Woke to the news that there is to be another leadership ballot in the Australian Labor Party today, just 11 weeks before the scheduled Federal Election on September 14. This time Kevin Rudd has accepted the challenge laid down by Prime Minister Julie Gillard (it’s strange how the incumbent has been the one to keep laying down the challenge over the past 12 months). For the sake of Australia, let’s hope the Labor Party Members of Parliament listen to the voters for a change and re-elect Kevin Rudd, who is the only one capable to taking the fight up to Tony Abbott, the deceitful naysayer leader of the Opposition. Sat glued to the internet all morning, checking out the happenings in Canberra. Finally, Kevin Rudd declared the winner 57-45, with Anthony Albanese elected as Deputy. Now let the contest begin in the lead-up to the election, whenever that might now be.

Rita went down to the house to start preparing for painting of the bedrooms. I stayed back at the boat, waiting for Iain to come across in the afternoon to look at the generator. First thing we decided was that the generator battery was definitely dead. But then we couldn’t get the generator started by jump-starting it from one of the engine batteries as I had last week. So off to the local auto parts store to buy a new battery (with Iain getting a 30% trade discount on the battery), then back to check out the cooling system. Iain finally realised that the inlet water tap had not been turned on for the cooling water supply (I thought it would have been turned back on as part of the de-winterising, and hence didn’t check whether it was back on). After turning it on, everything worked fine. Doh! I then showed Iain the water/oil mixture under the galley trapdoors, and even he couldn’t work out where it might be coming from. So we just agreed to keep monitoring it, and mopping it up as necessary in the meantime.

After this, I went down to the house to help Rita with a few things, and then we went for a bike ride to Nicholas de Grave in the warm afternoon sun.