Fah Kiew Tu

Wish that was the case here - I just had to relocate 2 big Pacific gulls that had decided my aft PV panel would be a great place to take up roosting. Still, better than a flock of cormorants s(h)itting on the sails... FKT

FTFY. FKT

Yeah, I have one of those, gifted to me by a cruiser who installed a water maker! Just came ashore from fueling and watering the boat. PITA taking it out in containers but the water is rainwater off of my roof area so I know it's sweet. FKT

My, you live a rich fantasy life. Not to mention having absolutely no qualms about attacking a person for something they didn't say. Sorry, but I generally give a person 3 chances to actually deal fairly, and you've failed. You're still making up stuff I've never said because you can't deal with what I have said. You don't in fact oppose coercion at all, you only oppose coercion when it runs contrary to your belief system. You'd stand by and allow another few generations of children to be abused, malnourished and ill-educated because you oppose coercion. That's not much of a position to take in my eyes, but that's the one you stand by. Good luck to you and I hope you'd be prepared to tell those kids to their face that you were condemning them to a dysfunctional future because you believed that doing anything else would be coercing them against their will. On that basis you must, for logical consistency, oppose vaccination of children if they say they don't want it. What's your position on that? Olaf is correct. It's a big can of worms, nobody pretends otherwise, but stupidly and willfully ignorant opinions don't add anything. Funny thing I've just been chatting with my Aboriginal neighbours, arranging to do some flounder fishing. Feel free to come on by and give them the benefit of your wisdom. If you think I'm abrasive, you've a lot to learn about local politics. I'm sure Olaf could share some stories but for the sake of diplomacy, I doubt he will... FKT

Well said. It's why I have no time at all for people like twolegged. They'd rather thousands suffer and die early than admit they might be wrong. True Stalinist followers who took on board his attitude that a single death might be a tragedy but a million deaths is just a statistic. It's people like that who are directly responsible for the utter dysfunction of those communities (and I use the term very loosely) today. Yet somehow it's never their fault. FKT

Thank you, Olaf. While I never worked in those places I spent a fair amount of time in and around Nhulunbuy, Napier Broome Bay and Darwin in the early 80's. My observations were similar. While there were quite unforgivable child abuse examples in some of those missions and orphanages, the thing that gets overlooked is that a hell of a lot of those children supposedly stolen were being neglected and abused by their birth parents and relatives. In the case of half castes in a number of the tribes, outright killed. IMO the real tragedy is not that we took some children away, it's that we didn't take anywhere near *enough*. The current day statistics on child abuse both physical and sexual in remote Aboriginal communities is an utter scandal. There's plenty of first hand accounts of this sort of thing on record, but it's pointless telling the likes of two-faced, whose knowledge base is a micron deep at best. I could dig up some first observer accounts from my library but it'd be pointless - no willingness to believe anyone except a polemicist like Pilger so a total waste of time. FKT

I'm fairly sure that's the model that Troy & Pascale have and yes, it does fit in a locker quite comfortably. Low tech - maybe, if you consider a precision engineered high pressure pump and a semi-permeable membrane that you couldn't possibly DIY make as low tech. I don't have one as I'm not planning on going far enough to need one, but for blue water work or similar, I'd have one if I possibly could. WRT furling gear I built a version of the 100 year old Wyckham Martin furler and so far it's working fine. I used a Dyneema strop for the luff 'wire' and machined my own bearing housings, using off the shelf industrial thrust bearings. It's so easy to use that we don't even think about it. With a bowsprit I didn't really want to deal with a hank-on jib. As the jib is on its own bit of string independent of the forestay, not in a foil wrapped around the forestay, you can slack away on the halyard and lash the rolled sail to the lifeline rails if you had to. FKT

That's when it's *really* nice to have a steel boat with 2.3m of steel bowsprit. Plastic boats give you room. Lots of room. FKT

Not to mention parental authority... I guess a bombing and murder campaign to force your political wishes on the unwilling is ok though. FKT

They are a lovely couple and I agree, Troy knows his stuff very well. The overhaul on their boat is really impressive. Currently they're over the hill from my place. FKT

What I'd *like* is the Aus Govt to permit the hydro guys to make the charts freely available for download to Australians, seeing as our taxpayer money has already paid for them. Maybe they could restrict it to Australian registered vessels or something. I'll accept a cheap alternative via AS but I can't see that ever happening as it'd involve actually doing something useful for sailing in Australia. Meanwhile I have my Simrad plotter, Navionics on a couple of tablets and OpenCPN with freely available charts and that's good enough for me. FKT

That's a pretty good description of how I used to feel when heading off into the Southern Ocean on a 2-3 month research voyage. You live in the 'now' and it only starts to go downhill when you're maybe 5 days out of port on the return leg and start thinking of all that shoreside crap just waiting for you. I've no desire to cross oceans on a small boat, though. I've done my time in the deep ocean. The interesting bits are around the edges. FKT

I wouldn't sell it but then I'm a pack rat type. I also wouldn't paint it - it's a PITA to get the paint to stick to aluminium long term. What I did was sand-blast mine back to a nice grey. In 2 years it shows no sign of corroding - it is raised off the deck - and I don't have to think about the paint getting damaged. FKT

Nah not really - in the last year or so we've pretty much stopped drinking alcohol altogether. Just lost the taste for it, no moral or health issues involved. Getting old disgracefully. Quiet evening is no bad thing. I can remember one outrageous NYE party up at Elvina Bay in Pittwater back when we were university students 40+ years ago - glad it's a distant memory now. FKT

They don't suffer at all when hit in the head by a 5.56mm hollow point bullet at 3400 fps, take my word for it. It's not in the least cruel, it's as near to instantaneous as you can get, and they don't have time to feel pain. So there's all your objections answered. I used to do it, I have no qualms about it happening, but these days I outsource the killing to my neighbours. Subject to change without notice though. FKT

All charts for all Australian waters, mind. I'd even join an affiliated club and pay the AS capitation fee for a deal like that. FKT

Watching the kangaroos & wallabies out my lounge room window. Bottle of sav blanc in the fridge waiting for my GF to get here when she finishes work. We don't bother staying up to midnight, one glass of wine, some orange fudge and off to bed. Probably take the boat out tomorrow if the weather is half decent (for a change). Except for when I was at sea, pretty much same-same we've done the last 20+ years. Have a good one. Hard to see how 2021 could be worse but here's hoping it's a lot better than 2020. FKT

Find or invent an Irish connection. Brexit promises to provide at least a year's worth of entertainment as viewed from Australia. FKT

Thanks. Wonder if they're bright enough to actually stay in their quarantine hotel. I hope so for their sake. FKT

There goes your retirement to the Greek islands... FKT

The US medical system must be making out like bandits. Perhaps we all should buy shares in hospital chains, medical centres and big pharma... FKT

True. They're a classic example of an organisation in search of a real role and Parkinson's Law in action. If they grow their role, they can ask for (demand) more resources to fulfill that role. At the same time they don't do things which would actually benefit all Australian sailing - such as make AusENC charts available for a nominal cost. In the old days of paper charts this was different - there was a real cost in printing, revising and distributing paper charts. Nowadays they have to do it for the RAN, they're paid by the Govt to do the job and the cost of distribution is effectively zero, so where's the downside? It's like the arguments about pirate copies of software; if people who ran pirate copies all bought it, revenue would be XXX. But those people won't pay the asking price, they'll use something else. And here we are, with AusENC charts unaffordable on any sensible terms and AS doing fuck-all to actually help. Indeed, they're doing their best to make the situation more confusing and worse. Worthy of a 'Yes Minister' episode, really. FKT

Maybe AS could actually do something useful for the first time in their existence and lobby the Govt to make the AusENC charts available to all Australians for a nominal fee. Nah, never happen, I'm dreaming. FKT

I sarcastically commented somewhere that the USA might crack the 400K mark by inauguration day. It saddens me that I might be right. FKT

I've got C-Map on my Simrad plotter, Navionics on my IPad and Samsung tablet (along with the Simrad remote viewer) and OpenCPN with charts of dodgy provenance on my Raspberry Pi so I'm golden. IF I could get AusENC for say $100 pa for all of Australia I'd do it but I'm fucked if I'm paying stupid money on top of already funding the IHO via tax revenue. FKT