COUNTDOWN FOR THE RALLY DEPARTURE

At this stage, we now only have 2 more sleeps before leaving Darwin for Indonesia but we've been extremely busy catching up on all the last minute shopping. On Tuesday, we had a compulsory briefing at the Holiday Inn, Darwin, where guest speakers from Australia, Indonesia & Malaysia spoke of expectations of the rally. The room was filled to capacity & although we got the general gist of things, the Indonesians were very hard to understand so it gave us a bit of an insight as to what to expect with the language barrier.

Malaysia sounded wonderful, unlike Indonesia, where there are so many rules & regulations for yachties with clearing customs etc , so we'll really look forward to November when we'll arrive in Malaysia. It also sounds like a good option for leaving the boat in storage when we fly back to Australia at the end of the year, with one new marina offering free berths up until 2010, just to get yachts in there!!! Now that sounds like a bargain!

These trolleys have been at our disposal through the sailing club, ever since we've been here & I can tell you that we would've been well & truly stuck without them. The tides are quite large over here, so if you're out for the day, normally by the time you get back to your tender in the afternoon, the water is miles away. A lot of yachties have put little wheels on their actual tender, which normally works well, but unfortunately, we'd left ours in storage on the Gold Coast, so they weren't of any use to us at all! However, these trolleys have made easy work of manouvering the tender around & although at times there can be up to 50 or 60 tenders sitting on the beach at any one time, there never seems to be waiting time for the trolleys, which has been great.

The days have been busy since being here, & at last, with the pick-up of our duty free grog this afternoon, everything is finally DONE. Kay & Jim, off "Bach & Byte", had the use of a relation's ute for a few days so we were invited to pile in with them yesterday to go & do our shopping. I'd been dreading the thought of that task as my cupboards were just about empty & I knew it was going to cost me a fortune to restock. I also knew that we'd be able to buy food over there, but it was a matter of deciding which foods & stores we just couldn't do without. Anyway, after spending nearly $900.00 at the check-out, it was obvious that I couldn't do without quite a bit of stuff but the good thing is, that we won't have to spend any more money on groceries for ages---maybe even years!

There hasn't been too much socializing going on this week as everyone frantically goes about their last minute business. Radio scheds of a morning have had people still looking for information as to where they can buy spare parts for this, that & the other & surprisingly, people have even left buying their fuel until the last minute, only to find that they can't be fitted in until next week, after the rally departs! Bugger! But I guess that's just the way some people are & although they'll never change, they mostly seem to get by.

Saturday morning at 11.00am is when the fleet departs Darwin. We're really looking forward to it after nearly 3 weeks here, preparing for it, although we're not really looking forward to the initial congestion that will inevitably go with the START. Maybe we'll just hang back for awhile, then gun the motors to overtake everyone in the black of night!!

This will probably be my last blogspot for some time as I believe that internet connection will be very difficult to find, especially around the more isolated islands that we'll be visiting during the first stages. We've had our mobile phones unlocked so that when we have the opportunity, we can use a local sim card in them, but until then, we'll just have to rely on our HF radio, sailmail ,for our contact with family & friends.