Petes Kellet Island main RHKYC centre (between the red block and the white block low down in trees) from the Duck Ling
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Typically, as soon as we got the mooring right beside Pete work, Pete got moved at work! So, Pete starts his new job officially on Monday, and has been told he can't be in shirts and flipflops (let alone bare feet) at the HQ. Luckily his cheap leather posh shoes he bought for a night out will do - they are sort of heel-less slip-ons, but look good. Work keep him supplied in a range of RHKYC/ whatever race has just started/ sponsored polo shirts, so its just trousers I have to sort. And a belt. I noticed today he's lost his again and was wearing a nice neon orange bit of cord, oh dear.
Our 2nd anniversary, Brian, Judy & Pete, leaving the posh Compass Room, RHKYC, Kellet Island
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
The pay isn't actually much better really, but he reckons he will like it, having suddenly decided he would like a bit more to do, and planning to keep in as much teaching as he can. But he has a much bigger desk space (oooh) thats all his own, in an office with just other sailing office people in it - and the big boss is his neighbour! Think I may go in/ meet him after work fairly often as the food is nicer there (bigger range), it has AC and comfy chair rooms, you get free towels in the shower, and it has a pool and small gym. Shame we decided not to moor there really, but it smelt like an open sewer and the light pollution kept me awake - I could read in bed at night with no lights on in the hull! I'm miffed with him though as the fancy dress theme for their next staff party is 'jeans'. Perfect, thought I, a chance to paint jeans or a denim shirt on him (there are prizes and there is no way he will even enter the karaoke or Mahjong competitions), but he absolutely refuses. I'd ask the rest of his office as its something I want to try/ add to my portfolio, but really, no-one else has as fit a body as he does so I doubt they'd be up for it!
One night we were lying in bed watching a DVD on our mini player (its sort of like a small laptop that only plays films - we can borrow dvds from the big club library or buy Video CDs for a few pounds in town) when a light lit up the night sky above us. Pete leapt up as he recognised it as an SOS flare going off. He thought it was just so someone could see something but as he brought his head back in the hatch and we settled down again, another went. He saw which boat it came from, moored accross the bay, and as 2 flares that colour are the international sign for help/ danger/ SOS etc, he went zooming off in our dinghy to see if they were OK. I lost sight of him in the gloom and started worrying that if they WERE sinking or whatever, he had no phone and I didn't know which boat it was! Luckily he came back after about 10 minutes - the idiot man onboard just wanted a lift to shore! Pete said the guy and the pretty oriental woman with him nearly knocked him over in their struggle to get on Pingu, and were acting very oddly - he thought maybe they were drunk. Anyway, when he returned he realised the guy hadn't phoned the police or whatever to tell them it wasn't an emergency. Queue our scramble on radio/ phone trying to contact the right people. Eventually we got put through to the police and Pete explained what had happened and that they didn't need to call out the coastguard, it wasn't an emergency. Thanks from them, and we hung up. They then called us back to clarify the situation with someone who spoke better english. Pete repeated. The next 2 returned calls they kept trying to clarify where the man was. At this point Pete started using words I have never heard him use to describe his action - as in obscure english (things like 'jaunt' and - which made things worse, so I kept poking him and trying to dictate in simple English. By the 7th call we had got them to understand the bloke had gone, but by then 2 police boats had turned up at the abandoned yacht and were circling its moorings searching with big spotlights. Queue another hour of calls from them, trying to work out where WE were in relation to them, before a police cutter 'found' us (they had been searching north of the ABC club outpost instead of east, where we were flashing our lights, waving torches and yelling at them). The officer came onboard and had to write down our statements!!! We got the feeling the boat guy was in trouble - still not clear why he didn't just ring the yacht Club and ask them for the ferry number or to send it! Anyway, the next day Pete got 3 more calls from the police, anoyther from the Yacht Clubs big boatyard boss, and then 1 from his sailing boss. We later heard the man in question was insisting he was on his boat 'alone'. And isn't married to an Oriental girl! Whoops! the fallout so far (apart from the police etc giving him a smacked wrist I should hope) is that the ferryman now annoys us by shining a massive spotlight around the moorings every so often when its dark, incase there is anyone wanting a lift!
The other day, we were walking down the 200 steps to get the ferry skiff accross to Pete Middle Island club (where we leave our dinghy to get back to the Shiralee) when I herad the WEIRDEST noises. Sort of someone blowing over a bottle (NOT a bittern you wildlife trust lot!) crossed with an organ and a bit of cartoon sounds. All in sort of harmonised but slightly staggered tones. Turns out its the frogs! Like no frog I ever heard before - very Jim Henson, should be gracing an animated puppet film! Very alien really - bit 'close encounters'! The ciccadas are starting agan too, not as musical as in Belize, far more raucus and grating. Hoping it will be quieter on the boat than where Pete lived last spring, as sometimes I couldn't actually make out what he was saying when he phoned me due to the racket coming from the bugs around his flat! And I found a wing from one of the lychee lantern bugs - dying to photograph them, they look stunning! Nasty thing is twice now we have spotted cockroaches flying out of nowhere and landing on the boat so hoping we always catch them in the act and no other iffy bugs get in that way. Urrgh flying spiders, there's a nightmare.
What else..Domino the kitten is literally coming on in leaps and bounds. After a few forays with her bravery encouraged by us being out there, at night, charging from one cockpit to the next, she now leaps around the mast, hanging off bits of rope and attacking the cords which dangle happily just for her. She has a major (worrying and annoyingly noisy) fetish for making plastic bags rustle, preferably by piling into them and then chewing them into submission. I have worries of her OD-ing on them like those poor turtles who think plastic bags are squid, and me being lynched by the SPCA vet after a post mortem on her bulging bag-filled tummy.
Domino the kitten idiscovering how to poke the vent out of the hatch roof on the catamaran
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Her tail is odd and actually coils like a piglets when she stretches. Luckily it it also gives her far more entertainment than any cat we have ever had - she spends hours chasing it. What this says about her mental state/ ability I don't know but she really is surprised by its behaviour and winds Pete up by scrabbling round in circles on the duvet after it whenever it wakes her up at night. Yesterday we were reading in bed and she was charging up and down the cabin (she hurdles the high foot-partitions either side of the bathroom area as if she's a derby horse). Next thing the mozzy net fitted into the open hatch above our heads collapsed in on us (as it does - is a collapsible wooden dowling thing I am trying to redesign & replace as winds dump it onto us painfully). My squeak was answered triumphantly from above us and her wee alien-eyed head peered down, trying to gauge if she could jump in. This is now her favourite game, escaping out the cockpit hatch, scampering around the roof and terrifying me until she climbs in. She hasn't quite figured out how to get back in the cockpits when the mozzy netting is hanging in them though - she can push out of it easily but gets tangled in in trying to push in and just chews it until someone rescues her, which won't be doing much for its resistance to bugs! And she does squeaky wee whiney meows whenever we disturb her or she wakes up, as well as yowling frantically as us for no apparent reason (What's that you say? There's a boy fallen down the well, Lassy??) which is another thing I haven't met before. Fun though & we have only had her 2 weeks!
On a scarier note, I was reading on deck one morning and Domino was playing Starburst (old Super Choice game - run off from me to 1 point, kill it, charge back to me, head off to another target, etc) wen she suddenly froze at a new noise. One of the massive Black Kites (those birds of prey that replace seabirds here) had spotted her and started circling overhead and crying to a few others. I suppose she is about the size of a juicy rat, so tempting!!!! I'm making doubly sure that when we leave her during daylight she is shut in one of the cabins - pretty certain they don't hunt at night! Saying that after shutting the storm cover into the kitchen hatch and leaving her while Pete took me to Middle Island to have lunch with him & his course (kids), I got back, opened it up and couldn't find her. By the time I gave up, hoping she was hiding in there or REALLY asleep, and went over to the loo side, she was sat happily in that hull hatch chirping at me. I can only hope she managed to climb up and squeeze out the air gap - the other option is she has found the flaps that are air vents at the far ends of the hull, crawled out them and decided not to venture off the footwell there into the water, jumped up onto the solar panelled bit of of the hull, climbed up that, into the cockpit then crossed to the other hull as usual.
Domino in the hatch to the toilet pump on the catamaran - note the paw by Petes foot....
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
We have had a brief but welcome cold snap, after our first 'normal' hot day which left the cat & I panting in any shade we could find onboard. After a week of jumpers, blankets, kitten scrabbling to get inside jackets and hot tea the mozzies were back out in force tonight so I expect thats the end of it.Pete took down some vital sail ropes and put the biminy (tent thing) up on deck, really high - its great!!! But then of course the winds returned so its been taken down again until summer truly rrives and all winds stop till winter.
I have become addicted to fresh pineapple. Just as well as most of the fruit isn't great or tastes hideous (see the jackfruit/ ugly fruit Christmas experience). The stalls here sell it peeled in a sort of spiral fashion, so you can either slice off an eat or just take it like a massive messy corn on the cob and munch it. Gorgeous! Ugly fruit is back in season - you can smell it as soon as you reach built up aes, it reeks even in the open air stalls. Annoyed as after 2 attempts including maps and asking locals, we still haven't found the alleged supermarket in Repulse Bay. We spent 2 hours looking for it on the street listed today, and gave up to find the only place you can eat around there is a Pizza Hut! P reckons that is beacuse all the poeple who can afford to live around there either eat in with their own family chef or eat out in posh Central HK places - and their staff either eat in or wouldn't afford to eat out locally!
One of Petes junior instructors is the son of the family who own a massive farm/ garden centre just near Aberdeen Tunnel (prime residential land!) which may be useful. In our quest to be green & survive the end of the world (? - thought it was only me who had read all the Apocalyptic sci-fi))we are thinking of getting a few ducks and growing some veg on board. I loved the ducklings we had in Suffolk, they returned to hand feed eve when re-released to the wild - I bet domesticated species would be even tamer. AND they lay longer than chickens AND could swim around the boat. A fresh supply of lettuce is needed - we are really low on veg & green intake, as we don't have a fridge, most is horrible or we aren't sure how to cook/ eat it from the shops, and what we do recognise is imported from the EU or USA (Bad - air miles). I think we are planning to end up a cross between Costner's boat in Waterworld and a sort of non-breeding Ark.
Me eating lunch at Middle Island (Petes club) before going to work as a face painting fairy
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Don't know what I have done to my left wrist - for a change it's not Carpel Tunnel in my right! I did land on my left heavily one night 2 weeks ago when the steps detached as I was climbing out of the bed hull, but it only started hurting during the rugby 7's. Doesn't feel at all like carped tunnel, must find a doctor!I got sent to A&E by Pete the week after the rugby - we can't find a doctor locally now, and I hadn't slept a few nights as my wrist hurt when I lay down/ he mived/ I moved/ the cat sneezed...... Turns out I have a sprained wrist & a dislocated thumb. A&E was amazing - very quick & quiet despite signs warning it could take hours minimum! I was registered, triaged, seen, X-rayed, fixed and given painkillers in under an hour for less then HKD$100. The nice doctor popped my thumb back (luckily I don't think his amazing english was up to what I said then) and gave me a sling to go with the elasticated copped wrist bandage I already had. I got home and Domino went mental for the cotton triangular sling - dragged it off and 'killed' it for over an hour. Maybe some hospital smell is on it she likes. I can't get it back she growled and hauled it into the small end of the hull I can't reach! Unimpressed as I lost the painkillers on my trip home! I went back again 2 weeks later as its no better - another round of X-rays and I'm being sent to the specialist next week.But this time I have 3 types of pain-klillers, whee! At the mo I have a very fetching hard pink holey thing the nurses in the occupational therapy unit molded to my hand & arm with thermoplastic for me. I feel a bit like a female dalek. Pete's been sweet and luckily all my bookings were at the weekend when he was off to help me carry & set up, or this week the only party I did was at his club. the Bankers Club hosted a 4th birthday for a mainly chinese crowd of 50 kids and their parents - myself and Ben the clown (been at a party with hime before) being the only Brit/ europeans. I nearly went mad as all but 4 of the kids only wanted hand art - used to horrible paints which don't wash off - and thats SO time consuming, fiddly and BORING for me. Especially with dads making unhelpful comments, like 'ask for Buzz Lightyear'. They have NO idea.........And the market on Sunday was a bit dead - plus BILING and I didn't realise I had scorched the back of my neck, ouch. Even with my DIY umbrella shade (brollies here are all silver coated fabric inside to stop rays too) my paints melted.
www.cats-creations.co.uk Attempting Cirque de Soleil type face paint
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Latest news is Domino took a swim while Pete & his mum (stopped over for a day on her way to NZ) were on deck. Wierdest noises ever, and she nearly pulled herself onto the dinghy before Pete fished her out.
Was she pushed or did she jump??? Domino discovering the sea is wet after falling off the catamaran
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Awww! Her ears were so flat back she looked as if we'd snipped them off! Still, with a bit of help from me & a towel she was clean & dry within an hour. We'd expected he to cower indoors for a few days but she was running around on deck as soon as she was fluffy again. Can only hope she learnt her lesson (saves me doing the aversion therapy thing!) and wonder what tempted her over the edge...........We now have a small floating panel trailing off 1 hull in the hope she can get on that if the dinghy isn't there.
