Returning to the boat in Australia


Everything went well in Canada, Malcolm even did a ski season again at Big White and Dina picked up a one-year contract. After 18 months, Malcolm flew to Australia to start getting Good as Gold ready for more cruising. When he arrived in Bundaberg, he quickly made plans to get a new coat of bottom paint and have the boat put back in the water. It has to be said that a lot of dust and dirt can accumulate over 18 months, so there was a lot of cleaning to do inside and out.
Getting ready for new paint
All ready for the water with NEW PAINT!

Good as Gold on the dock at Bundaberg Port Marina

After so many years of use, the anchor and chain needed to be re-galvanized. This provides a nice coating of zinc to help prevent corrosion. Malcolm sent the anchor off to a shop in town, but the chain was too corroded so we ended up purchasing a new one. The new chain needed to be marked at various lengths so we would know how much we are putting out while anchoring. Instead of the usual idea of using colour paint (which wears off) or cable ties (they break off), it was the perfect time to try tying on short pieces of coloured, really durable, line.
Corroded anchor chain, not worth saving

Coloured spectra lines on the new chain (4 yellow = 40m)

Wow, that anchor looks new!

By the time Dina arrived, 4 weeks after Malcolm, the boat was in reasonable living condition. It was now time to tackle lots of little jobs that needed to be done, just basic upkeep like any home. Some of these jobs were simple maintenance items and some were new improvements.
Malcolm made this for cleaning the track the headsail slides into.

Time for new fire extinguishers, new flares and a new liferaft (ours was 30 years old)

Malcolm up the mast running some lines.

Malcolm has ALWAYS BEEN ANNOYED with the storage space we call “The Pantry”. IT IS TOO TALL AND NOTHING SITS IN IT PROPERLY!!!!! SO he made some shelves and Dina painted them. Malcolm has also BEEN ANNOYED BY THE FREEZER COMPARTMENT for pretty much the same reason, so new shelves were made for it too. Along the way, Dina’s closet got some shelves.
New shelves! 
New faucet too


The only big issue we had was trying to get the generator started. After lots of investigation, it looked like we needed to spend a good bit of money to repair it. We have way more than enough power from our solar panels, and have almost never used the generator in the 9 years we’ve owned the boat. So instead of fixing it, we took it out. Now there is lots of room in the engine compartment to access the various parts of the engine. There was also room to get at the ceiling and add some LED lights. These two things pleased us more than getting the generator running ever would have!
So much space without the generator

After six weeks of all these little projects it was finally time to get going. We ordered a bunch of provisions from a large grocery chain and had them delivered right to the marina.

Good thing we have those shelves to hold all this food
All clean and ship-shape
The boat had been sitting at the dock this whole time, but that was okay because of the nice new bottom paint. The dinghy, however, needed to have all the growth cleaned off. We motored over to a nearby beach and spent an hour scraping everything off Tubby’s hull.
Pretty shaggy with all that growth
Nice and clean

After that we returned to the boat and finally left the dock . We anchored at the mouth of the river and were ready to go.
Sunset at the anchorage