Shortly after arriving in Constitution Dock we secured the boat & flew up to Brisbane for a family birthday party - about 36 of us having a BBQ at the dam,playing with a canoe, dinghies, golf, & motor bike.  We stayed on at brother Peter's farm, and because Pete & Ginny were heading over to Thailand for a couple of weeks we spent time here looking after the farm & trying to do a lot of the chores that P & G were having trouble getting on top of - we fed a cat, chickens, 3 dogs, 10 puppies, & about 150 cattle, driving a couple of different tractors to carry around big hay bales, in addition to replacing entrance gate rails eaten out by termites with steel stockyard rails, replacing a window, fitting new doorlock to wine cellar, mowing & slashing grass, cleaning mould out from a silo of grain pellets, cleaning a firefighting tank, securing tank to a trailer, weed spraying on the dam, fixing filing cabinets, clean stockyards & grease moving parts, cobweb cleaning from house eaves, & numerous other jobs typically required on a farm - all good fun.

Back in Hobart we found time to undertake a few chores for ourselves on the boat - made up a new fenderboard, a new fibreglass floor for the toilet, got some minor welding jobs done, raised the sink to keep water in the drainpipe instead of lapping in the bottom of the bowl. We also made fitted underblankets & sheets for all our bunks, rearanged plumbing & diverter valve in the toilet in preparation for a new holding tank, & set up terminals to enable the battery charger to be easily connected. Another chore we worked on was drinking up our various bottles of wine & spirits, intending to cut back on consumption once it was all gone!

 We continued through winter with boat jobs, reading books, getting better organised on board, making new friends, visiting museum, art gallery, library, and a few day trips around in a car lent to us by new friends Tseviet & Shouline. One day we had a sail on the square rigged Windeward Bound, seeing a whale & calf in the Derwent River.  This has been followed by a few more trips acting as crew when they have been short handed.  We have also given a few astro navigation lessons to yachties, crew on the Windeward bound, and also some of the crew on Sea Shepherd, one of the boats involved with disruption of Japanese whaling in Antarctic waters.

 In late October we headed off on a "holiday" in Vietnam for almost 4 weeks. Enjoyed it immensely, spending time in Hanoi, Halong Bay, Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang, & finaly Ho Chi Minh City, travelling internally by plane, train & bus.  There is such a diverse ethnic range in the country, lots of old temples, pagodas, ruins from various eras, lakes, rivers, & water everywhere. Some fantastic scenery, very friendly people, and generally a lot of bustle, particularly from the millions of motor bikes.  Crossing the road was so scary at first but we got accustomed to it eventually.

 Now we have just got back to Hobart & still need to get a few chores finished off before greeting brother Peter in the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, slipping Expeditus for antifouling on 3rd January, & hopefully heading off to New Zealand sometime later in January 2011.