We went over to visit with Maria and Gary on Merlin. They were a wealth of information, telling us all the best places to go in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. While in Port Douglas we had picked up a cruising magazine with an article about Indonesia, and it turned out they are the authors. They have written a couple other articles for the magazine on Indonesia, as well. Guess we bumped into the right people!
The plan was to Continue reading
Everyone was coming at 07:30, so we were up very early to get ready. Kosmos was a mess inside, since we have been more focused on the exterior than the interior since getting out of the yard. We ate a quick breakfast, did some tidying, and got our own tanks filled and our diving gear ready.
Everyone was on board and ready to go by 0800. There were 11 of us total — 4 snorkelers, the instructor and his two students, and another couple that would be diving with us.
Cod hole is 10 miles southeast of Lizard Island. We were happy to see there was a mooring available. The reason the spot is called Cod Hole is because gigantic Continue reading
We headed over to the beach a little before 13:00 (1:00 pm). Everyone was gathered around a small picnic table under a tree on the beach. There were about 16 people there, all Australian retirees. We listened to the horse race on the radio, then hung out and chatted with everyone for a couple more hours. Everyone was really nice. Politics was at the forefront of everyone’s mind since Continue reading
We only had 18 hours left to go to Lizard Island, so we didn’t need to leave yesterday until the afternoon. We realized that in the small slip we could easily reach the rub rail and miscellaneous external metal pieces that can’t be reached in a full size spot, so Christi spent a couple of hours polishing the metal on the starboard side of the boat. We have to admit that we have been incredibly lazy about the metal and, until today, haven’t polished it ourselves once since we left home. In Fiji the people who waxed the boat also did the metal, but it was looking pretty bad again already. The areas that Christi did are sparkling and shiny, which makes the rest of the dull and partially rusted metal look that much worse.
We pulled out at about 13:30 (1:30 pm). The ride to Lizard Island was wonderful. The views were pretty, with mountains similar to Port Douglas along the coast most of the way up. There were lots of Continue reading
At 0800 the travel lift rolled over to us and the crew worked on getting the straps around Kosmos. The straps can be unhooked in the middle, so they rolled the machine on top of Kosmos with the straps undone and hooked them together around the blocks we were resting on. With us inside Kosmos, the lift picked us up and drove us back to the slip. Once we were centered over the water, we were slowly lowered down. And we floated. Phew. A good thing indeed.
We had an appointment at the fuel dock in the marina at 09:30 for fuel. We did circles in the river to kill time. The freshly repacked shaft was getting hot. Too hot. Not good.
We had already decided Continue reading