Buried treasure!

The weather was rotten in Sydney over the last few days -I've been pottering around the house rather than pottering on the boat. I'd heard rumours that there was some vintage sailing stuff buried in my dad's old workshop, so I decided to excavate. The workshop has been exposed and barely touched for about ten years, and at some stage suffered a white ant infestation, so most of the shelves collapsed - it's piled high with unloved tools, rotting timber and old papers and boxes. It wasn't a very encouraging sight.

My mum told me to look for a "bazooka", which I somewhat anxiously asked her to explain in a little more detail, because you never know.. it turned out what I was looking for was a large, home-made fiberglass chart case. Eventually I spotted the end of it sticking out of a pile of decaying planks and sheets of perspex. Shifting all that wasn't much fun, but it paid off - behind the "bazooka" and an old tea-chest full of broken autopilots, I found my dad's old sextant! It's a beautiful piece of work, and seems to be in good shape. The "bazooka" turned out to be full of the original designs for my parents' yacht Vambrace, which they built in Japan in the early '70s, which was also a bit of a treat.

Buried Treasure

PS Thanks, Karinne, for pointing out that I hadn't enabled comments. That should be fixed, now.