Sold and bought kayaks

To upgrade 'The Fleet' I recently sold an older heavy double and baught a secondhand double 'Prijon' (not the thing that causes Mad Cow disease!)

We tested on our 'coffee shop route' to Maianbar. Mary pronounced it very comfortable, Phew.

On the same day that we collected the kayak, we called in on Kris and Mike and walked around Middle Head  in Sydney Harbour.

We'd never been there before--all old gun emplacements and tunnels to keep either the French (1788) out or Germans /Japanese (1940).

In 1788, England was at war with France and two days after the first fleet arrived under Govenor Philip, two French ships arrived in Botany Bay to survey it for potential  colonial use. According to the actual log books of that time, this gave the English officers a mighty shock. With 1000 convicts for free labour,  the English quickly set about protecting their new colony from potential invaders and moving guns from ship to shore with 1000 labourers  would have been no problem. There were two attempts shortly after, by the French to colonise parts of Australia, thwarted by either the weather or express warning communication from London to Sydney (they had an interesting  form of 'Express Post' even in those days, written about in ships' logs, which involved a network of other, sympathetic seafaring nations with some fast sea-links, some ships being much quicker than  others).

The French fleet in Botany bay at that time was  paralysed by scurvy and the English officers, in spite of the political situation, gave the French crew a great deal of medical and nutritional support--such was the bond of seamanship at that time.

You can see from the different directions of our  fingers on the map that we had no idea where to start!

A tall ship did in fact pass by, straight from 1788, but we didn't fire at it.