Photo shows one half of a discombobulated catamaran!

We are anchored just off Australia Fair, one of Southport's big shopping centres. It's quite a spectacular anchorage and free - as long as you move out of the area for 24 hours every 7 days! The towering apartment blocks of Gold Coast City are on one side, a more muted Southport on the other and a series of sandbanks, between which ply the constant phalanxes of boats of all sizes and shapes, mainly far too fast for the comfort of those of us freely anchored. Just over the sand dunes lies the surf beaches of the Tasman, or is it the Coral Sea?



A billion dollar view of billions of dollars of real estate, both on land and on or close to the water, but this Southport anchorage of ours is free for a week at a time!

We have had the survey of the Beneteau. It went o.k. The surveyor was very thorough and spent a total of 6 hours on it, first with the boat out of the water, peering and prodding at its keel and then crawling all around its interior. We thought we knew all there was to know about boats, but Captain Tim found things about Sundari that we hadn't, mostly things that no longer worked! In fact, it's amazing that such a nice looking boat had so many things that weren't working, perhaps because the businessman owner had hardly used it for so long.

Saraoni, despite being somewhat tattier, has everything working and if something breaks down we get it going again as quickly as possible! In fact, Saraoni is better equipped than many of the fancy looking marina boats we have seen recently - solar panels, a wind generator, an HF radio, a VHF radio with AIS, a desalinator, a working outboard and dinghy, a nearly new anchor winch, nav. lights that work, water tanks, a stove that works, an autopilot that refuses to give up the ghost and a wind vane. Did we mention the relatively young Nanni diesel?

Anyway, we have convinced ourselves it's time to move on. Sundari's owner is buying some stuff to replace the things that don't work and getting other things fixed that shouldn't need to have been fixed and no doubt we will part with some of our cash at the end of next week.

We will then have two boats - perhaps we can tie them together, like a discombobulated catamaran? Or maybe we can put the two boats end to end, making an 83 foot long odd-looking bendy schooner?

The plan, such as it is at this point, is to take them one at a time back to the channel between Karagarra and Macleay islands in Southern Moreton Bay and haul Saraoni out at the nearby boat yard for some much needed TLC and a bottom paint before tentatively putting it up for sale. Meanwhile we should have our new 47 foot boat to live somewhat more luxuriously on while plotting the next step.



"Relative luxury?"