At last a Ship again!

Well after many weeks of no major activity at the Ravensbourne Wharf, we had a boat arrive on Saturday morning, two days late mind you according to the paper it should have arrived on Thursday evening at 8pm, so we sat out front and waited, and waited! Then we decided to do the intelligent thing at around 8pm of logging on the online shipping logs, only to find out our long awaited boat was still in Lyttleton and now not due until Saturday morning at 9am, hey ho!! For those not particularly interested in marine comings and goings sorry to bore you but it is like a major event for us here, and with ringside seats an unmissable event!! You see it all comes down to the whole logistics of the event, starting with the the 'Pilot' boat (non nauticalias, this is the boat and captain that has to see any vessel over a certain size into the harbour) which comes in with it, then the boat has to turn around in the deeper waters just after the wharf and then the whole process of the mooring lines is dead interesting. There is a little 20ft motor boat that takes the lines from the ship to the mooring pontoons. Anyway here are some piccies of the ship from our front veranda.

You can just about see the little 20ft mooring boat at the bow heading towards the pontoon on the left of the picture
The ship is called Pos Brave from Hong Kong

So that was the entertainment yesterday morning. It departed at 9am this morning and we watched it go sitting on the verandah reading the paper supping coffee all very civilised.

Anyway onto the rest of the actions and adventures! I am going to have to start with most recent and work back or I will get all confused, you know how it is!

Well yesterday we had Pauls niece with us for a few hours so we went off to the cycle and footpath at the front of the harbour opposite us so we could try out the scooter as she had brought her own to use. The new track which has been finished about 3 months was fantastic and gave us some good views of how our house looks from the harbour and gave us an opportunity to have a better look at the ship.

Well needless to say we all survived the incident without major injury as Pauls niece and I were predicting a hospital visit may be in the itinery as Paul had modified the scooter and this had a large potential for quite serious injuries. Coupled with my general accident proneness and lack of concentration for more than 30 seconds, a true disater waiting to happen!






We then stopped at Moller Park (the Harbour Rugby Club grounds opposite our place)
to have a bit of a muck about with the new softball glove I had bought paul to use, so we can play the 'doggy boot camp' game better with Simba and at the same time a bit more fun and interesting for us. (I had brought my glove over from England, good old faithfull mitt that is 15 years old and as good as ever!)

Pauls niece hadn't used a glove before and she was a quick learner who was body blocking and reverse handing the glove in no time at all. Unfortunatly didnt take pictures of this. So we had a laugh anyway with Paul using his 'Indiana Jones' hat as his glove! I realise I wasted $30 on buying a glove, as he could have used this all along!

So then back for a BBQ as I lit the Cobb before we went out, so it was nicely ready for cooking and then Paul's sister and her husband came to retrieve one daughter from us, thankfully in one piece, uninjured!

Paul and I had a nice fire bath last night and watched 3 episodes of 24 back to back while in the bath, most civilised.

As you may be able to tell we have had a short spell of lovely weather, but I am not going to hold my breath on this!!

Ok other stuff we have been up to, well I have started decorating the sun room/entrance area/ dunno what to call it room!! it is presently the cats room, but I really do feel that they do not need a room all to themselves. They blatently tend to spread themselves around the rest of the house anyway! So the intention is to put a single bed in there with cushions on so it can act as a sofa type set up as well as spare bed and in winter will be a dead cosy alternative to the verandah for ship watching etc. So that is a work in progress at the mo. Will do an update once it is done this week.

Ok and the only other thing really is that Paul and I have done a few mystery shops these last couple of weeks which is always fun.

Ah yes and Merlin has had his 'bits' off!!! it hasnt slowed him down at all!

Simba and I have been to dog training, but he will update you on that so I wont, unless he gives me a slating that needs justifying of course!

Well that is about it really, I have been busy but I cant place my finger on 'doing what' exactly. How i will cope with adding work into the mix as well I just dont know!

Till later x