all that steel

Boats are damn demanding creatures. I’ve decided this after a day and a half scrubbing rust off stainless steel bits and bobs. And let me tell you, there are lots and lots of stainless bits and bobs on this hefty mama (all 63 feet of her and nine metres - what's that in feet? - across the beam). Now, I don’t consider myself a slacker when it comes to helping maintain other people’s boats, having done the odd bit of scraping, sanding, bogging, sanding, bogging, bogging, bogging, antifouling, etc. But the rust assault just plain sucks. After an entire morning, you have two gleaming bits of metal the size of chopsticks and sunburnt knees.

So today, after my sunburn started getting sunburnt, I downed gloves and took to the streets on mah new wheels… merrily pedalling to the Botanic Gardens where I came across a little patch of Chocolate Beehive Ginger which looked like something very delicious that Winnie the Pooh might invent if he was working for Willie Wonka. (Let it be said I spent the morning hovering over a bottle of Jif – a product choice greeted with much wincing by our neighbours with the very shiny boat.) Also checked out a couple of exhibitions at a place called The Tanks and one of them was, curiously enough, by a Brissie-based artist who recently asked me to housesit and whose offer I was ‘unavailable’ for due to description of said house - ‘it keeps the rain out’ - and the pet rollcall requiring the best part of two hands to count off).

Last night first mate and I took the zodiac for a squirt around the marina and checked out his dream-boat (a Sparkman and Stephens) and went on an envy tour of all the cruisers anchored outside the marina. I haven’t elaborated much on first mate but he’s a bit of a thinking girl’s man (who beams about his temporarily absent partner, thank you). In the week and a half I’ve known him, he continues to grow in my esteem. Half-way through our apres-dinner cruise, he turned the steering over to me.

Moi: “Where should we go then?”

First mate: “Up to you, you’re in control now.”

Let me remind readers at this point that first mate is… a boy. Read that last comment again (please).

I wonder if this is how Anna Bligh feels right now…

First mate's brilliance continued this afternoon with:

“I thought I’d cook dinner tonight if you're keen."

Keen?