Day 14 – 20/12/13 – Grantville -> Carrum Vic

We had gone to bed pretty late after the penguin parade so a sleep in was in order! We climbed out around 8 to find a magnificent view of mud flats. I felt like I was back at Wynnum! We were out of water so we scouted around and found a tap on bottle shop that wasn’t open yet. 80l later and we were off!

The fella in  the big red suit is due pretty soon so we dropped De off to the mall in Frankston while the boys and I found a boat ramp to park at. Driving through cities and even a lot of small towns is hard but finding a park for our ‘rig’ is near on impossible sometimes, so we now head for the boat ramp as there is always space! I managed to find a really handy app Aus Boat Ramps that is coming in really handy. It locates you and then gives you a list or maps all of your nearest ramps! While they do charge you to use boat ramps in Victoria we have avoided any inspectors so far. We knocked over a few jobs and a few hours later we went back to grab De.

We headed back to the boat ramp as I was yet to properly christen Rufus, our roof top tinny (on the roof with us) and the boys were keen to have a swim. We headed for the beach and there was a pretty long jetty and we (read the boys) decided it was time for mummy to have her first dive of a jetty. The boys and I jumped in and De soon followed. While the water was pretty cold it was refreshing and we had a great time.

We were soon back at the ramp with the Rufus getting his feet wet. In the only other time she had been in the water there was a couple of issues, firstly it was blowing 25 knots at Colmslie on the Brisbane River, secondly I hadn’t sealed the holes in the stern (back of the boat) that you can secure the motor on with and finally whilst the boat is rated for a 15hp engine it probably wasn’t designed to have it, my portly self, a fuel tank and about 20l of water all in the very back of the boat whilst the rest of it is completely empty. This resulted in the boat pulling a very serious wheely or maybe a sterny as it doesn’t have wheels, to the point where I had no idea where I was going, as even at 6 ft tall the bow was pointing so far to the heavens that I couldn’t see over the bow. It was slightly terrifying especially heading into the 25 knot wind!

In order to avoid the boat pulling another sterny I had implemented a few changes. Firstly I sealed the holes in the stern and moved the tank to the front of the boat. I was thinking about going on a diet but decided that I had a couple of wonderful counterweights that I could employ for our second test voyage. So I grabbed their life jackets, threw Sam and Jack in the front of the boat and we set of what was a very narrow and shallow creek. All went very well and while it will take me  a while to get my confidence up like I had in Tom The Fox (our other tinny) I think that is probably a good thing!’

We loaded Rufus back on the roof and headed north towards Melbourne. As I am sure you can imagine free camps aren’t very common in capital cities so we decided to head for the nearest boat ramp. I thought I had seen some pretty good ramps in my time but the one at Carrum was something out of this world! About 500m in length with 4 two lane ramps, moorings the full length and three rows of trailer parking this would hold every boat in Brisbane! We later learnt that when the fish are on it is not even close to big enough and cars are parked on the road for hundreds of meters!

I am guessing that it might be time to share lesson #3; Don’t park on boat ramps on Friday nights. While I am a light sleeper at the best of times, having cars doing circle work beside you isn’t conducive to a good night’s sleep, well for me at least. The boys slept like a log!