Celebrating near the leading edge of the New Year

New Year's Eve was probably our last night aboard Totem in Sydney Harbour. We're heading north to Brisbane now, but couldn't miss out on what must be one of the world's most stunning fireworks displays.

Experience told us to arrive a day early, so we staked out our prime spot in a rapidly filling anchorage on the 30th. It's adjacent to the Taronga Zoo, which gave us the advantage of some great wildlife audio. Totem got dressed up in her party clothes. By the forestay, a string of courtesy flags; countries shown in the order that we visited them. On the port spreader, a string of our Seattle Yacht Club burgees and flags. On the starboard spreader, our pretty Australian ensign: the maritime flag was a thoughtful parting gift from the crew at Amnesia.



The only thing we couldn't find (embarrassignly enough) was our American flag to fly off the stern.

We had two beautiful days of bobbing in the water...having friends visit from shore and other boats. I think the most unforgettable was the parting gift from our marina neighbor, Peter, from s/v Kittani. He claims Scottish heritage and decided we needed a proper sendoff.

With bagpipes.

Oh yes, he did!



The serenade began at Kittani and circled around Totem. The piper, John, was met with such an overwhelmingly positive response he decided a tour of the greater anchorage was in order. Many songs were played...and many, many drams of whiskey were drunk.

As sunset approached on New Years Eve, we all got a little tingly. The skies cleared completely, opening the way to a spectacular show.



There's a warmup display, "for children," at 9pm. Kind of reminds me how my favorite celebrations in our Bainbridge Island neighborhood involved families getting together in the early evening to count down and bang our pots and pans at midnight on the dot...Eastern Standard Time! We watched the preview with Frank and Karen on their beautiful catamaran, Tahina, then returned to Totem for hot chocolate with a vow to stay awake until midnight.



My photos of the grand display aren't quite up to par (something about being pinned under a sleeping child, behind the dodger- well most of us stayed awake anyway!), but the pictures in my mind's eye are beyond compare. It is a spectacular show.

Thanks, Sydney! It's a sendoff we'll never forget.

Aussieisms: Cherries are for Christmas

We plunked ourselves down around the community tables in the marina last Friday for our weekly barbecue. The informal "it's going to happen anyway" gathering is comforting in its unplanned simplicity...we love this regular reconnection with our boaty neighbors.

Plates of munchies were around. Jacqui brought out a bowl full of fresh cherries, sighed, and said "now it's really Christmas." Cherries? Christmas? Yes, if you live in Australia.



Validated the cherries=Christmas theory at Christmas dinner with Aussie friends... apparently it's true. Being just after the the midsummer solstice...of course! Why not?

Merry Christmas from the Totem crew!

What a week full of ChristmaHanuSolstiZaa! Perhaps feels more sensible now that Aussies call this "The Silly Season"? I think I'm a fan of Festivus.

We're keeping it low key on Totem, but there's no getting around how the decorations put us in a holiday mood.



I think this tinsel dates back to Mazatlan 2008- hopefully we can get a few more years out of it!

Wishes to all for the happiest of holidays, wherever you are & however you celebrate.

This is how I'll remember her

Diana Jessie at the helm of Totem, tacking through a fresh breeze on Banderas Bay: smile on her face, wind in her hair.



We have lost a dearly loved member of our family.

Diana and her husband Jim came into my life through through Jamie: he originally met them while backpacking through Europe in the 80s. There's a story that involves wandering the docks in Dubrovnik, and being irristibly drawn by a friendly hail to the pretty sailboat with "San Francisco" as her hailing port.

They've been an integral part of the fabric of our lives. It's a simple fact that this life I love so much- choosing to live afloat, embrace a nomadic path, be proud of what makes us different- I owe to the Jessies, and to Diana in particular.

A spiritual mother, and a very grounded one, Diana opened the door for me. She demystified what felt like an unattainable dream. She was passionate about sharing a woman's perspective and experience of cruising, to put open-eyed women in the drivers seat of what had long been a male-dominated realm.

As our life goals shifted to follow in Diana and Jimmy's wake, she stood by and supported our steps to realize the dream. She was there to encourage us, to answer any question: some we asked, most she simply anticipated. She knew what we needed to hear, and she always had an opinion.

We knew that eventually we'd probably experience the loss of a loved one from far away, where we wouldn't have the option to physically join the collective grieving and remembering process... the gathering to mourn and celebrate and share and heal that our culture uses to mark a passing. We knew it would be difficult. There's just little irony in the fact that it was Diana who taught this lesson originally...to anticipate and make peace, as we lived every day to the fullest.

Love them. Can't stand them. But still, love them.

I should hate the destructive cockatoos, but now that we've taken down our headsail (so they can't shred the sail cover!) removed all instruments from the top of Totem's mast (since they wrecked the wind instruments and expensive weatherstation anyway!)- leaving little left for them to demolish- well, they are kinda fun to watch.





At least, until they threatened our friend Warren's beautiful NEW(ly refurbished) mast, rigging and instruments.

Cheeky buggers. Look at that guy on the anemometer. Yeah, he's feeling pretty high and mighty!

Tactics have been discussed. They are a protected species.



Siobhan to the rescue: little miss Small But Mighty throws her weight into swaying the forestay, and annoys the cockatoos just enough to convince them change roosts.



The marina rests.

Aussieisms: the sausage sizzle

Anyone remember the Tourism Australia campaign from way back where Paul (Crocodile Dundee) Hogan said he'd put "another shrimp on the barbie" for you? Aussies would never use the word shrimp: here they are prawns, thankyouverymuch. But they do love their barbies, and what you'll find most often on an Aussie barbie is a sausage (also known as a snag or at least 3 other slang terms that my children know better than I do).

As far as I know, the Sausage Sizzle is a uniquely Australian phenomenon. They are fundraisers, a kind of bake-sale-meets-barbecue event. We've seen them raising money for everything from childcare centers to cancer foundations. On election days, there are even Sausage Sizzles at polling stations (finding a captive audience for fundraising: Aussies are required to vote).



On weekends, pop-up barbecue stalls at the local equivalent of Home Depot grill sausages, onions, and serve them on a slice of bread. Tomato sauce (ketchup) and H&P sauce (which isn't exactly steak sauce or barbecue sauce but a little bit of each) are avaialble to squeeze on top.



Like most fast greasy food, it smells incredible. There is huge expectation for the first bite (you probably went out erranding on little more than a cup of coffee). And, like most fast greasy food, your gut tells you to regret the entire event soon after the last bite is finished.

Collecting plastic garbage from our waters

The children have been on a mission to collect and dispose the garbage that floats in the water around the marina. Seeing plastic trash litter the shores of pristine islands, thousands of miles from anywhere, left an impression. We might talk about the impact of consumption and pollution around the main cabin table now and again. They understand well the threat it poses to marine life and ocean health, and see our marina as a point they can intercept this junk before it is carried out to sea.

Here they are with a bucket full of one day's collection

We keep our kayak floating at the bow for easy access, so it's often a convenient place to toss an errant bottle found floating near the jetty.

An overfull kayak, with the wrong kind of cargo

It accumulates at a rapid pace,especially when runoff from rainfall adds to the volume of floating trash. For a while, they kept a log of the quantity and type of garbage, plotting it against tides and weather.

Rainfall brings plant material... and styrofoam

Siobhan found the complete packaging for an Apple computer, right down to the shipping label. I wondered what would happen if we returned it to the rightful owner?

 

Box full of more styrofoam. No computer.

After a call from our neighbor Peter on s/v Kittani, Ian Kiernan came down to meet them one day. He's a former BOC sailor, and Aussie environmentalist. Dismayed by the garbage he saw floating in the world's oceans, he started a movement in Australia that earned him the the Order of Australia. The recognition by an adult outside our circle for what they've been doing meant so much to the children! That picture at the top? They're proud of what they're doing, and I think it shows. 

Aussieisms: the queue

The orderliness of queuing for public transportation in Sydney almost equally charming and puzzling. I cannot imagine this happening in... SO many places, I get a giggle out of it pretty much every time. Even the little bus stops with 3 people waiting in our residential corner of Sydney, people line up. It's sweet, but is it really necessary? Is it mindless habit or genuine courtesy?




Here, in the dark, in the rain... is a long line that stretches behind the sheltered bus stop. I'm usually the person without an 'brolly who dives for the shelter.

Camping! Cricket! Kangaroos!

A few weekends ago, we were included with a group of families who get together for camping fun a few times a year. What a treat! We knew from last our failed attempt at camping (we were rained out after one night) last January that the kids loved it, but hadn't had the right impetus to try.  This one included 14 adults and over 20 kids.



Our campsite was a beautiful private property along a river in the tablelands west of the blue mountains. The children were off at the barest crack of dawn, and came back with excited tales of kangaroos, birds, and a possible platypus sighting.



The river had just enough current to carry an air mattress for rides.



Jamie set up a ropes course.



Most kids found it easier to cross with shoes. Mairen is not most kids.




 Each family had responsibility for one meal- this worked very nicely.



There were horses, walking right through the campsite! This is Mairen's idea of heaven.




There were cricket lessons. Literal lessons, and cultural ones. Did you know, to say something is 'cricket' is to say it's fair? If it's not cricket... it's not fair. Stemming from the history as a gentleman's game?



And lessons in retrieving the cricket ball from a fetch-happy border collie.



Many more pictures on Flickr.

The continuing saga of the marina geese

A few weeks ago I wrote about the heartbreaking state our resident marina gander, Peter. He was in deep mourning for his longtime mate Paul.

The crew in the marina and shipyard decided something needed to be done, and new geese were acquired in a mission that included the children, who trekked to a farm well outside Sydney to find him new friends. The mission was for three but somehow, four came back.  All were promptly named by the kids, of course.

It was decided that they should be held in a pen at the shipyard for a week to ensure they associated the location with food (e.g.- "home") and wouldn't take off once released.


The children with Steve, the marina caretaker, checking on geese in the pen.

To ease the situation for Peter, one goose at a time would be released over a period of several days- giving him time to adjust.  The geese- or more accurately, ganders, as they are all male- are less than a year old but full size. They were patient with the marina pen. The first to come out was George.

George follows Peter everywhere like an obedient puppy.

Things went pretty well- Peter mostly ignored him, but they stayed together. Ben was next.


Ben hits the water.

He and George hit it off, but Peter continued his obsessive post-Paul behavior of talking to his reflection and wasn't terribly sociable.


It's so sad! He talks to himself, even.

There was a little bit of drama when Jerry escaped when the geese remaining in the pen were being fed. He doesn't swim very well, and took off without a backward glance at the marina. It took some chasing and coaxing but eventually he was returned to the shipyard.


Coaxing geese back with bread.

They're doing OK now. Peter was truly unpleasant to Ben (or maybe it was Jerry... I can't tell them apart!) in the beginning, but has backed off. Trying to assert his dominance, maybe? His alpha-gander status? Any Goose Psychologists out there? For now, they seem to be have a group identity.


Snoozing on the rails in the shipyard. They really do have two legs each.

Out for the weekend

This past year has been a relatively land-oriented one for us...it's also been one that once again gave "weekday" and "weekend" definition in our lives. When started to get cold last winter (yes... Australia does have winter), we really went into hibernation. With Totem at the dock, her crew bundled up, our lives felt very different than they had for the prior few years. Our circle of weekend activity involved trips to the garden, or the library, or some Sydney-side destination... very different from the open ended explorations we'd been accustomed to, poking around the corners of our watery habitat.

How nice to have spring arrive to warm us all up, and get us out exploring again. We welcomed it by getting off the dock to anchor in a quiet bay for the weekend not long ago with our neighbors on s/v Kittani. After a season of many enjoyable evenings spent playing cards below deck, keeping warm, it was nice to shift to the cockpit. It is amazing how many corners of Sydney Harbour can make you feel like your are far, far from the madding crowd.


Close to the city of Sydney, but feeling far away


We couldn't quite ditch our "jumpers" (Aussie for sweater) yet.


The girls having a laugh during afternoon tea in Kittani's cockpit.

The children went for a swim. I worried about sharks the entire time. It's not irrational, even in the protected inner bays of Sydney Harbour.


Still a little chilly, but no wetsuits required.

Coming back from a dinghy exploration, we circled around rocks popping up at low tide and temporarily marooned them. This was met with lots of King of the Hill fun, but ended a bit prematurely by sharp oysters.


I still worried about sharks. Love them, but respect them.

It's warmer and warmer. We had a scorcher recently that even cracked 100*F! We're back to "normal" spring temps in the low 70s now... but feeling summer right around the corner... and feeling many more bays beckon for anchoring.

Things to love about Australia: Clivia

I was reminiscing to my friend Joan the other day about White Flower Farm. We used to get their catalog, back when we had a garden that benefited from a good chunk of of our weekend efforts. I'd drool over the entries in their glossy pages and dream about the showstopper of a garden I'd have someday. It's fabulous dream fodder.

One flower I remember in particular, Clivia, was sold as an indoor flowering plant. You can spend about $90 with White Flower Farm for a 7" pot that will flower if you can keep it alive for another 2-3 years. You can even get special editions of the flower for about $800. Yes, eight hundred dollars! (You still have to wait a few years for blooms. Sorry.)

Still, I thought, someday I'll have a flower like that. But you know what? It turns out they grow like WEEDS here in Australia! They're ground covers in public parks. They pop up along the hillside behind the marina. They're used in large shady tracts around neighborhood yards. And they are beautiful: even more than the catalog suggested. I'm not sure if I'll ever have one, but I'm enjoying them all around me.

Here's our $800 "weed". I'm going to try and save a few seeds and send them to Joan. Her husband Rainer has a talent for nurturing amazing life from seeds... he specializes in bonsai but I think he'll humor this. If you're still here with me, check out Joan's blog, and send her a little light.

One year in Australia!

Time flies- it's such a cliché, but it's true. One year ago today, we made landfall in Australia.

What a year!


Niall waves an Aussie flag from the deck of M/V Further on Australia Day- January 2010

Aussie snapshots: beach culture

A few weeks ago, we had use of a friend's car (thank you Jennifer!) while they were on vacation in Hawaii. It was really fun to stretch our wings beyond our usual public-tranportation circumpherence and see a few new corners of Sydney.

Here's local phenomenon. It seems like every beach has it's own Surf Life Saving Club. Also known as men in budgie smugglers (that's Aussie for Speedo), charging into the surf, for entertainment and perhaps sometimes even for lifesaving.

Bert's reign over the marina

When I mentioned recently that our neighbor cat, Bert, considers the marina his domain- I wasn't kidding. We had a hysterical event recently that illustrates it perfectly.

Witness Bert, hanging out in one of his favorite places: the middle of the dock.



See that little orange fluff waaayyyyy down towards the other end of the dock? That's Whistler, the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever (yep that's a breed) that belongs to marina neighbors.

Note that Bert is not even bothering to look at him. Such a cat.

He's scared of Bert. He will NOT pass him on the dock. He did get closer, but they remained in a standoff here for about five minutes.



Eventually, Whistler turned around and went back to his boat... Bert's dominance unquestioned.

Halloween in Sydney

2008 - Malibu, California
2009 - Santa Rosalia , Mexico
2010 - Noumea, New Caledonia

...and now, 2011: Sydney, Australia.

It feels a little odd to be in warm and sunny weather for Halloween

Four years, four different countries for our family on Halloween. Every place we've been does it a little differently. Here in Australia, the holiday is just catching on (retailers finding another way to sell stuff I'm sure). From a trick-or-treaters point of view: the trick, it turns out, is to find out which houses are actually giving out candy! They are in the vast minority.

There's a kind of secret handshake: homes that are "in" on the Halloween gig put a balloon outside.


Creepy accessories a bonus.

Most participants go in for the direct distribution model.


The tell-tale balloon


Our neighbor, Elise (next to the door in her fabulous black velvet cape) scoped out a good street near the primary school that had a higher concentration of in-the-know homes. Steve, the marina caretaker and much loved friend of the children came along too- getting the hang of the American family and their crazy holiday. He brought a bag of Halloween goodies to give to the other children we passed: little skeletons, yoyos, and treats.

But a surprising number just put out the "honor bowl."


Just one!

It wasn't easy to find a proper Halloween pumpkin. There is a LOT of pumpkin consumed in Australia, but they're not the big orange jack-o-lanterns of the holiday- they are usually green, or gray, and very tasty. I saw only one meager display of carving pumpkins for sale in last week of October. Perhaps not surprising then that there were some clever twists on the tradition.


ghoulish apples


scary squash

Our creepy characters had a ball putting their costumes together. There was a near disaster. Mairen had been planning to be a witch (again), and bought a proper hat to go with the dress she made for our Mexican Halloween. Minutes before we were to depart on our trick-or-treating adventure, a gust of wind lifted it off her head and out into the bay. Pursuit by boat hook, and dinghy, ensued but her hat sank below the murky surface before it could be retrieved.

She took it completely in stride: accessorized now with a cape and vampire teeth, she was a hybrid Witch-Pire. Creepy!



We also had a zombie: Niall practiced just the right jaw-dragging expression. Our neighbor Elise found the fabulous fake zombie wound-skin.



Siobhan... our little drama queen, decided to be a Syren. She described her costume essentials as: pretty hair, a pallid blue tail, and fangs. I don't know where she came up with pallid, and I'm not sure the scarves shot through with silver lurex I found at a thrift shop exactly qualify, but she was happy.



Happy Halloween!