I just saw them as another part of the “... it’s all about ME” mentality that has become the tiresome norm. But I do accept that I may be wrong. Facebook and twitter seem to continue to thrive on “I h8 mundays, and work, and the guvmint”, and “I just got back from this gr8 booteek (K-Mart)where I bought these AMAZING kewl shoes...(crocks)”.
So, until I started researching everything I could about boats and the sailing life, I didn’t read any. I’ve now read quite a few. And I was right. Many of them are egotistical claptrap. Drake, Cook and Columbus would love to be able to look back on their careers and have achieved half as much. Some are dry, wordy records of endless travel delivered with such monotony that even with steely determination you just can’t get to the end of the page.
Others have flashes of brilliance, and then they go and have a baby or grandchild and for the next 6 months all they post is baby on the cabin floor... baby on the bunk... baby mashing food all over its face, while in the background you can see they’re installing a new autopilot that you’d dearly love to know more about.
Occasionally a blog is well written with good, simply written technical information, Bryson handling the travel bits, Hemmingway doing the adventurous stuff, Cousteau filming the reef diving, and the right touch of humour adding flavour to the package.
Oh that we could come close, but nothing wrong with having a high benchmark.
Sandy started a blog when we were getting the house ready for the market and I found her writing really funny (Old Blog above).
She sees herself as the 'the Deckscrubber'... yeah, right!
I see her more as a sea nymph who loves fishing. Whatever works I guess.
Sadly, the fish don’t find her fishing much of a concern either!
But this first post wasn’t meant to be an essay on blogs. That just happened while trying to get comfortable doing something I was so negative about.
It’s October 2011 and we’re still here. The 2 big anchors that had us solidly attached to land were the house at Georgina Avenue, and the coffee business. It took 7 months to get the house ready for the market and another 12 to get it sold. Final settlement was in early August this year.
That's anchor number one free.
De-cluttering is never easy. We gave away heaps, sold some... Sandy even got suspended from Ebay! But that’s another story. We bought a 20ft shipping container and packed in enough furniture and keepsakes to set up some sort of home again when our sailing days are done. It’s now parked in a field beside a shed on her parents’ property.
We decided we'd be smart and avoid the hassle of carting furniture to and fro from the container and went hunting for a furnished place, figuring it would only be for a couple of months.
There wasn't much and most of the places were awful, furnished with the assumption that even the charities wouldn't want the stuff.
But with hard times in the economy, we decided to look at the holiday accomodation market.
It's amazing what deals can be done on high end holiday apartments that are standing empty. We ended up finding a massive first floor, 2 bedroomed apartment with 3 balconies, a sun room, modern kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and direct garage access into the apartment. We've added work tables to the 2nd bedroom and we run the coffee business from there very easily.
Of course water, electricity, rates, garbage, insurance etc are included, and all for 1/3 of the usual holiday letting rate.
We're opposite the main channel into Lake Maquarie, which is about 7 times the size of Sydney harbour and can watch boats coming and going daily. We watch pelicans flying in like WW2 Sunderlands and white faced cormorants catching fish, from our front balcony.
The whole little town of Swansea is right behind us and the nearest shop is a Woolworths supermarket.
It would be perfect if we weren't trying to go sailing!
The coffee business, our second anchor, is still holding tightly... snagged in fact. The broker is getting about a quarter the number of responses to all their advertising at the moment. Just the state of the market right now. And so we keep selling coffee and servicing machines, and live in hope.
It feels like sitting in church when I was about 5 years old. We were tired of drawing, we still had to keep quiet, all the stuff that was going on was for the adult sinners... we still had the innocence of childhood going for us, and we just couldn'r wait for that never ending sermon to wind up so we could go and play.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to go out and wrestle a saltwater croc so we can get some good fotos for the blog...