Today I got up and wrote yesterdays blog. After that I started todays blog. Then I made some breakfast. After breakfast we drove into town and went to the market. At the market they sell these things called a Fruit Thing. They take frozen blocks of fruit of your choice and put it through a sort of mincer. Then you get the cup with your minced fruit in it. It tastes so good that last time we were here we bought three in one day. When we arrived at the market we looked around for the Fruit Thing stand. Well we found it and ordered a Mango and Coconut one. It tasted even better than I remembered!
After eating the Fruit Thing we looked around the market until quarter past ten. I saw the wildlife stand and went to have a look. The ranger was feeding a one year old Fruit Bat. It was hanging from the ranger's fingers with it's tiny feet. When it got a piece of apple it grabbed it with it's front paws and held it like a sandwich. Then the ranger brought out a newborn Kangaroo. It didn't even have any hair yet. The joey's little legs were very large in comparison with it's body. It blinked around at everybody before starting to try and eat the apple. The ranger hastily picked up the pocket knife and cut a bit of apple and gave it to the joey. The joey held it like a sandwich and munched through the middle. After that the joey was left with two small pieces of apple which it dropped on the ground.
Quarter to ten couldn't come soon enough even though the market was very interesting. Once quarter to ten arrived Dad and I hopped in the car and drove out to Gantheaume point. Once we arrived we drove down onto the beach. After half an hour on eleven o'clock on the dot Cameron arrived with sea legs in tow. Sea legs is a boat that has three wheels. One at the front and two at the back. These wheels can be lifted up by hydraulics. Once out on the water the skipper lifts the wheels and starts the outboard. Cameron and Dad yakked on a bit and then Cameron climbed aboard Sea Legs and lowered the wheels. Then he reversed off the trailer.
Cameron drove clear of the trailer and then lifted up the front wheel which in turn lowered the bow. I climbed on and Cameron lowered the front wheel which raised the bow. Then we set off along the beach at 30 km/h. It was a rather rough ride as the sand had many ripples and bumps. Then we stopped so abruptly that I nearly fell over. Cameron lowered the bow again and Jess, his real deckhand, climbed aboard. Then Cameron turned towards the sea. He drove into the water and in 30 cm of water he started the outboard. I though the outboard would break down because I learned that in freshwater you never start the outboard in 30 cm of water. But this was saltwater and it didn't break down.
Cameron waited for a higher than 35 cm wave. It came in and Cameron gave the motor all it had. We motored out into the the deeper water and then Cameron lift up the wheels. With the drag gone, the 115 horse power outboard engine did it's work. We shot off through the calm sea with me hanging onto one of the storage pockets so that I wouldn't fall off. After a few minutes of zooming through the water we slowed down and we arrived at Kai-Aura. I later found out that Cameron had named the boat Kai after his son. Kai means ocean and Aura means spirit. So he named it Kai and Aura to make it Ocean Spirit. After jumping aboard Kai-Aura I tied Sealegs on. Then I got a taste of deckhand work. First I vacuumed inside the cabin and the back deck. After that I lifted the vacuum cleaner onto the flybridge. Then I vacuumed the wheelhouse and and the deck behind the wheelhouse. Then I went downstairs and did some polishing while Jess and Cameron cleaned the windows.
After polishing the stairs and poles Cameron drove Kai-Aura in close o the shore. Then he jumped in sea legs and went to pick up the passengers. After two boat loads we had all the people on board and we motored away through the maze of boats. Once we were clear of the mooring place Cameron put the hammer down. We were doing 16 nots which is 30 km/h. I spotted some birds wheeling overhead. Cameron told me that they were feeding together with the Long Tail Tuna. The seagulls were picking the small baitfish off one by one and the Tuna were eating the larger ones. Cameron drove through the school at full throttle. The Tuna were jumping left ad right to get out of the boats way. After a bit we spotted some whales. They were breaching all over the place. The whales had to get used to the boat first so we watched the dolphins. They were zooming around just under the surface and they looked like sharks.
The whales went very sociable. They came up twice and breached once and that was it. After that we motored north and found some more whales. These ones were very sociable and they came up five metres off our starboard bow. They swam around but got sick of us after five minutes. Then we motored around the ocean. There were lots of whales breaching about a kilometre away. Eventually we were so far from land that land was a 2 cm high strip on the horizon. While we were motoring around looking for sociable whales I spotted a 1 metre Sea Snake. Then Cameron found some whales. While we were watching the whales from a distance someone yelled out "What's that". 'That' turned out to be a crab swimming on the surface of the water. I rushed into the wheelhouse and checked the depth. It was 20 metres deep and here was a crab, swimming on the surface! We moved on soon after that and began to motor towards land.
We were motoring at 8 knots. It was a nice speed and we could see any whales breaching. I spotted some whales and Cameron drove over there. We had to wait fort five minutes before they surfaced to breath again. They only came up twice and we set a course back to shore. These kids came up onto the flybridge and we got taking. One of them asked me were I'm from and I told him. He said to me "My uncle lives in Wodonga as well". It's a small world! After about an hours travelling we still hadn't found any whales and we were nearly back at Ganthium point. One of the kids started trying to press buttons on the instrument panel. Cameron told him to press the button labelled 'Horn'. The kid was about to push it when he had second thoughts. He seemed to think that he'd get in trouble if he pushed it. He was about to have another go when Cameron said "Boo!". That kid nearly jumped overboard in his haste to get out of the bridge. His brother asked what happens if you push the button and Cameron pushed it. It was disconnected and no sound came.
Once we were in the mooring area Cameron took over steering from the auto pilot and slowed right down. After we were tied successfully to the mooring Cameron jumped in Sealegs and ferried the first boat load of people back to shore. After 10 minutes he came back with the passengers still in the boat. He said that he had to take out the spark plug. After some quick maintenance Cameron had Sealegs running again. He motored off to the beach and returned at top speed. Then he took the second load of people. Wjile he was gone Jess and I went around collecting the empty soft drink cans and water bottles. Then we went up to the flybridge and put on these anti gull spinners. What they do is spin around and make sure the seagulls don't poop all over the sparkling white deck. Then Cameron came and picked us up. We rocketed through the calm sea and the wheels hit the sand with a thump. Then we drove out of the water. By now it was 6:00 PM and it was dark. Once we were at the trailer Cameron lowered the front wheel and the bow went down. I jumped off and Cameron drove Sealegs onto the trailer.
After that Cameron drove off with Sealegs and we drove to Jandamarra. It was a great story about and aboriginal person but I was to tired to make sense of the story. After that we drove back to the caravan. When we arrived I went straight to bed. I slept very well.
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