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by steve, on December 21st, 2012 ( Australia, Trim) The highlight from Wednesday was reuniting with Ken and Laurie from Trim. We had a fabulous meal with them at a nearby Mexican and even more fabulous conversation. They’re currently off on a road trip to central Australia. This is on our bucket list so we’re looking forward to meeting up with them again in the New Year to learn of their experience. We won’t have time to do a road trip on this visit to Australia but we now have so many reasons to return one day that this must happen. For us, this really is the way to experience Australia and Uluru (Ayers Rock) as opposed to flying in with a gaggle of tourists.
I have spent a fair bit of time working on connecting to the UK health system, in particular, getting connected to the consultant I want. We’re not there yet but the fight is on and I intend to win it. I am confident I will.
Helen and I went out yesterday to buy in our last pressies and stock up on seasonal refreshments. That’s now all done and everything wrapped, except for the things still on delivery. And that leads me on to ….
In my last blog I asked how can life get any more exciting. Well. When I learned that Ben had indeed received my Nexus 4 in the US I cancelled the order here. Twice. Once through a support ticket and once through the online support chat line. Just to be sure. This morning I received and email informing me they had shipped the unit. I have discussed this with Helen. If it is delivered, she’s going to have one too. The second one of course. Life is more exciting. We’ll now be able to play scrabble, without a board, just like Sarah and Russ.
by steve, on December 19th, 2012 ( Australia, Callisto) The trip back to Melbourne on Monday was again straight forward. We’ve heard a lot of bad things about TigerDirect but all our experiences to date have been excellent. We even find their seats more comfortable than their direct rivals, JetStar. Very happy with the service.
Tuesday was a big day in terms of meeting with the haematological oncology specialist, Michael MacManus, at the Peter Mac Institute. There was no direct feedback on my current condition except to say things are still going pretty well. He was able to confirm that there really is nothing more we can know between now and the final MRI in Jan followed by meeting with my overall specialist, Prof Opat, in mid-Jan. This means we can go about booking flights out of the country now without incurring any greater risks than we might do by waiting. More importantly, he agreed to refer to Prof David Linch in the UK. With help from the UK Lymphoma society, my own research and confirmation from Mike (Callisto) we are certain he is the top guy for my condition. We need to visit my family in South Africa so it’s good to establish this connection in advance of our return to the UK for many reasons. We also managed to meet the assistant to Prof Opat who promised to ensure he would make a similar referral. She’s the sort of person who will make sure her boss does what he’s supposed to so this was another bonus.
With this news and Dignity left in the hands of professionals and friends we entirely trust I left the hospital feeling incredibly buoyant. I felt as though I’d crossed an invisible boundary in my life where we’d gone from the balance of our activity’s responding to the past to now being fully focussed on the future.
Since then we’ve begun really sharpening our thinking about the next few months. We’ve already booked our flight from South Africa back the UK. We are close to arranging our dates / flights from Australia to South Africa. We hope to spend a few days in each of Sydney and Hong Kong along the way. We’ve shelved our plans to visit cruising friends in Malaysia so we spent some time chatting to them yesterday via Skype and giving them the news.
Another treat yesterday was the return of the Sarah and Russ’s son, Chris, from his first semester in Stanford. We’ve been here so long that even we feel the family is now back together.
In the evening we joined the family at Ros’s school where she was presented an award for community leadership. We are all proud of her.
Last but not least we’ve decided to have Ben mail my Nexus 4 to Australia. There’s a chance it’ll be here by Xmas. How can life get any more exciting?
by steve, on December 17th, 2012 ( Anthem, Australia, Boree, Freezing Rain) To a certain extent the weekend has been more of the same but we are slowing down a bit.
On Saturday Bert and Ingi popped by to say Hello / Goodbye. Just like when we’re out cruising we often say goodbye to people many times and sometimes never get to say goodbye. The former is always better. But as the French say, it’s always Au Revoir as we really hope to see our friends again in some future time and place.
We had another viewing in the afternoon. Seemed to go pretty well but there are so many factors for each party to consider we will have to let this play itself out as far as it goes, if indeed, it goes any further. One thing both Helen and I agreed on was the professionalism of our new broker was orders of magnitude better than the last.
In the evening we had drinks, nibbles and conversations with Jack & Jan from Anthem and Don and Marie from Freezing Rain. A lot of very interesting discussions were had including some about the devastating news unfolding surrounding the tragedy in Connecticut.
Sam visited us on Sunday. It was great to spend most of the day with him, chewing the cud, giving parental advice (hard to avoid), etc. With his work with Greenpeace getting more and more interesting and involved (he is now coaching the next batch of workers) and our random movements between here and Melbourne, we always wonder if each visit we have together may be our last in Australia. We had a nice walk together along the Esplanade to Wynnum and back treating ourselves to ice cream in the park on the way back. I have to be honest, I still find the 30c ice creams at MacDonalds the best.
This was a really good weekend. And there is still some excitement to share. Ben let me know that he has received notification that the Nexus 4 I ordered has been delivered to his office. Assuming he confirms physical delivery I can cancel my order here in Australia. Then all I have to do is wait two and a half months (argggghhhhh) until we meet up with Ben and his partner, Amy, in South Africa i. But getting to see Ben and Amy and giving them big hugs is what I’m really excited about.
Healthwise I still feel like I’m on an upward bounce from the last chemo. I have had a few bouts of extreme tiredness over the last few days. I think the sail we went on knocked a bit more out of me than I imagined but I look at this only in a positive light. Today we’re heading back to Melbourne where tomorrow we have an appointment with Michael MacManus at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Lot’s to talk about and hopefully we can take a few more steps towards building a bridge to the UK health services.
by steve, on December 15th, 2012 ( Australia) Friday was another work day on the boat. The roles panned out much as they do these days. Helen spent a lot of time outside making the boat look really nice, something we were not able to do before for all the obvious reasons. The shipwrights came round and buffed out the light scratches left on the boat following the last survey and moved the stern light so it couldn’t be obscured by the wind gen support pole. Something I’ve meant to do for years.
Another mistruth that surfaced during the last survey was that 110V are uninsurable in Australia which was a little ironic as we are now and then insured here. We now have it from one of the company presidents that 110V boats are indeed insurable. It’s a bit like the gas regulations in that there is more disinformation out there than good. The answer is pretty obvious when you ask the insurance company directly.
I’ve also shared, in detail, my discoveries of poor practice and false statements from the previous survey with our new brokers. I have also stated my requirements for future surveys. The responses I have received so far have echoed our own horror but also essentially stated that my requirements are essentially in line with their own expectations and how they normally handle surveyors on board a customers boat. The implication here is that we were badly let down by our previous broker. At this point, I am not surprised to learn this.
You can be assured that any future survey will require the surveyor, prior to leaving, to walk through and discuss each proposed issue with a representative I have chosen. If the issues are not seen to be documented and photographed prior to departure or any added later nor a copy of the final survey given to us, we will reject the entire survey. Turns out this is fairly normal practice.
I also knocked a few items off the list (and generated some more) relating to health/financial/travel planning for our return to the UK. The list is not getting smaller so the back is not yet broken on this segment of the task list.
Today we have the first of a few potential buyers aboard. I’m actually looking forward to this. We’ve learned a lot of lessons the hard way. It won’t change how we initially interact with the new prospects but if there is interest we are now far better prepared to move forward, for both our and the prospective buyer’s sake.
by steve, on December 14th, 2012 ( A Cappella, Anthem, Australia) If you’ve read my previous blog you’ll know we were up to boat stuff yesterday. Helen did a great job on some cosmetic sealing as some of the seals around the boat were looking a little grubby. You have an idea of what I was up to. One thing I spent time on was testing the AIS transceiver. When we were out, about the only thing I was disappointed in was not seeing Dignity on www.marinetraffic.com. When I got down to testing, I noticed that just in the harbor here there were seven vessels putting out an AIS position but only one showed on the website. I managed to get a quick positive test from Anthem who could see us loud and clear. The most likely reason is  something to do with the port receiver here which is either not receiving and/or communicating positions of all the vessels out here. Oh well – no geeky fun to be had. At least I know the transponder works.
In the afternoon we had a visit from Peter Cronk who bought Lagoon 420 hull #26 around the same time we bought Dignity. We’ve been in touch with him over the last 7 years and met him for the first time yesterday. He was one of the folks giving Helen tremendous support while I was seriously ill. He’d even offered to sail the boat over from Fiji but was understandably glad he hadn’t. It was great to finally meet him and thank  him in person for everything he’s done.
Shortly after Peter left, Ed and Cornelia from A Cappella arrived to take us out to dinner. We went back the nearby Chinese restaurant and had a very pleasant evening together.
Back to my rant from yesterday. Have I calmed down? Yes. Am I more sympathetic? No. Calling out faults that simply don’t exist is deceitful. Completely misidentifying parts of the boat is simply incompetent. Just one error like this implies the surveyor had, at best, a broken/faulty process which exposes everyone involved to harm. Bad, bad, bad.
What’s done is done. Moving forward we can learn some lessons. For our next trial we will have someone aboard who will make sure the surveyor points out all the faults they are going to list in their report and to make notes of each issue. If the surveyor later adds anything we simply won’t accept it. I’ve wasted too much time on this. If I were the previous potential buyers I would want my money back. If I were the surveyor I would be ashamed and either improving the way I work or looking for a different profession.
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