Inshore

Sooner or later, every sailor finds that town life pales.

Ishmael knew that he had had enough when he felt himself seized by the desire to step into the street and knock the hats off of people's heads.

We know we've had enough when the playground starts fighting back - vide Eric's ear, above.  Bad day on the slide.  And it was four in the afternoon and Alisa was a mile from the boat, no car, no mobile, both kids, and Eric bleeding copiously.  Turns out that if you jog to the doctor's office at that time of day, and present them with a bleeding, screaming one year old, you go right to the front of the queue.

So, no lasting damage, we trust.  And Eric is tough.  He wasn't too happy for the rest of the day, but hasn't mentioned the ear once in the two days following.

All the same, we took it as a sign that it was time to leave the concrete jungle of Hobart behind, and to go sailing.

So we're seeing a bit of Tasmania outside of the capital.

We sailed wing and wing down D'Entrecasteaux Channel, on a breeze that started out talking in a loud voice and ended up whispering.

We gybed at every turn of the channel.  And where a gybe with a poled-out jib takes about 40 minutes for me alone at three in the morning out on the sea with a bit of breeze and swell, they were taking ten each on the flat inshore water.  Normally I channel my inner matador to approach the whisker pole as it swings wildly across its foredeck domain.  But in the Channel everything was so still and suburban that I could let go of the pole to adjust something and it would just stay where I had left it.  Weird, but something I could get used to.

So we'll carry on with the family life in this corner of Tassie for ten days or so.

And tomorrow is Easter, of course.

We embrace the most incredibly pagan interpretation of the holiday.  Chocolate and easter baskets define the outer limits of our theology on this one.  Hard to have the traditional pagan celebration of spring in a hemisphere where autumn is just beginning, but we're making do.

Elias left taped this note to the Easter Bunny on the companionway hatch.  It reads in two columns, first the right and then the left - "Dear Easter Bunny, please hide the eggs".  As in, don't just leave the goods lying out, put some sport in it for me.

We're anchored up next to our good mates on Aratika.  And we got brave this afternoon and had egg dyeing for all the kids in our saloon.  Great picture above of the kids dyeing and Alisa in the background, quietly freaking out over the chance of spilled dye.

It's all good.