Solo Ventures

Not to burden anyone with my issues, more to unburden myself of these issues by writing them out. Here goes..  Okay. On my broader familt, there is a wing that has been delving in darkness; drug use, unruly teens, metal health, crime, biker gang membership and suicide. The media make movies about this shit, but being on the fringes of it in real life is bewildering and frankly drives me speechless. There's stuff gone on in the family branch that no-one will ever know about.  One of the byproducts of a brief, probably distasteful,  sexual encounter. This occurred in a drug rehab oremtal health ward, I dont know. The issue of this encounter was immediately placed on Care where he has remained for the previous 12 years. Unfortunately, these arrangements have been unstable, volatile and not much publicized.  In January this year word spread that this "poor boy" needed urgent placement as his host family, his aunt, husband and three teens, were in conflict and at risk of ...

I haven't been onboard this week, due solely to the fact that she lays some 300k from where I live.  I do have good news though, and that is that this week I took formal ownership of JS and am about to secure the Clareville Beach mooring. The very same Clareville Beach from where Ann Gash departed and returned from her solo circumnavigation. I have new lateral chainplates to install too, so apart from shipping safety gear (flares, vhf & ?), I just need to overhaul the anchoring gear and  ready for sea. SydHarb is just 16nm, head to head, so a solid halfday's sail could see us swanning around under the coathanger. Apart from getting under sail and testing her out, the under the bridge sail is the only immediate goal I have for JS. Taking a dump out the front of government house and Vaucluse mansions are two other perverse pleasures I may take part in, though l will need to mind the Fun Police.              *     * ...

After motoring to the beautiful Clareville Beach, I found the waters calm and silky dark. Slow skidding cumulus that reeked of showers, hung without menace.  The lovely Barry Marshall (previous owner) arrived with a bag of ship's papers which provided a potted history, receipts, manuals and registrations. Generously, he also passed on a porta potti, boat hook, auto bilge pump, two headsails and a spinnaker. The headsails felt heavy and crisp, were labelled North Sails and are possibly unused.  I also became the caretaker of the yellow surf ski. I'd seen Barry, who paddled across Bass Strait calmly paddle this as a tender and as he told me the lock code, extolled it's virtues and how easy it was "to stand on to get onboard ". Of course I couldn't wait to try out the new tender in order to check on on Jack Sprat  so off we went with se new chain plate fittings and little else. As we arrived at the gunnel Barry's words came to mind as I shuffled and jerked, g...