"Baching it"

Rene had to fly down to Brisbane for work, leaving me on the boat "baching it". I actually didn't mind too much - there's so much for me to do on the boat and the locals here on 'E' finger in the marina are very welcoming and friendly so the time went by super fast and I managed not to become too lonely. 

Mosquito screens finally finished! (close up detail)

While he was away I managed to knock a few things off the daunting 'To Do' list. 
The mosquito screens for all of the large hatches are finally finished. My grand plans of harnessing the power of magnets didn't work. I ended up having to glue velcro to the area surrounding each of the hatches and then sew the other side of the velcro to the mosquito mesh. I'm pretty happy with the result and now just have to do all of the portholes - these are much trickier though! 

Galley is now more secure for sailing.

The galley is now more sailing-friendly with the new fruit hanger and barrier that I've installed. It could still do with some tweaking, but I'm really happy with how it's working so far. On a yacht, all space is integral and this area was not being utilised well.. until now! The photo makes it look so easy and simple but let me tell you that this job took HOURS! So many awkward angles to drill/screw and so much figuring out exactly what I wanted. 




I also went out sailing on Water Frontier, one of the yachts here in the marina. A fellow bachelor (Les) came along too and we all had a fantastic day out on the water. This boat is so much faster than what I'm accustomed to! It was hard not to get too jealous of the great features that Water Frontier held. I fell in love with self tailing winches and found that the boat sailed so well that I didn't feel scared at all! We were all there to test out their new MPS (multi purpose spinnaker) that they'd just had made. It looked amazing when up... pulling it all down again was interesting though! I'm feeling quite daunted of one of my jobs which is to sew a 'sock & bucket' devise for hauling our MPS down. Oh dear! I'm in for so many big jobs! 

Water Frontier's new MPS

Leanne & me - note how relaxed I look!

Winch envy.

Les & John tacking 'Water Frontier'.

Rene is back now, working hard at his laptop again. I'm happy he's back as it was a little lonely here without him.