Back on track

Well I'm running out of reasons to prolongue my departure from Oz, so I'm going to just go ahead and say it, that I'm just about ready to leave. Old Kalitsah's undergone some quite transformative changes and I'm now enjoying greatly the feeling of living on a boat ready for sea, rather than the basket case she seemed so recently to be.

On the list for the coming weeks are some rigging work to beef up the forestay attachment and to add an inner forestay to accommodate a working jib, a final slip and no doubt a million other small things that will come up between now and then.

Ticked off the list recently: adding ribs forward to address some flexing issues when pounding into waves, replacing all my delapidated old sails and adding a cool big red assy, giving Isuzu some much needed loving, and many other odds and sods that I have already repressed into my super ego never to be revisited.

Come June, I'll leave Sydney for Noumea, via Lord Howe if I can wrangle it with the good people in immigration. I plan to stay in New Caledonia and the Loyalties for a little while given they sound so brilliant, then off to Port Vila and hopefully out to dig for Lapita artefacts in Pentecost.

Along for the ride to Noumea will be my good brother Stephen, then fingers crossed my girl will meet me later on. I'm glad to be getting out of Sydney. Man this place is expensive. People keep telling me how much sailing costs. It's all crap; sailing costs nothing, it's being on land that's expensive. And my, how this city excells!

I'm still in Black Wattle, down near the fish markets, for all who care to drop by before I leave.

D