Leaving Australia for Montenegro

We wrapped up our busy, busy time home strangely looking forward to a couple of long flights sitting down doing nothing! One more trip to the Island to tidy up and sadly, but in a well considered way, putting our house there on the market. It has been a hard year fixing up Air B and B tenant damage which saw the property off the market for a year and Rod and Gina going over a few times to sort septic trenches out, trying to damage control blown up batteries and fault finding the generator. Even with their expert experience and knowledge of the house it was hard to organising things from overseas - especially the battery delivery, the generator delivery and installation (which in the end Peter did himself). The trouble with remote locations…..they seem pretty exciting and romantic but can be a giant challenge and expense.

While we were there the second time the council did a planned beach replenishment. This involved excavators, bulldozers and a pumping pipeline that brought sand from the dredged Brisbane channel via a ship. They created about 3 extra metres of beach in front of the properties and a gradual incline which the engineers fondly imagined would let the sea wash up and down and not undermine……Not……the first gentle westerly took a couple of metres of height on the second night. This, apparently, is a step they have to take before doing something more permanent. We'll see.

During the time home I had cataract operations on both eyes and now only need glasses for close up work which is fabulous. It's had the unexpected benefit of improving my balance and depth perception, and night vision too, to a point. Everything seems a lot brighter too. A modern day miracle but very routine - it was like a production line at the day surgery unit.

I had a nice birthday dinner with Peter and my son Rupert in February. It's been really good seeing both families. I got a rather extravagant present of a Dyson hair dryer. I've always had cheap nasty ones that don't last very long. Not helped by the fact that they defrost bar fridges on the boat, soften silicon and get stickers off gel coat. I see in the cautions that one should not use a Dyson for anything other than the recommended use - but then again Mr Dyson does not live on a boat!

Peter's little great grandson, Waylon, is nearly two and very sweet and cute. We visited a few times and he came over for a swim. First up when we arrived back Lisa and Scott had organised a Bridgewater apartments drinks thing by the pool and we caught up with everyone all at once.

We also managed a 3 day trip to Moore Park Beach to see old friends up there and also the Australian/ English coupe we met in Turkiye who helped us a lot on our first arrival there who now live in the complex where I had my unit - a truly odd set of coincidences.

When we got to the airport the Singapore lounge was closed so they sent us off to the Air New Zealand one. Here I had a strange couple of experiences. Firstly, there was a nicely dressed older gentleman getting himself a double shot of gin and tonic (who ever has had a single?) and a cleaning lady with a trolley or dirty plates and glasses told him that only single shots were allowed - the man asked what was he to do with the one he'd poured then? and she snatched it from him and took it away!! This is in a very uncrowded lounge at 10.30 pm and not a rugby team in sight behaving badly. Nor was the man drunk or troublesome. I watched him for the rest of the time and he only drank coffee. Very weird. Next the cleaners were taking away our dirty plates and glasses and the guy asked me if I wanted him to throw out Peter's Kindle that was sitting on the table…..?! Anyway, It was a good flight, as were all the others. We narrowly missed a Croatia Air cabin crew strike by one day and a Singapore Airlines one by two - we'll take our luck that way, thanks.

Now back on board and Nic, the local boat carer, has looked after EN very well. The next day our new crew joined us. Max and Shaunagh, a young couple from South Africa who seem very nice. When we were taking off the vinyl seat covers we found a mother cat and five kittens! They were very young with their eyes still shut. We found a nice warm box and insulated bag and put the kittens in it on the dock. The poor mother was demented running back and forth with one in her mouth trying to find another safe place for them. I spent the afternoon guarding them from children and dogs but she hadn't returned by night so we made them as warm as possible and by morning they had gone. No sign of a massacre so we are assuming she spent the night relocating them one by one to a new place.

We'll spend a week or two here then off down to Sicily for the next stage of travels.