We had dinner last night with Con and Vicki, two friends we made soon after I came to Melbourne (in 1998?) Con was friends with Vicki then, and they were married in 2001 - it took 8 years of courting before Vicki's mother was convinced Con was OK for Vicki. Then they could not get pregnant for 3 years and had just about had enough of IVF and so on, when Vicki got pregnant with what they had decided would be the last treatment. And not one babe, but two. And one of each sex! The babes are 2 months old now, and Con and Vicki are parents aglow with love and pride. All 4 were good company last night - they were good to be with.

As for the boat we put another coat of paint on it yesterday, then went home to cook.

Last week was a big one. On 27 November my number 1 son, Michael was married to Chrissie, in Brisbane. Mum came over from NZ for the wedding, brother Steve and his family attended, and Lelia and I flew to Brisbane on friday, and came back on Monday. It was a good party, and Mike and Chrissie look well together. They flew out to Vietnam for 11 days on Monday evening. For the rest of the week in Melbourne, we were pestered by the real estate agents, to make the house available for viewings. This was a nuisance, but it paid off on Saturday when we received an offer for the house that we have accepted. So, sold the house, and we will move on to the boat on or before 3 February, the settlement date. We have a hell of a lot to do. Luckily, we downsized a lot when we moved from Albert Road to this house, in May last year. But we still have to get rid of a housefull of furniture. We will store the books and music - just about everything else we will sell. The boat is on the hard at the moment, for a repaint and installation of a watertank. Pissing with rain today, so not much progress - glassed the corners of the water tank.

1st of September - first of spring! What a good feeling. Time to dust off a few things, including this blog. I have not been here since April. Thanks Anniebskipper and Andrew, for commenting. Be nice to hear more from you. Andrew, J&L is on a swing mooring just off Parsons Marina, under a beige canvas cover. I am at home today, my current work contract ended yesterday and I am having one day of idleness before I start work on the house. Our plans have changed a little since April, we have not been able to find a bigger boat that we like here in Australia, so have become constant readers of Yachtworld,looking for a Pacific Seacraft at the right price and in the right place. As far as I can see, they are all in America, so thats OK - we sort of speak their language! We are heading out to lunch now, somewhere with a view of the water. Best regards to all - Jeff & Lelia. (the "L" in J&L is Lelia)

Afterlaunching in April 2003 we had to learn to sail. Here's what I wrote in May 2003. The weather caught us out on Sunday. The forecast was for ENE at 5 to 10 knots, changing to a southerly at 10 knots, and a balmy autumn 16 degrees C, after morning fog. Just right for a couple of duffers to go and practice the ropes. We got to our boat late in the morning, and the fog was hanging on in the west, a great grey bank of wet wool. Out on the water was lovely though, and we already had the southerly as we pottered along on the first leg of a triangle that should have taken us past the beaches of Port Melbourne and St Kilda, the second leg across the bay to Altona and back around Williamstown to our mooring. We lunched on the way, homemade wholegrain bread with fresh brie and pickled chillies, plus a clove or two of fresh garlic for relish. All washed down by a Corona, cool from the bilge. On the second leg though, everything went quiet. The breeze dropped from 5 or 6 knots knots, to a couple of knots, to nothing. The waves, that had been less than half a meter, flattened out and our progress, which had been sedate, went to snail-like. Eventually we sat and slatted. There was no breeze at all. We watched the smoke from a ship’s funnel in the working wharfs at Williamstown rise slowly to a great height in the air, before it slightly bent and wafted away to the northeast. We gazed down the bay to the southwest, where we could see miles away, from where the wind would come, the remains of a fleet race of keelers. All the spinnakers had collapsed and those boats were as listless as ours. I guess we could have coped if we had not been drifting slowly into the shipping channel. We were lucky that no ships came through while we drifted, but after about 2 hours we thought it was time we left the area. We tried to flag down the first yacht that came by under power, and they were all under power at that stage, but the couple on board thought we doing no more than waving happily to them. They motored past, the lady staring intently forward as she took lessons on the tiller, and both she and her mate made deaf to our shouts by their diesel throbbing underfoot. I thought a little about my decision not to install an inboard in our boat. I thought more about our decision made every time we go sailing not to mount our outboard because it is “too difficult” to reach out over the stern. Happy would I have been to have that motor then. I saw us drifting onto the rocks, (the tide was coming in) or being run down, and I brought the life jackets up into the cockpit. I rang my brother at home, to have him look up the number of the marina along from out marina, so that if worse came to worst we might be able to hire a tow. I waved frantically to a big glass cat. The catamaran willingly and cheerfully assisted us back to our mooring. It was a charter boat, full of party people who were demolishing what must have been a pretty serious cargo of alcohol. We will rescue you, the party people said. Take this rope, the crew said, and we did. At about 4 knots, and travelling straight and true, the catamaran wafted us back to our mooring and left us with cheery waves and beer fumes. We enjoyed our last Corona on the mooring. When the cover was on, and the bird netting secured we rowed back to shore, into a beautiful calm and clear evening, with the water unmoving and like a sheet of glass. We are truly grateful to operators of that catamaran, and quite positive that we need to do something about a permanent installation for the outboard. It is so easy for duffers to get caught out, in many ways. We have run over our dinghy, been out in breezes that we should have reefed for but were too afraid to go up on the deck to the mast, and now been ignominiously towed. How little sailing credibility we have though, was brought home to us on this windless Sunday – we had absolutely no means on board of doing anything about getting ourselves home. No motor, no oar or sweep, no radio. Just a mobile phone. The fog is hanging around again today – we would still be out there without that tow. We owe them! JR

Since we launched our boat in 2003 we have not sailed her as much as we could have. We spent much of the rest of 2003 renovating and preparing our house for sale - we changed the bathrooms around, replaced a wall of brick along the back with a wall of glass doors and built a deck. We had the outside of the house plastered, then painted everything and planted a garden. New fences and a new drive, tearing out the old broken concrete. At the end of 2003 I lost my job, which was good, because I then had time to finalise all the half-done things on the house, and we sold it for a good price in February 2004. We moved into a shabby little flat we had held as an investment (!) and started renovating that. I started paid employment again in September 2004. We hauled the boat for the first time in July 2004, for antifouling and a few jobs like wiring and installing electrics. There is a plan to all this of course. We drastically reduced our mortgage by selling the big house, and will sell this flat in a year or so to top up the cruising kitty. This time next year we plan to be in the Whitsundays, preparing to spend winter there, and keeping an eye out for a bigger boat. We would love another gaffer, but cruising gaffers are not thick on the water in Aus, and I will not build another boat!