Mackay marina

I'm currently in Mackay marina doing a few jobs awaiting some crew before I head south again. The position of Evening Star on the marina means that anyone that walks past says hi or offers an opinion on whatever job I'm doing

The marina is the only one on the coast without a Sailmaker or chandler, thus the headsail repair was job number one.

Next was the 'eyebrows' these are tiny strips of teak running along the coach house to look good I suppose, they take approx an hour a side to sand and then varnish, then another 4 coats to follow!
Bow thruster remote decided to fall apart, a trip to jaycar, and I was armed with a solution, see pic.

Next job was replacing the remaining 6 meters of black water hose! Sounds easy yet the job took nearly all day, lucky ES has aircon. Check out the pic of the spaghetti mess These hoses make.
Next was to convert the heads to fresh water flush, the trick I learnt was to plumb the inlet to the sink drain, to flush, turn on the tap and bingo. Also to empty the sink drain post washing teeth you have to flush the head! The aft head was just a matter of closing the seacock, the fwd one I had to do a bit more re plumbing of the deck wash intake, a quick trip to the plumbing shop in downtown Mackay, and all done, reality was a little different, yet managed to finish in time for happy hour at the marina pub.

Hopefully we are gone on saturday, it seems a big southerly predicted on Sunday means we won't get too far.

Video of the GT's at bait reef.

This is a cool vid of Lach and Ali watching the GT's as I throw the remains of the tuna while we were at bait reef.

My Last Days on Evening Star !

Hi all. Yes it's true that I lost interest in the blog and was face booking, but I find blogging on the IPad too hard. I will have to master the IPad before I leave port for our next trip. Yes, I am planning our next trip. I have absolutely loved sailing on our beautiful boat Evening Star. She has looked after us the whole way from Sydney, and even survived Hammo Race week.

Today was my lAst day of sailing and it brings a tear to my eye wrtiting this. I felt so sad sailing past our last Whitsunday island. We left Goldsmith Island at 6 this morning to get the the northerly wind to arrive into Mackay. We were only out for about an hour and the fishing line told us we had a fish. Yum I thought. Fish for our last night! We were under full sail and a bit hard to slow the boat down, so our little fishie was lost (or very large fishie) taking our prized Louis Vuiton lure (ask Ben Lillyman what we're talking about).

Here in Mackay now so the boys can watch the rugby and I can have a haircut and colour to look Sydney presentable.

This being my last blog I thought I would share with you my top 3 spots and my top 3 moments on this Crazy Gap term. It's sort of been a thing that I have asked Mark and Alastair since we've been cruising. I always ask them to tell me their top 2 spots and moments. I am changing it to be 3 as I cannot choose. Here goes:

Top Spots:
1. Platypus Bay on Frazer Island. Long white beach with absolutely no boats or people about.
2. Cape Upstart, south of Magnetic Island. Spent 4 days there getting out of the wind and met some lovely lovely people. Just what was needed after our sad time on Magnetic Island.
3. Bait Reef - 15 nautical miles from Hook island. Mark had wanted to go there when we first arrived but I was too scared. We waited until the McKeiths came Onboard and then a second time
with the Turners and the Hunter teenagers. Amazing spot snorkeling on the reef in the middle
of nowhere.
4. Can't stop at 3 spots, so sneaking in a 4th: all of the beaches/bays at the top of Hook Island particularly the Pinnacles. The best snorkeling and beaches. Divine !!!!!

My top 3 moments:
1. Sailing into Brampton Island, officially the first Whitsunday island. I couldn't believe I had sailed from Southport, me who gets sea sick and won't sail between the Sydney Heads and Pittwater.
2. Snorkeling out on the reef. Why have we been going overseas for the last 5 years scuba diving when we have the best reef here ?
3. Ali telling me he couldn't concentrate doing his schoolwork as he was distracted with dolphins jumping around the boat.

So that's it for me. Ali and I leave on Tuesday to return to Sydney and our busy life. I am letting Ali go to school for one day with his long blond hair and then he has to have a haircut. Mark Hunter has about another month before he gets back to Sydney and he visits a hairdresser. I made him have a shower and take of the blood stained fishing shirt he had on before he went to the Tavern to watch the rugby this afternoon. He walks around in these horrible thongs of his because he says he cannot fit into shoes !!!! It will be difficult for all three of us to get back to our Sydney lives.

I hope the boy followers of this blog are not too bored with this latest post! I know all you boy followers are loving Marks talk about heads, showers, sumps etc. Don't be disappointed, he has another few weeks left delivering Evening Star back to Sydney and I am sure he will share with you all that boring stuff..

Love Kirsty xxx

Photos related to the previous post

Above is the new hose out of the holding tank, can anyone tell me how to stop the kink? After the hose is heated it kinks no matter what you do

Top of the fwd sump, the fridge used to drain into it too!

the repaired engine water pump, yea

A few jobs completed as we have cruised

For those that are wondering where Kirsty has been on writing the blog, she has lost interest and moved over to the main social network 'facebook' ask her to be a friend!
So that now leaves me in complete control of the blog, thus you can expect more posts on practicle subjects rather than sunset drinks and marina laundries!

A major job I completed was to change the sanitation hose from the fwd holding tank to the discharge pump.After a period they get permutated with the tank odor, which in turn wafts up throught the boat.
This task was deemed a success, pat on back, and now I will embark on the remaining pipes. I have been in communication with the self professed expert on heads called  'the headmistress' in the US, a link to my qu and answer with her http://forums.sbo.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?t=133550 Diagnosed a blocked vent (which also needs replacing) and a leaking anti syphon valve, all fun and exciting jobs.
Evening Star has two such head systems thus I will be the expert when they have all been replaced.
Another major job was in getting the shower sumps to empty, as the shower drains are below the waterline, the showers need to drtain into a sump first, then this gets pumper over the side by seperate pumps. Well neither worked, so in I went and found both sumps to be full of toxic waste which had corroded off the pickup pipes, both now work perfectly yet the inline filters need constant cleaning of that toxic waste, yuk!
Engine now, I have now added another 100 hours since the oil and racor filter change since Gladstone, upon inspection I noted the racor had turned black, which in short meant that the it was filtering out dirty fuel. A diesel will not run with dirty fuel, and it will reduce the life of the engine, as the one on ES has only 2400 hours, you can say that it is less than half way through its life.
So rather than paying a mechanic to do what is an easy job (once you know how that is) I attacked it with while at the marina at airlie beach, thus close to help if I stuffed it up.
I do remember the mechanic in Gladstone being stumped when he got to the bleeding process, he solved it by running the engine while an injector was opened, way beyond my skill set. So I dialed a friend, who said the reason the fuel pump wont work, and thus bleed the system of air, is that you need to open the bleed nipple FIRST! Simple when you know how, even the guru, Nigel Calder and his $100 worth of books didn't have this bit of advice, is there a 'diesel for dummies'?
Filters all cleaned and engine didn't miss a beat, another pat on back I say.
The bildge is a pit of smelly putrid oil water and I hate to think what else, where was it coming from?
There is a huge built in oil drip tray under the engine which catches the drips, yet also filled with water, then just spilled over into the main bildge.
The water was coming from a leaking fitting on the engine water pump, about a drip a second was enough to do the damage.
Off the fitting came (i make it sound easy, yet it is hours of work in an area that is so cramped that you cannot turn a spanner more than 1/8 of a turn! See following pics
You also have to contort yourself into a new yoga position, and hold the pose while doing subtle finger movements for ages.
Anyway, I fixed it, leak stopped, oil drip tray now only gets oil and not water, and the process of cleaning the bildge has started, anyone like to help?
Mizzen boom vang is still now fixed, so I have rigged a topping lift that does the same job; might just leave as is and save myself the $450 for a news vang from FRANCE!! And while I'm on the rigging, the Profurl guys have suggested that I upgrade the boom, to which they even have a product and a manual they have sent me. This gets me wondering why they have had to have an upgrade kit anyway, no doubt I am not the first to have experinced the boom problem I had during Hammo race week.
Engine zincs, prop zinc, bildge pump strainer, sump strainers, cockpit speakers, VHF repeater re solder, the list goes on.
A yacht is like painting the harbour bridge, once you finish you just start all over again; Lucky I am unemployed!

Bait Reef

One of the great things to do on your own yacht in QLD to to actually sail out to the reef, charter boats arn't allowed, so your only other option is with 1000 other punter flapping like shark bait while attempting to snorkel, great senerity! As I type we are on a mooring 15 miles north east of Hayman Island at Bait Reef, the closest one to the whitsundays, you would think that it is popular, yet there are 6 moorings here, and we have never seen anymore than 3 boats out here, maybe the skippers did what their wives said and stayed in Nara Inlet.
Tonite we will stay out here talking about all the good scencs in Dead Calm.
We will feast on tuna, we caught a ripper of a specimen on th eway out, he did not want to be caught, and unlike the first one we caught in Hervey bay, this guy was very much alive.
Lachlan had to pass the rod to dad top bring him home, 20 year olds have no staminer!
The scene was one of chaos as I prepared the Hinckley after cockpit for the fish fight, to which Kirsty called it 'fish misenplace' The next 5 mins saw the fish landed, almost lost as it flapped in the scuppers until we threw it in the cockpit, Alastair donging the head with a Pardres mini bat, and finally a coup de grace of the head in a bucket of now blood red water. Every surface of the cockpit was splattered with blood, and the female crys of cruelty died away.
The following photos paint the visual picture, needless to say the sashmi was fantastic (and yes Col tuna is ok raw) and the remainder of the fish is in the process of being curried for dinner, yum.

Now here are some cool pics from another camera, note the vicious 9 yr old alastair hunter

only just have him, he managed to jump off both lure and gaff!

Baseball training?

The t shirt says it all

Happy Hunters!

Bait Reef 2

Now as Bait reef is part of the marine park there is no fishing (the fish in the previous post was caught outside the zone), so as a result the reef is full of very friendly fish, BIG fish.
So we had feed them like every other yacht that comes in, yet I doubt other boats would have had a jucy tuna head and guts to throw overboard.
This created a frenzey amongst the approx one meter long very scary looking trevally type fish, as yet we have not fully identified them.
This also attracted a nice black tipped reef shark, well at least he was now fed!
the following pics show how we entertained ourselves for nearly an hour; one picture that got away was two fish flying through the air and having a mid air crash head on, kinda like a fish pash.
We did get in the water with them, yet did not stray too far from the ladder.