Thursday Island is looking to be pretty damn good only one negative, the boat ramp ( it's actually really good if you don't have a 28ft flybridge catamaran) Pulled up yesterday to have a bo peep and suss out what's on offer only to read a sign saying " 5ton gross load on ramp" and the worlds lowest power line hanging across the access road to the ramp complete with dangly spinny watch the fuck out things hanging off it left me wanting to curl up into a ball and cry like a small child. Well that's well and truly gone and fucked me on a grand scale. Boat comes in at a shade under five ton loaded, add a trailer 1.5 ton and a truck at five ton puts me at double the doable weight and an over height load at 4.5m.

Upon losing my shit and feeling dejected for the rest of the day and wanting to move to anywhere with a decent boat ramp I spent the afternoon drinking beer and contemplating life in general with a dim view on everything. This morning my wife said to me " Why don't you leave the boat in a pen in Cairns and we can use it when we're down there?. " My dim view on life has just gotten a little brighter.....:D Turns out we will be living down that neck of the woods when this contract is over. She will be travelling down there for work on a regular basis and we can use the big duck from time to time when we're there or I can fly down for a week at a time when the weather gods are smiling. Freight to TI from Cairns was going to be $20k each way on the barge and I was a little skeptical in burning that much loot to have a boat on the Island. We did the sums and five years pen fees in Marlin Marina in Cairns works out to be five grand cheaper than return freight costs and you've got all of the amenities on hand one would need ( fuel dock, safe pen etc etc ).

Seeing that most of the local boats are big assed open dingies I'm looking at either 6.7m Southwind with a Zook 140 or a little Stessco side console with a merc 60 on the back at the moment as my daily banger for the next five years. Looks like the big girl was never going to be a practical boat for a daily runner up here. All I can say is I'm grateful for having a wife who sees the situation from a different angle to me. On a positive note I get to go boat shopping again!.