Photo - Dave and dinner :)

WEDNESDAY DEC 18th - Wirrina Cove to Port Adelaide.

Well... what can I say about this final day. We had it all, from fairly strong winds that roundabouted for hours on end, swinging from the south in the morning, through to the north, back again, and back again ...again. Then in the afternoon the breeze dropped away to 2 knots, to the point where a sneeze would have pushed more air into the sails than the actual wind. It was the most still it had been on the entire trip. The seas dropped from about a metre and a half high down to little more than a diminutive ripple and although it would have been super relaxing drifting along at that pace, we just wanted to be back in the marina at Garden Island,

I have changed my mind about the wind. I have often said that the wind is a fickle bee-atch but I have remembered, from the epic and weather besmirched naming ceremony, that the wind gods are all male and it all makes sense now. It's like the wind a bastardy bloke who won't make a commitment one way or the other, who promises one thing but does something completely different, who breezes in, has a good toss and just as quickly blows back out again, who comes in all blustery and bold and then falls asleep on the couch. Yep... definitely a bloke. They used to call the wind Mariah... I shall call it Marvin (Oddly that name came to mind before I knew what it meant, which is 'friend of the sea'... and I totally know that he and Neptune are in cahoots! The swine!)

So, whilst Marvin the wind was being a degenerate and snoozing on the job, we cranked up the engine and motored for a few hours. It wasn't a completely squandered day though as Dave managed, by trawling the line out the back, to catch a couple of decent sized snook, one of which was particularly ample at 75cm long and weighing in at a respectable 2.5kg. They were the first fish we'd caught by trawling and since we're using no bait whatsoever in our fishing endeavours, it made for a promising future of being able to do a bit of hunter gathering stuff and eat as new as it comes. To keep the fish fresh we initially had them in a bucket but that just didn't work so I put them in the kitchen sink. The big one didn't fit and was top and tail out of the water despite it being a really deep sink. In the words of the guy from that shark movie (yeah... I try not to think too much about that one) "I think we're going to need a bigger bucket." :)

We tied up to our berth at back at Garden Island at 7.30pm. The evening was just beautiful and we were greeted by a couple of the neighbours and so stopped for a chat for a while. It was nice to be 'home'. We decided to spend one more night on Venture before going back to our semi-temporary lodgings at Hope Valley. After a well earned cup of tea, Dave was feeling utterly elated, being unable to wipe the grin from his chops, and celebrated the end of our first little journey with a Cuban cigar, the first smoke he'd had since we left almost a month before (and then started smoking again but that's another story).

He filleted the snook and after I'd picked over the fillets with tweezers, not single bone was seen that day. I worked my witchery on them (which was a perfectly acceptable thing to do at that stage as I'd moved beyond Einstein, way past Phyllis Diller and was well on my way to full blown witch (minus a wart or two) with the silvery hair (okay... grey but why split hairs... nyuck, nyuck.... ahhhh, I kill me!! :D ) flying free and frizzy in every direction except next to my head. and produced a thing of absolute deliciousness. They were the best fish I'd eaten for a long, long time

It had been an awesome experience despite the occasional anxiety and regurgitation and injury and panic and apathy and tears. I think I have learned a thing or two along the way as well.