Our first week cruising around Pittwater enabled us to really get to know “Addictive” even better, plus experience how we can change from living in a nice sized house to a small boat. We were able to get more comfortable with our battery consumption, water consumption and food consumption.

We discovered we don’t eat as much as we thought we would (always good to overcater), but that the fresh food we were able to store served us well and there was no wastage. We used about 50 litres of water, which tells me we likely weren’t drinking enough! The batteries can support us easily on sunny days, but a few days of cloud will mean we would need to have run the motor, which we likely will anyways as you can’t sail all the time.

We tried fishing, and discovered we’re not at all that good, although we had success with our crab pot and got a fantastic sized blue swimmer crab which was great with a lemon soy dressing, shallots and some rice noodles. We bent a few forks trying to get the meat out so we’ve since purchased some proper crab eating implements with the hope we can catch some more. Adrian also had some oysters we shucked off the rocks in a little bay which were fresh and delicious! Given he survived, I’m planning to try them next time.

Bernie is settling in really well and having no toilet issues at all, and getting some good swimming exercise. He adores the water, but I don’t so adore salty wet dog inside much to his dismay. We need to keep absolutely on top of this as he’ll bring a tonne of salt and dirt into our small living area which won’t be nice, so he gets rinsed off, made to sit outside until dry, then groomed a little before I’ll let him inside. He’s handling it fine. I’d have to do a whole separate post about doing his business. Its been a journey.

So in conclusion, things are going well and all our preparations have paid off. We definitely need some more guidance on fishing techniques, locations and lures and fortunately have a wealth of knowledge available in my step dad who has since given us two tackle boxes of his fishing gear, and some much needed words of advice. So here’s to the coming weeks and catching some actual fish! Fishing challenge to be continued…

Fi