12th June 2010 - Cairns

Distance travelled nil

Today we had planned to go on a reef cruise, but Colin found some obscure weather warning from the Bureau of Meteorology for strong winds and big waves off Cairns. He even checked it the local BOM office. So the cruise was off. However the day dawned calm and sunny and we walked the dogs with Wendy and Keith with hardly a cloud in the sky. Throughout the day Colin checked back to the BOM but the strong wind warning was still there - this became known as Colin's wind - akin to what usually is found in the bog!

So after we had coffee at Palm Cove with Keith and Wendy (Colin had 2 lattes he was so latte deprived) we had to decide what to do. It was too late to get onto a cruise so we decided to do the next best thing and visit Jim and Marion Stewart in the Cairns marina and dream about sailing around the world. With that course of action decided we walked back to the house and had a Wendy big brekky. This took a fair time and Colin called Jim to say we would be coming at 11am if that was OK.

The brekky was certainly big and Keith and Wendy's pace was suitably leisurely befitting their retired status, but Colin was getting a bit toey when it was still going on at 10:15. He decided to initiate the closing of the brekky phase by clearing some of the dishes and in the process dropped a knife into the pool. Keith tried to retrieve it but it stubbornly refused to be picked up. Later that night Colin contemplated skinny dipping and diving for the knife but thought better of it. He would leave the knife there to remind Keith of our visit as he suspected that it would never be retrieved.

The boat Jim and Marion were sailing was called Balu which means bear. It was a green 40ft steel hulled sloop and was well appointed for ocean sailing. There was an ingenious self steering mechanism hanging off the stern but still they never let the boat sail unattended and took turns to steer all through the night. The jib had an electric driven roller reef and they mostly sailed using the foresail alone as they ran down wind nearly all the time. They had also to store a lot of extra fuel in tanks lashed to the handrails to ensure they had a safe range under power. It turned out that Marion grew up in the same town in Essex as Wendy! - a small world indeed. The topic of pirates came up and they hoped to get into a convoy of small vessels in the Indian Ocean before running up past Aden into the Red Sea which is the danger zone. They were brave people indeed.

After we left Colin asked to stop at a newsagent that stocked interstate papers to pick up a Friday's Age so he could do the cryptic crossword. Keith innocently asked Colin to give him an example of a clue and how to solve it and Colin worked out the answer to 1 across "Tree whose leafy edges appear in teacup's brew" was "eucalypt". After he explained how this answer was derived Keith decided he wanted no more to do with cryptic crosswords.

Colin and Alan were dropped off at a small zoo near W&K's house and checked out the crocodiles and the real live Cassowaries. Colin picked up a bag of food for the kangaroos as well. However by this time of the day they had been fed all day by the tourists and were generally uninterested in any more tucker. We found a suitably menacing croc and a colourful Cassowary.

We had a barbeque that evening and Alan, Keith and Colin watched a rugby international between Australia and England. Colin encouraged Keith to mute the sound during the frequent add breaks so he could continue to work on the crossword undistracted. But during the play we were all riveted as the game which in the first half looked like a rout by the Australian back line then became quite tense when England forced 2 penalty tries due to their stronger scrum.

Colin's off to Townsville tomorrow while Alan will go onto Ayr. They will meet up hopefully in Emerald the next day.