Care package

My goddaughter Sasha (right) and Martin on her 25th birthday

Late last night, after everyone had gone their separate ways from Sasha's birthday dinner at Rozelle Thai, I said to Alex, "We should have been lifting Enki today." He'd remembered. He doesn't talk much about the boat but he's always thinking about her.

It wasn't a hard decision to put back our departure from Sydney. Boat jobs can wait. The start of the cruising season can wait too. We have people to attend to, to keep watch over - a beautiful girl whose bright spirit has clouded over and friends whose broken bodies have been pieced together again with pins and stitches. Tony and Gillian are out of hospital now, astonishingly robust and mending, mending well, but Pops is brittle and her fragility is unsettling for her and for those who love her. That's what's holding us here for the moment.

Gillian visits Tony in rehab

Pops (and below) at Quirky Way

City "do"

This is not what we expected to be doing at the end of March. We've patched together an extended tenancy at Quirky Way, a sweet little cottage in Rozelle owned by a paper artist called Skye. Many long-term cruisers don't have such leniency built into their budget. We've always known, in theory, that this life of ours was dependent on other people's health as much as our own. Our "escape" and our "freedom" is conditional. We don't fool ourselves it could be otherwise, though this is our first reality bite.

Mike picks his way between the lines

Freddy's solved his problems

Madi and Sam in weekend mode

Meanwhile our baggage train has reached its maximum size. Orders of boat parts had arrived in time for us to fly back to Turkey last Monday, and as we hop from house to house we are trailing around with us the wherewithal to install a back-up autopilot, amongst other odds and ends which are either difficult or very expensive to lay your hands on in Marmaris.

Bringing up Louis

It's anyone's guess when we'll leave. We've rebooked for April 8, but perhaps I'll still be here in a month and Alex will be back with the boat in Turkey. We don't know. But then again, there's a question mark hanging over Turkey's near future too. We'll find out more about that after tomorrow (March 30) when Turks vote in local and municipal elections. If you've been keeping half an eye on the news you'll know that the government in Ankara is very nervous.

The Nemeth boys - their toughness is skin deep