Australia Day 2015

Before leaving Perth we purchased the flags of each of the States and Territories that we anticipated visiting. In effect the only flag missing is the ACT flag. No coast line, means we won't be sailing there. When we ordered the flags, the Bloke had been in discussion with the Map Shop about purchasing a small burgee size flag for each State. When they were unable to supply and suggested contacting the flag supplier directly, the 'burgee sized' flags were still front of mind. The quote seemed comparable to expectation so it was a colossal surprise when the package arrived containing flags the size of shower curtains! These flags therefore, are high impact.

We hatched a plan to get Zofia appropriately dressed for Australia Day and rose early to hoist our display. We had barely gone below for breakfast, well pleased with our work, before we heard somethings snap. The string of flags had separated leaving just 3 dangling from the Spinnaker halyard. Ooops.

Trailing and incomplete flag run.

Our AIS aerial on the top spreaders looked like it might be damaged unless we acted promptly. 2 hours of attempting to lasso the flags using the Topping Lift halyard ensued. Each time the Bloke succeeded in getting a bit of a wrap I had to pull on the Spinnaker halyard hoping to yank the flags down. Sadly the weight of the halyard inside the mast was greater than the weight of the flags so they were not going to drop to the deck on their own. Most of the time the ropes just slid through the wrap. There was A LOT of winching! A trip up in the mast in the riggers harness was one option but we normally use the Spinnaker halyard to do the hoisting, with the Topping Lift halyard as the safety line. Without a safety line this was a marginal option. This so easily could go from being annoying to becoming an accident and what we endearingly call a 'Cluster F*@k'!

 The culprit.

Our flags were supplied complete with the fittings to hoist them, except that this item was faulty on a couple of flags and the loop on the left was open/broken - poor manufacture/quality control. We'd not noticed and it was the Tassie flag that separated from its fittings, thus causing the mayhem. Once we'd got all the flags down and new fittings attached (we seem to have spares of almost anything) we hoisted our display again to good effect. This is not before the Bloke and I nearly had our own Australia Day fireworks before lunch!

All up and fluttering. Success!

That's a lot of 'shower curtains'!

Later, we went ashore with the crew of Casablanca, Margaret and Bob, for a BBQ lunch. The fire you see is not the BBQ, it's the camp fire we lit to keep warm. We are still waiting for summer. We had a lovely time with the smoke seeming to swirl wherever we tried to sit and we all returned to our boats smelling like hickory sticks - perfect!

Happy Australia Day!