We have been at Airlie Beach for 12 days waiting for parts we ordered to arrive, one of them critical for us to get away, and as luck would have it, it is the one we still haven’t got. However there is a ‘but’!

Although we kept reminding ourselves that with strong wind and rain, we were not missing out on a great deal by staying put, it irked us and we felt trapped. One of us is severely lacking in the patience department.

The main issue was a dodgy hatch on the under bridge deck in our bedroom. The hatch is handy for ventilation at anchor, especially when it is raining and we can’t open the ones above our bed. But if not shut properly when underway you scoop up a whole lot of sea water into the bedroom! The hatch failed while we were in the Whitsundays. Wade managed to force it shut, so we could get back to Airlie Beach without flooding. Once anchored in flat water, he slid under the bridge deck in the dinghy, removed the hatch and found the culprit: a broken hinge! At this point we were officially stuck, unable to go anywhere!

The challenge was then to find a replacement hinge… our 23-year-old Vetus hatch is no longer made, but after much searching, we found a marine shop in New Zealand, Barton Marine, able to supply the hinges which are used for another brand of hatch! We ordered two, figuring the other hinge might be close to death too! Until the hatch was back in place, we were immobilised… a long frustrating wait for our order to come from NZ!

Given we were stuck, we attended to a few other issues: new dyneema rope spool from International Rope Braid for the trampolines, new 3/16^th inch fuel tail for our CVA filter from Enzed to attend to the small leak in the fuel line to the diesel heater, replacement battery for the Canon camera, new multiport adapter for the Dell laptop… all bits were ordered and arrived promptly… except for the main offender… the hinge for the hatch! Arghhh!

Meanwhile we visited other boats, socialised, had daily walks ashore, but it was tedious. We were itching to go on our next adventure and could not, because the blasted hinges were still in Customs at Brisbane…

But then on Thursday we met up with a group of resourceful cruisers on our friends’ boat Bossa Nova! Neville and Amanda had organised a morning tea on The Bossa with a couple of others boats’ crews: Doug and Jeanette on Reeflection, Darren and Liz on Crazy Lil Thing, and us on Anui.

Just by chance, Wade decided to bring the hatch and broken hinge with us to check with Neville and Doug, who built their own boats, whether we could botch a repair. We were that desperate to get away! Doug did better than that! He recognised the hinge and had spares on his boat. How lucky can we get?

A big thank you to all – to The Bossa for organising the get together and to Reeflection for coming to our rescue.

When our hinges finally arrive at Airlie we will have them forwarded to the next port!

Where to now?

We have been watching the forecasts like hawks. We are now at the start of a rare 7 day weather window of calmer conditions – 10-20 knot SE rather than 25-30, enough to head far offshore to a few Coral Sea Atolls!

Thursday afternoon was a mad rush to fit the repaired hatch, do the laundry and provision the boat! And today as we post this we are heading off to the top of Hook Island, ready for a dawn departure on Saturday… to the Coral Sea atolls, some 260nm offshore. We will see where we can point. Yeah! And we probably will have a buddy boat too: Lyn and Dave on Moggy, who follow us and who we met in Airlie, are heading off too. So hopefully we will meet up in the middle of nowhere! All is well that ends well.