Adaptions

 Snapper season has hit with a vengeance. The local ramp carpark is overflowing with monster 4 wheel drives, people parking everywhere, queues of stink boats coming and going on the jetties. Friday I was thinking of getting the SCAMP out, but even on a Friday it was way too busy for me.  I have decided to avoid the little local beach for a while as well, as the last few times I have launched there, I have had run ins with people invading our local seal's personal space.  So, what to do?

I have been reading Colin and Julie Angus's book "Rowed Trip" which recounts their journey from Scotland to Syria using rowboats where the waterways are possible, or towing the rowboats behind them with bicycles.

Their expedition rowboats are three times longer than Barca, and loaded with camping stuff must be at least three times heavier. But they were probably a third of my age when they made the trip, so I figured it all should sort of even out - a bike trailer for Barca should work.  As part of our downsizing I have been looking darkly at Ozzie's bike trailer, thinking it needs to go. But then it occurred to me it might make a good trailer for Barca. And what do you know, with a few modifications like a longer drawbar,  it does!

Road trials so far are good, it works, I can get down to the revetment beach no worries. I will just have to pick the tides.

I should really not have been faffing round with this, with so many jobs to do on the downsizing moving project, but I told myself it is an adaption that will get me through Snapper season without too much aggravation, hopefully, and it will be very useful in our new place where there water is all a bit further away. 

Downsizing

 One dimension I had not anticipated with downsizing is all the strange shreds of the past that get unearthed as you sift through the nooks and crannies where you have hidden stuff.

I am working through a bag that my brother Mike passed onto me, that I have never really looked at. My mum's water colours, dad's degrees, his B Ed thesis on teaching mathematics, pages from  my great great great grandparents Bible...

Three Harriet's on one page, nice to see our little Harriet continuing the line.

There are my paternal grandfather's papers from his houseboat Waterlilly that the family used to sail around Shanghai around 1917.

Thanks to the marvels of Google translate, I can see this is telling officials that Hardy Gu, my grandfather, is a gentleman of good character, and instructing that he should be treated with courtesy.  There are other papers listing all the places not to go thanks to martial law and civil unrest ... Makes sailing on the Bay look very tame.

And there are my disgraceful records of wooden boat association committee meetings.

I do suspect my heart is not really in committee work. 

So much stuff, the thinking about it is harder than actually doing something with it. 

But, we are making progress. Derry went off to a new home, to live in a neat, dry garage with a Eureka canoe for company and a nice young family ... Better than being out in the rain being crapped on by possums, but still a lot of good memories going with her.  Ewaste collection at the council depot today, a pile of stuff gone. Poisons collection next weekend. More books to the Brotherhood...

I wake up at around 1 am most mornings, and often can't get back to sleep as my head starts running through all of the things, a lot to process.  

It seems overwhelming but if we keep on chipping away, just doing the next thing, with luck we will come out the other side.