Catching Up

Phew. A lot has happened over the last few days. Unfortunately it all coincided with the peak of my side effects from RT which has left me feeling pretty wiped out a lot of the time. So a combination of lack of time and lack of energy has delayed me blogging. Good news is I am feeling on the upswing and on a roll.

So a quick recap of what’s happened since last time.

Every day on the boat was filled with more work. Minor fixes, cleaning the boat/cupboards/surfaces/anything, head in bilges cleaning pump valves (to prevent water backfilling bilges), packing the last of our stuff to take to the UK, etc. Helen did far more than I as the Queensland heat and RT side effects would knock me out and I’d have to rest for a while. While not active I was often still busy setting up new brokers and the endless follow up on all the stuff going on in our lives right now. One of the things now behind us is the sale of the NJ rental property that all started just before we set sail in 2008. The whole thing has been a bit of a disaster financially but we’ve had some astounding help. If anyone is looking for a first class property manager in the Cranford area, contact us.

We did have some fun times too.

On Saturday we met up with Steve and Vickie from True Companions and Bert and Ingi from Boree. Steve and Vickie were interested in our lessons learned selling a boat here in Australia. Bert and Ingi have graciously agreed to keep an eye on Dignity while we’re out of Brisbane as they’re staying in the bay for some time. We all ended up going out for a Chinese meal together in the evening.

On Sunday Sam came over to pick up some of his stuff. We took him to his digs in Brisbane and then went out to watch the latest Bond movie. Afterwards we ate dinner together then sat chatting in the park by the South Bank. It all seemed familiar in a way to us and we wondered if it was the site of Expo ’88 which we visited when we were last in Australia nearly 25 years ago. Later research showed it was.

Monday was a bit frantic as we mistook our flight departure time for our leave the boat time. We realized this when waking up but had to cram a lot into the morning with 2-3 hours less than we’d planned for. In amongst all this we had the gas inspector round to certify our appliances. We are now fully certified – Yay.

Jack and Jan came over from Anthem to say goodbye. We were all quite sweaty as we were all working in the heat but it didn’t stop the hugs goodbye.

We returned our hire car and made it to the airport in good time arriving in Melbourne without delay. With good traffic we were back around 7pm local time in time to celebrate Russ’s birthday with their first BBQ of the summer.

Dignity, in a lot of ways, is now no longer our home. We still have a couple of options to return to her and take her out for a final sail. We haven’t done so, so far, due to lack of time mostly, but it would be nice to take the old girl out for a final spin sometime. We’ll see.

Back here in Melbourne life goes on. Yesterday I had a blood test to make sure I’m ok for the next chemo beating which starts midday today. The next two (and final two) sessions should be chemo lite. I imagine the treatment as rubbing down the gelcoat. We’re now on the final fine grained sandpaper hopefully leaving a nice smooth finish. Final MRI is now booked as our our final meetings with consultants from Monash and Peter Mac. The end, no sorry, the beginning of the rest of our lives is in sight.