One Night In Avatar

I kept telling myself that I have to write a posting about our 'new' 14-year-old boat, Avatar. However I also felt that Avatar was too special for me to write anything non-interesting or non-exciting about it. For two whole months I waited and waited for interesting stories to happen (and how I almost fell into the water while trying to get on didnt count) but unfortunately, anyone who has bought a property/car/boat would know that these types of purchase comes with a series of very non-interesting and non-exciting activities. In a way it is like adopting a child.

We bought the boat on New Years Eve, 2005, which marked a wonderful ending to a pretty good year. We were scheduled to settle in 3 weeks time. Heck the things you have to sort out in three weeks! Boat Rego, Boat Inspection, Boat Finance, Boat Insurance (Who to go with?), arrange for a mooring/marina berth - public or private? How much would it cost? How long do we have to wait? Should we get a dingy? An aluminium dingy? An inflatable? Should we row the dingy? Or should we use an outboard? What outboard? How much? Actually, we almost didnt make it to our 'deadline'.

And then the things you had to do after you pick up the boat: Transfer of vessel, put our names down on a waiting list for a public mooring, etc. (Which is silly, as you cannot join a waiting list unless you have a boat. But then if you dont have a mooring set up - you risk buying a boat and then having no where to put it.) We also had two slightly more interesting and 'artistic' tasks - which was to 'decorate' our cabin and get a sign bearing the name 'Avatar'.

We originally had pretty horrible looking DARK GREEN seat covers with weird stains which smelt of diesel, which is a bit of turn-off. Fortunately Shang came to the rescue and offered to lead the project of getting all new seat covers for Avatar. We went to Cabramatta on Australia Day and bought this blue and white stripy cotton that cost only $5 a metre! Later on she bought matching navy blue piping and the zippers for us and also talked to her maker to put all of them together for us - which would have cost us a fortunate if we have gone to anyone else. We went to IKEA two days later and picked up brand new bed sheets and duvet cover for the V-berth and some bright red cushions (Stripy Blue and White + Red - How French is that?!).

During the 3 weeks while we waited for the seat covers to arrive we also did some serious cleaning and scrubbing of Avatar. This is just so much hard work and you pretty much have to do it constantly. Imagine keeping your white car in the ocean and all these birds would shit on your bonnet and windows. Yuting is also particularly obsessed with the toilet. I am very grateful that we have an enclosed toilet as most small boats just dont come with one (which means you have to hold) or you get portoble toilet 'boxes' (called PORTA-POTTY) and dump the crap yourself everytime after sailing. So one of the 'criteria' when we were boat hunting was that it had to come with an enclosed marine toilet.

So yes, back to the toilet. It is small but quite nice really even with a pothole so you can admire the water views when you are doing your business. The only problem is that it kind of smells. Well, it doesnt smell like a public toilet as you would imagine. Instead the smell is actually a mixture of the smell of mould, diesel, sea water and human waste. Yuting have cleaned the toilet for at least 5 times, with every product you can find in the supermarket. We suspect the problem is that we dont use the toilet enough to keep the 'circulation' going. It also doesnt help that it is next to the engine room so you could smell the diesel. We are now trying to use it a lot and keep flushing the toilet with fresh water too. It still smells but is getting much better - we will get there one day.

The last thing is to get Avatar's name on the boat, and to do that I had to take off the old boat name first. While doing that I accidentally discovered a spider's home in the handle at the stern and when the spider crawled out it gave me such a fright I almost fell into the water.

Anyway we had some friends (and kids) onboard and did our first twilight sailing last Friday, which was really nice as afterwards we just chit chatted and listened to Love Song Dedication on the radio (Eric did a perfect job pretending he was one of those creepy stalker guys who rang up and said he loved this girl and stuff) plus Eric and Jeicy took the dingy out and had some romantic time of their own in the harbour under the moonlight too.

Yuting decided on Saturday night that we should do a 'sleep-over'! I was a bit reluctant - I guess emotionally I was not prepared so I tried to come up with excuses like how we havent tidied up the place yet and how we havent cooked dinner and it was already late, bla bla blah. Yuting was so determined that he tidied up our apartment and then cooked tandoori chicken and then packed it in lunchboxes so I had no choice but to follow him - it was already 9PM at the point. It turned out to be great. It was like camping on the water. We could see the stars from the V-berth and felt the nice sea breeze coming in from the hatch. It was nice to hear the waves and the gentle rocking of the boat just puts me asleep in no time.

We both slept in the next morning and Yuting got up and had breakfast and read the weekend paper while I just used the loo and went back to sleep. It was tiny but it felt like we had a holiday home where we could just chill out and forget about work. The guys at the boatshed had to come and check on us as they were getting a bit worried that they knew we were on board but didnt see us out of the cabin for the whole day. (I think Yuting looks like the quiet serial killer type - hee hee)

Anyway that's where we are at with our dear Avatar. It is not that interesting but have you listened to new parents talking about their babies?

On a side note, we had to go to the boat after work yesterday because Yuting left an avocado in the cabin on Sunday - what a genius, and we didnt want to risk it rottening away on its own - it's bad enough having a toilet that smells...