After launch, Steve motored Endless Summer down the Tweed River to the
town of Tweed Heads. The harbour is technically only for fishing boats,
but Bruce, the harbour master, didn't seem bothered by technicalities,
particularly because we were paying cash. The bill? $10 Australian per night.
And we have the nicest neighbors. Being the only "fuckin' yachties" in the harbour
did have a certain cachet. Grizzled old fisherman stopped by to chat. I received
a great deal of advice, very little of it printable.
There was still lots of work to do, but at least we could move aboard.
Our new berth in Tweed Harbour was right across the street from a fishing store.
We got a fishing rod, some hand lines, and some very stinky little shrimp for
bait and the kids could fish.
And after the wonders of outdoor fishing were exhausted, we moved on to indoor fishing through the escape hatches.
In addition to oars and an outboard, the dingy has a mast and sails. After I had rigged it up and convinced her that the breeze was good, Karin took it out and the wind promptly died.
At least she was easy to photograph.
After yet another day of delay, the riggers showed up and installed the mast. Except that the pin which held the forstay to the front beam wasn't the right size. So they used the spinaker and screecher halyards and told us not to ease the line jammers or the mast would fall down.
No worries.
Another day and it was all taken care of.
Except that we raised the jib and discovered that it was nearly a foot too long. I'm such an expert on "hurry up and wait" that I think I could profitably sell my services to the Army.
It was really neat to live on the water and wake up to see pelicans cruising by or this:
A cormorant drying its wings.
On the other hand, shopping was a pain and the docks were fixed, not floating, so the relationship between the dock and the boat changed continuously as the tide rose and fell. We had to rig fenderboards to keep the boat from grinding into the piles and coming aboard could be pretty awkward.
This is Nicoline's eye and mouth. Photo by Tristan. I'm not sure that I can come up with an
explanation.
Tristan getting artistic.
Since he couldn't start the dingy outboard, we agreed that solo flight in the dingy would be limited to kids who could start it. Tristan went berserk with the pull starter and 15 minutes later was able to start the outboard on command. Somewhat reluctantly we allowed him to take the dingy by himself and then with Nicoline as a passenger.
