Our haul out was scheduled for 8:30 however the office girl rang at 7:15 and said, where are you we are ready? We were 15 mins away so we madly up anchored without breakfast and motored down to the lift. The guys were very effecient and had us tucked in snugly for our lift. We grabbed the essentials, phones, wallets, Morgans lead and shoes and watched her come out.

We were hauled out at the northern yard where they keep the super yachts as we are too wide to fit into the smaller lift in the southern yard.

She didnt look too bad underneath in parts as Wayne (Nuts) had dived under in Yamba and cleaned some of it but there was still growth on the hard to reach areas.

After pressure washing and sandblasting her bottom Ovive was moved to the super yacht berth, we looked so tiny amongst the big mothers.

The next two weeks were spent antifouling the bottom (not us we still had MG work to keep up with), servicing the sail drives, replacing the salt water pump and prodder ropes and little minor issues. The wind indicator which hasnt been working since the new display and instrument went on 12 months ago required fixing (it was the old cable that was the issue, had to pull a new cable through the mast. That took two blokes 2 days!

We had a visit from Megan and the girls, who stayed overnight and had a lovely time , especially at the little beach near the marina cafe.

The Sanctuary Cove Boat show was on at the time so we caught a ferry across to the show and wandered around for the day looking at the displays. I was disappointed with the show as I felt it was aimed at the big money spenders and not much for anyone else. I had an enjoyable day with my sisters and brother in laws anyway, so thats all that counted. I am looking forward to spending a lot of time with them over the next few months.

Exactly two weeks later we splashed back in the water and moved over to a marina berth, (still amongst the big girls) for 2 days while I went to Sydney one of the days for an interview .

Life on the hard wasnt too bad,however the boat got filthy from all the dust on the ground. Boatworks is a great facility with two excellent cafes and a restaurant next door making it a little bit resortish in some areas. Fruit trees are abundent that you can help yourself to, so all in all not too painful. We rode our pushbikes everywhere, other than when we borrowed the free courtesy car. There are plenty of service and sales businesses that we were able to purchase anything for boat repairs.

Oh and Morgan enjoyed her stay.

Time to head north.