We filled our days getting organised we had to get  Australian registration, marine insurance, a stainless steel frame to hold the solar panels, a spinnaker made and delivered, a new battery as well as various upgrades or replacements to things like the outdoor BBQ, a dripping tap, watermaker, new anchor and chain.....

We waited months for the watermaker to arrive from Trinidad (of all places) it was held up in customs for weeks.
There were some beautiful sunny days and some not so nice wet and windy ones but the temperatures were slowly rising and there were no longer minus temperatures even overnight. 

To get her insured we had to wait for Bill’s insurance to be cancelled, we had to have a bill of sale, forms had to be completed with length of hull, tonnage, measurements from top of mast to waterline.  Then we had to have a Public Notary sign the forms.  We were so well looked after - the lawyer in the practice up the road from Northern Confections was a Public Notary and said he would sign our paperwork for us at a charge of $25.00.  After he had signed our forms he said “no charge “ how nice was that. We left him a $25.00 coffee tab with Todd and Heather as we had noticed his secretary, who was also his wife, picked up coffee there most mornings.

In Australia before we left we had to pay $200 for a Public Notary to sign forms on the closure of property we sold in USA, we had to use him twice and the $200 was only half of what he should have charged us.

Once we had our registration number from Australia Maritime we had to source a plaque that needed to be engraved with 2 inch letters stating our registration number and our weight. We walked up a huge hill to visit an older man who was a carpenter and had previously made a sign for the owner of the marina, it took a few days but he made us a beautiful timber sign out of America Oak.  It was way too big,  but we paid for it anyway he was a lovely gentleman who had recently lost his wife.  He invited us inside and showed us the grandfather clocks he had made for each of his sons and the roll top desk for his daughter. 

Instead we ordered a Perspex sign from the sports store, the sports store’s machine wasbroken and we would have to wait for the part to come in.  Everything seemed to take so much time, but in reality it was good to have time to live onboard, and for us to get used to the space and the movement, we tied up with quite long lines and Adriana would bob around when the winds shifted. some days the wind would create waves but generally the lakes are very calm and there are no tides.

The day we received our Melbourne signage was exciting

Craig installed an Iridium Go, an extra navigational tool that creates/links us to a wifi point from a satellite.  We had to send off our Raymarine AIS to be updated with our details and that took forever, we sent it to Canada, who then sent it to US, who sent it back to us.

We wanted to install solar panels, Craig calculated 6 would be sufficient and we needed to have a frame custom built to hold them.  The frame will sit above the dodger.  We were given a few names of local stainless steel fabricators. 

The best person for the job couldn’t do it until 2nd week in June and at that time we were planning to be gone by then so we kept asking around until we found someone willing to start straight away.  

The first problem was this person could not source the grade of steel that we should use.  We wanted to use 316 stainless but all he could source was 304. Up here around the lakes they don’t have the salt air so the 316 grade is not so common. We felt we had no choice so gave the go ahead.  

The frame was beautifully built his welds were really neat and clean, the frame fitted over but we had trouble securing the legs to the boat.  After about 7 attempts to match the angle of the feet to the side of the boat he gave up and refunded our money.  

We spent our days onboard learning as much as we could about Adriana’s systems, how the power and pump systems worked, where the Blackwater drained to from each toilet and where the sink water went.  Why did we keep blowing a fuse? Turns out the power point was faulty so we walked to the hardware and to our surprise we could purchase a new power point straight off the shelf.

I created the blog, we walked each day between the supermarket, the hardware, the op shop, the marina and Todd and Heathers.

It was still chilly we were still wearing beanies and parkas but I no longer had to wear my $15 boots I could now wear runners, we were still wearing leggings under jeans and long sleeved T-shirt’s under at least 3 layers.  

Adriana has an electric heating and cooling system with separate zones -  one in our bedroom, one in the main living and then the spare bedrooms.  We were lovely and warm as the weather got better we stopped using the a/c and just used the small portable electric fan heater to heat the air at night and in the mornings.

All the locals kept telling us wait until 1st June, the weather completely changes and so it did, by 3rd June I was sitting in the cockpit with a skirt on sunning my legs.

The morning and evenings were still chilly but we could cope with that. 

We had somehow not packed our music cd’s I do remember putting them aside but we ended up not packing them.  We should have ...Adriana has a Bose deluxe entertainment system it sounds so good.  We managed to hook up Craig’s laptop to the TV so we can watch movies on the tv with surround sound.  Heathers daughter Emily gave me her password for Crave, the Canadian version of Netflix and we have  Deidre's Netflix passwords but this is only good if we have wifi.  We bought a few DVD’s from the op shop but they were soo bad. 

We have Spotify, I have made a playlist with all Callum’s music and we enjoy hearing his voice and music.  We even worked out we could play Triple JJJ through the Bose speakers that’s pretty cool, I miss Australian music especially the Melbourne music scene. Our son Callum is an electronic music producer and has  his music is played on triple jjj radio.  So that’s all we had listened to for years, and l feel we are missing out on hearing all the great music that comes out of Australia, I think I’ve said before the music on the radio over here is pretty sad, it might be different in Toronto there will be alternate stations I’m sure.  

If you would like to check out Callum’s work Elkkle is his working name, he is on Soundcloud and Spotify.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5O3OUnaadL3aEVi5x6ImOl
https://soundcloud.com/elkkle

We ate great meals cooked by Craig, we tried not to spend too much money. 

We were gifted charts and chart books, we are not sure if we can use them as some are fairly old eg 2005 ?

We researched fishing in the lakes and what gear we would need.  All while waiting for the weather to warm up, there were some beautiful days with blue skies but then it would turn cold again and be rainy and windy with top temps of 8c.

We had to have Adriana surveyed for our insurance, that took such a long time to be completed.  I won’t go into it, let’s just say I ended up helping the surveyor write the survey, and I made the folder with photos and descriptions to send. The gentleman we hired was a bit too old fashioned for what we required and didn’t have the skills to create what an insurance company in 2019 expects.  

The other issue we had was that he charged us as if he was producing a 30 page bound document instead of the 3 pages he presented to us initially.

We managed to get a  $200 refund which helped pay for the word program I had to buy to create the report. Eventually our insurance came through, one step closer.

Our new anchor arrived a Manus swivel with 80mt of 3/8th BBB Chain.  We laid it out and marked it with paint every 10mt 

Marinas are funny places: everyone who walked past and there were a few, had to tell us how they marked their chain.  Craig would get frustrated but I think it was just an excuse to stop and talk to the Aussies.
The staff at Wiarton Marina are fantastic, everyone is so friendly and helpful, the guys were always yelling out "G'day Mate" to Craig and laughing at him when he chose the wrong day to walk around in shorts and thongs.  Carol and Margot in the office helped us so much  by sourcing parts and letting us know when they arrived.  Alex is a wealth of knowledge and I don't think there is anything he doesn't know or cant fix.
We had to pump out while we were in the Marina, obviously you cannot discharge your blackwater while you are in the marina, but you cannot even do it anywhere in the lakes.  This is understandable as the water is so pristine and clear, each town has its own town water pump station to supply it but they still have to add a bunch of chemicals.  A few years ago another town in Ontario had a huge disaster where people died and others were left with permanent digestive issues from E.coli being present in the drinking water.  It was a government employee who was not doing his job properly that caused it and it changed the way the water to the towns are now supplied and the amount of chemicals that are added.

Here is a small quick video I have made for my Dad so he can see the process used to return the yachts back to the water after the Winter 

Sunday 2nd of June I gave out my blog info to strangers, and here’s how it happened. 

On the Saturday we were on the dock laying out the new chain and a lovely guy introduced himself as Cam and invited us over to his boat for a drink after dinner and to meet his parents, he noticed we had run out of paint and offered us what he had left in a can he had, We had run out as we had used most of it marking the original chain that came with Adriana.  The chain had been delivered late that afternoon it was a Saturday and the shops were all closed, it was cold and spitting rain I might add. Cam ran and fetched his can which turned out to be almost full how nice was that.

We were invited to Todd and Heathers for pizza and didn’t get back in time to visit Cam and his parents but chatted to them in the morning and that’s when I gave out my blog details. They were very interested in us and our forthcoming adventures.

Todd and Heather continued to look after us, they let me do our washing and drying at their house, everything was still going in the dryer as there wasn’t always enough daily sunshine.  

They would walk Izzy down to the marina every night to say hello, most nights we would join them for a walk , sometimes they would come in for a beer, occasionally watch a movie or share pizza, they would bring us samples from the shop for Craig to taste test and if we mentioned we needed anything they helped us source it. 

They adopted us like we were their children, if they were going to Owen Sound we would tag along, we went to their food wholesalers, there were fun nights with them and Bill & Sue playing a neat game called Cards against Humanity. They hosted pot luck dinners and as the weather became less chilly they had us round for bbqs where we sat around the fire pit. 

There was an incident one  night at the Marina before we left.  We were pottering around getting ready for bed, Craig had started the watermaker for the first time and we were tasting the new water so it was a bit exciting.  I felt the boat move at the same time as we realised there were flashing lights outside, the movement was a boat in the slip opposite us it had just returned to the dock and they had rescued 2 guys from the water. A third was pulled from the water by Brian in lazuli, the boat opposite us on the same arm of the dock.

Four guys had been out fishing in the lake in front of the marina, the boat had hit something below the water that ripped the bottom off it and it sunk very quickly 3 of them were rescued but one man  drowned. 

The water was around  4-6 Celsius, they had been swimming  in the cold water n the dark for about an hour.  It was awful hearing everyone yell out  Tyson Tyson, then once they located him everything went silent. A very sad few days watching the police boat doing their investigating and detectives around interviewing the main people involved in the rescue.

It brought home to me that I will need to always be wearing a life jacket in the dingy and while we are sailing.