn’t go too smoothly but we’re all sorted now.

I have a bunch of photos of the progress Peter’s been making on the balcony so will set aside some time to write about that over the weekend.

Hope everyone’s well.

Great weather this weekend so we took Muchacha out both mornings for a wakeboard. On Saturday James and Lou came down, then today Iao came too, so we had 5 in the boat this morning. It was James’ first time and he managed to get up on his third attempt (must be our driving skills) and Iao went well too (proving that it’s like riding a bike) but Jayne and Lou didn’t board (they’re scared of sea-beasties). I reckon they’ll get in next time.

The water was much warmer than we expected. James and I wore our 4/3 steamers but Iao toughed it out in his boardies and said it was fine. Not sure of the actual temp but it’d have to be around 17-18 deg.

Muchacha went really well and had no trouble pulling Iao out even though he’s pushing 100kgs and there were four of us in the boat. The throttle’s still a bit touchy but it’s easy enough to maintain a constant speed.

May there be many more sunny and calm weekends like this between now and next April!

Plenty more photos on our Picasa page (and more to come when Iao burns his onto a CD for me).

James

James

Iao

Me

Me

Love that waterproof camera

Well we didn’t have a good day on the punt (except Paul’s win on El Pauli in the last) but we had a good day on the tucker.

Pics on our Picasa page
(http://picasaweb.google.com/jayneandmarty/MelbourneCupDay2007).

It’s been raining for about 18 hours straight down here. The BOM says we’ve had nearly 60mm in the last 30 hours. Great for the garden, but this morning Peter noticed a fair bit of water collecting under the house. We tracked it down to a 2cm high and 30cm wide gap at the bottom of the laundry door frame. The rain’s coming in sideways thanks to the strong southerly and I think that’s the problem.

Jayne’s down there now bailing out with the “turkey baster” thing that we use to get rid of water that collects in the transom area of the boat. (I’m upstairs in the warm writing this on the computer). She’s a champ, isn’t she? She tells me she’s removed 15 buckets’ worth so far.

Here’s where it’s coming in

Then it’s trickling along the wall under these shelves

And collecting here (Peter put those boards down so we could walk around down there without covering ourselves in mud)

She wasn’t smiling like this after the 15th bucket

We’ve put down a tarp to plug the gap for now, and hopefully the rain will stop soon. We’ll get the gap fixed properly as soon as we can!

Been busy these last four days so haven’t had a chance to post about Peter & Christine’s arrival yet, but today’s rain is preventing us from doing much so now’s my chance.

Their flight arrived at 11.20pm on Wednesday night, which was about 20 minutes late. Apparently the ground crew at Perth airport went on strike just as their plane was about to leave – literally. They walked away from the plane leaving the stairs still attached to it and it took JetStar (presumably) 20 minutes or so to find someone to do it. Lucky they weren’t on a later flight or they may have been really stuck.

Jayne and I were struggling to stay awake (we’re usually in bed by 9.30) but we were all home and unloaded by about 12.30, which wasn’t too bad. Jayne took Thursday off to help them unpack and help them settle in, and the removal van arrived at about 1pm with all their boxes and furniture, some of which has found a home in the house, with the rest down in the garage and spare room for now. We’ve swapped our fridge for theirs ‘cos it’s huge, but unfortunately it’s about 10cm too high to fit in the recess so it sticks out a bit! We’ll do something about the cupboard in due course. Replace it with a shelf or something.

They spent Friday sorting out boxes and yesterday in town. The sorting’ll continue for a while … there are still 20+ big boxes in the garage from last year when the shipping container came over from Tassie! Other than that I think they’re settling in OK, and Max is certainly enjoying the company during the day. He’s put himself to bed at 8pm for the last four nights – clearly he’s not used to all the activity during the day.

More photos and stories in due course.