Oh dear God, I bet that hurt!

Another day has been spent on Hawkeye getting her ready to sail. Shibby has been coming down with me helping me install the engine and while waiting for me to need her assistance she has been cleaning down all the salt encrusted walls and cupboards. Today she started in the fore-berth and worked her way back from there. All was going well until she opened up this can of worms,

It looks bad but believe me it's much worse. It looks like someone has deposited a vindaloo it there and left it for lent. Actually though, a lot of the grime is from the salt water combined with a few hot days and sitting stagnant . Was hell to clean off. It took her nearly an hour to make it sparkle. She'll remember her gloves next time.

One thing we have noticed it that every little cut that we get, seems to get infected from the salt laying around the boat we're doing our best to get it all cleaned but there is stuff everywhere. I have boxes of sail repair gear, electrical repair gear, tools, lifting equipment and parts that are need to put the engine in place. Were getting there though. Every muscle is sore from having to be a contortionist in such a tiny and cramped place. just putting the bolts in the flange for the drive coupling has me upside down with my legs over the navigation table. Crawling into the aft berths is like squeezing through a crowded shopping centre doors on a boxing day sale.

One more weekend and she will be able to come off the mooring and we can go for a sail and nut out the problems with the sail rigging,

Well We've done it!

We bought a Yacht! I went and looked at the boat on my own and bought it there on the spot pending the survey condition of the hull and deck gear. I knew the engine was shagged and all the electrical's "She had been under water" Shock gasp 🙈🙉🙊 Everyone's response to this has been "No way I would have bought a boat that sank.

But I look at it this way. I have a boat with new ropes, reconditioned engine, freshly de-fouled, sanded and painted hull (below waterline) 3 sets of sails including a storm sail and four reef main for $12,000. I bought it without Shibby even taking a look at her. I walked on deck and knew she would love it (and she did!)

The Boats name is Hawkeye She is painted in a terrible yellow colour kind of suited to a life boat type colour. You cant miss her. We will change the colour but keep the name. Hawkeye is a 40 foot Steel hull of Group finot design (1982) with and aft cockpit. Her home of origin is the USA "San Francisco" She is a Bermudan Cutter with the head sail on a furler. She sank because the previous owner left a seacock open and went home for the weekend and a fitting under the sink broke and filled her hull with water. The bilge pumps kept up for a while until the batteries ran out of power and she eventually sank on her mooring with only a couple of meters of mast hanging out of the water. The salvage team bought her back up and let her dry out.

At the moment Hawkeye stinks of a combination of salt, diesel and rotten food. The first day on her was taken up with Shibby cleaning the salt encrusted walls and cupboards out and me changing halyards and pulling out the totally seized engine from it's home. The water tanks were filled with food waste, God knows why but they were. The fuel tanks have water in them so there is an extensive cleaning program to be performed there also. At least one thing about her being underwater all the cockroaches are dead, I have found a fair few corpses and egg sacks. We still have a long way to go
with the living areas of the boat but that is part of the journey. I also got stuck up the mast for a bit because Shibby let the rope tail go back around the winch she was hoisting me up the mast with and I had to use another halyard to help her untangle the mess so that I could get back down. Pissing down with rain I might add. But we both declared we had a great day.

The following day turned out to be a challenge to say the least. I haven't been sleeping well, I would say I have only been averaging 3 hours a night for the last two weeks. So I decided I wouldn't set an alarm and sleep until I woke. At 2am I woke up with a thousand things running through my head so I got up and did the one thing that makes me sleep. I sat in front of the telly. I ended up dosing here and there until my mind got the better of me and I got up and got ready to put the new motor into Hawkeye. I went to work which is an hour away in the opposite direction to Hawkeye I lifted the new engine into the hull of my pleasure cruiser and tied it down on a pallet. We then headed off to fit the new engine. We got on the water at 3:30pm on Sunday afternoon and were expected to be at Hawkeye by 4:00pm but noooooo. The last time we used our boat, I flushed the engine and in the process I had forgotten to put the plug back into the seawater pump line ( have never done this before) so 10 minutes into the trip steam was billowing out of the engine compartment. All we had were our 500ml bottles of water that we had filled at the boat ramp and nothing else. We let the engine cool for about half an hour and the removed the coolant cap and started to pour the water into the heat exchange. The water was swallowed up in seconds and we needed more. I cut my water bottle open with the timber saw I happened to have on board (in case we needed to cut timber in Hawkeye to fit the new engine) I then scooped all of the overflowed coolant from the bottom of the hull and returned it to the engine. We were still short but so I drained some of the coolant from the new engine for Hawkeye. It worked and we hadn't destroyed the engine so we were on out merry way again.

From here on in it was pretty much easy going. We lifted the new engine out of the boat onto Hawkeye using her boom (so glad I replaced the halyards) and put the old engine back into our boat. I made a few measurements and we headed home only to find we had a stuck starter motor on the boat and had to give it a tap with a hammer to get it to work. WHAT A DAY!

I am sleeping easier now Knowing that Hawkeye has a new bilge pump, a lot of battery power and the seacocks are closed

Just want to thank Shibby's son and his Girlfriend for helping up put the new engine in. You guys rock!

Lead to blame

About Us

Hi,

My Name is Paul, I am 44 and I have a fantastic girlfriend called Shibby (Sheryl). I work in the recycling industry for a large scrap metal company in NSW Australia and Shibby is 46 and a social worker, looking after disadvantaged kids who need a bit of helping hand. We are both known for working hard, I don't know if that is a good thing or not. Sheryl and I met a little over 3 years ago through some friends on Facebook. At the time Sheryl was finishing off her second uni degree and I was working for myself while trying to get another job so that I could get a steady income.


I was going through a divorce and I lost my job and wasn't in any position where I could have my children stay with me overnight so things were hard. I had a few default notices handed to me from the bank but I managed to just scrape by and come out on top with them. I had a huge debt with child support and several smaller loans and credit cards.
I won't bore you with the details but in the end I basically came out the other side with a smile on my face, good health and best of all ZERO debt (other than my son who keeps going over his data usage each month and costing me a fortune, damn Telstra plans :-)  ).

I have children to previous relationship. I won't go into too many details with them other than Jackson (14) Ainsleigh (11) and Jocelyn (8) They are all beautiful children, They all have their own personalities that are very different from each other.
Shib also has children to another relationship Josh (25) Tanisha (22) and Zachariah (19) They are great kids also. They are achievers and are all working well towards their goals.
I won't write any more about them because of previous relationships etc.


When I met Shibby I had a small 13 foot dingy and I would take it out on weekends to go fishing. Shib wasn't into fishing at all. She had bad experiences in the past with tangled lines and rods getting snapped then thrown into the water. I showed her a different side. Eventually I wasn't allowed to go out on the boat on my own. I had created a "monster" she developed a love for the water the sea side and fishing. Our fishing adventures got bigger and better and because they did the little boat was all of a sudden too small. So the search began for a better boat, well not on purpose anyway. We would call into the boat shop on our way back from the coast and check out all the fishing boats but what happened next was totally unexpected,.... We bought a leasure craft. Oh dear then the money went out of my pocket at a quick rate. New life jackets for the kids, water skis, ski tubes. Then after a mishap, a new propeller, depth sounder and that led to more fishing gear because we could now see the fish. But the smiles on the kids faces is well worth is and I get a lot of enjoyment from seeing the people who come for a day out with us on the water have a fantastic time behind the boat or in it.

I have been an inland boy all of my life constantly skipping the coastal roads when I am on the road because I was bought up being told that the beach is for a holiday. I hated sand between my toes and the smell of the salt water. Now it's the opposite, I long for it. I have now had enough of the dust, the rarity of rain and the dream of owning my own block of dirt with a few acres to spare. I have changed my way of thinking about inland people. The area I live in isn't farming anymore. It is totally engulfed by people who are only here to take what they can from the land and leave. I am pro mining and I will probably always will be. But to see how many people travel into the area everyday not spend any money in the town and take away their wages to another town is down right disappointing. Not only that the companies that take from the land and when they do don't bother to put it back the way they found it.

The ones to blame.

So whats this blog about, well it's a story of a journey from the demands of keeping up with the Jones' to the independence of a free life. The best part is the journey has just begun. Our new journey is to buy a yacht and sail. Not so much sail the world but to just get out there and live a simpler life then see where Shib and I end up.

About a year ago I read a book called "South from Alaska" Written by a talented writer called Mike Litzow. I am not much of a reader mainly because I get impatient with reading and want to get to the good bits. The book describes Mike, his wife Alissa and their 10 month old boy Elias's journey from Alaska to Australia in a sailing boat. It goes into detail about the problems of sailing in general and then the added duties with a 10 month old on board. If you want to read more about their adventures have a look here http://thelifegalactic.blogspot.com.au/ . I don't even know how I came to purchase the book it may have been because a lot of Australians seem to be drawn to Alaska because it is an icy wilderness where Australia is a dusty one. Or it may just be because there is nothing else like it in the world.

After I read Mike's book I found another book called "Get Real, Get Gone" It is written by an Englishman, Rick Page and his Italian/ Slovenian girlfriend, Jasna Tuta. They go into a good amount of detail about how to sail on a budget and enjoy a sea gypsie lifestyle visiting new and different cultures and experiencing things that many people will never get to, or want to do. This was another book that I found hard to put down and have bent over many page corners for reference when the time comes. Rick* and Jasna are only to eager to share their experience with everyone and have some very good views on their experiences. If you want to read more about them have a look here http://www.sailingcalypso.com/

Finally the last one to blame is my second cousin Kevin. He introduced me to a sailing boat about 3 years ago after my grandmother passed away, I ran into Kevin at her funeral I had never really knew him that well. My kids and I went out on the water for the day with him and he showed me all the things that I knew how to do but have never been doing. The things like saving money. Over the years I had become a consumer. I was earning high income and it became easy for me to pay for something that I didn't need other than repair or make do with something that I did. I had become a prisoner of consumerism. I came from a childhood that I only had the things I needed not the flashy things I wanted, so I think that when I started to earn the "big bucks" I developed a feeling of comfort by buying the things I wanted whether they were any use to me or not. I bought a remote control car once for a little over a $1000 because I had always wanted one. So I bought it, I played with it for a day then sat it on a shelf and it was never driven by me again. Kevin made me realise again that I needed to watch the penny's so that the pounds could look after themselves. I have spent a lot of time with Kevin picking his brain, not only about sailing but saving money and making good choices when it comes to purchasing items that are needed. When I stay at Kevin's I wonder how many other people in the world besides Kevin and myself use soap and shampoo that you get when you stay at motels.

Everyone needs a plan. Mine is to buy a yacht in the next 3 years and then to start to fix it up in the next 3 after that  and learn to sail in the meantime. In 10 years after my youngest has become an adult I will be setting off on an adventure into the big blue. I have no idea after that. To be quite frank I don't care just so long as I have everything that I "need" to survive and that I get there soon.

I don't know when I will post anything up again but as I said it is a journey so until I can move onto the next step I have to keep doing the 9 to 5 and putting the pennies away. I will post up other stuff from time to time that won't relate so much to the final goal but it is all an important part of living through the Journey

Thanks for checking in,


Paul