Sunday, 22nd January, 2012
My parents must hate me at the moment. In the preparation of getting ready for the ‘George Bass Expedition’, I’ve managed to completely take over their lounge and dining room with our headquarters! The dining room table is covered with ocean charts of Bass Strait and down the coast of Tasmania, laptops, business cards, paperwork with little notes scribbled all over them. And that’s just the start of it! The floor is covered with equipment from tents, to clothing & fishing rods – even wet wipes for toilet paper! Then there’s the workshop in my parents garage. After making them move their cars out and having my boat moved in, we’ve manage to spread tools and boat parts everywhere! There’s no doubting that there is a lot of work to do before we set off on Thursday!
Great news though! After spending last weekend in Sydney with Clark Carter (who’s coming on this up and coming expedition) and doing an interview on the ‘weekend TODAY show (Click here to veiw it), I’m now back in Melbourne, picked up Margaret Bowling (skipper for Bass) from the airport and we have managed to create a HUGE list of things to do and are slowly ticking them all off! It’s so great having her for this week leading up to this row. She knows so much about ocean rowing and the preparation into it that I’m starting to wonder if she’s a little ocean rowing mad! 
4 days of preparation until we head off so this is just a short blog, because I really need to go get stuck back into it! Just quickly, it’s amazing to see the community support getting behind us and helping out where they can, from rowing clubs to individuals like Annie and Zac who lent their car to me so that I could tow my boat down to Nautek Marine to get it fitted out, to Pj Williams (a father of a 5month old with CF) who late last night, came over and picked up a part of the boat that we need a welder to duplicate for us!
And finally before I head off and try my best to hammer and drill stuff into my boat, I’d like to announce that LJ Hooker has come on as our most recent sponsor! We are so happy about this especially since they have a great history in supporting cystic fibrosis!
Anyway, wish us luck with this week with our preparations! We definitely need it! OH! And Clark arrives on Wednesday morning! woooooh!!!!
P.S – Let’s all thank Wendy and John for their patience…….(my parents)
