It had been a very long time since I was last in Edinburgh (43 years to be precise) so it was certainly with fresh eyes that we landed from Belfast, caught the tram into town and walked from the Princes St to Stockbridge. It really is a very fine city with much of the historic …
The boat is now safely parked out of the water in Oyster Cove at the far western end of Port Stephens, and Deb and I are writing this from Alice’s lovely apartment in Bangkok. We are on our way to the UK and breaking the journey here for a few days. We have really enjoyed …
We’ve been back in Pittwater for a month or so now and it has been a busy time. It was with a great sense of anticipation that we sailed back into Broken Bay and took a mooring in the Basin. It is such a beautiful boating area and so very familiar to us. Yet at …
Well we certainly got the storms we mentioned in the last blog. For a week or so the afternoon and evening supercell thunder storms menaced SE Qld everyday. A combination of very hot conditions on the coast, a cold front/trough and hot dry winds coming in over the continent from the west produced rapidly developing …
On the spur of the moment we decided to drop everything and go see our daughter Alice in Bangkok. The boat was well looked after in Bundaberg, flights from Brisbane to Bangkok reasonable and Alice’s work schedule had her in Bangkok the following week. So without giving her much warning (ie “what are you doing …
Finding the right weather window proved tricky and a bit stressful. The further west you get in the Pacific and the nearer to Australia/New Zealand the weather is increasingly influenced by the lows and associated fronts that travel east between the highs. The passage is about 800nm or around 5 ½ days so we were …
Lined up with several other cruisers all with similar plans, we headed to the Denarau Port authorities to complete the checkout formalities. Turns out we were all planning to leave that day for Noumea – it is nice to have your big decisions ratified by others and it meant we would have a bit of …
This trip has been much anticipated as the final leg of our journey from French Polynesia before we leave the boat for a month or so to head to Aus and then the UK to sort out some family business. After the long trip to Tonga this one at a mere 3 days seemed liked …
We waited a couple more days in Ha’apiti then moved around to Cooks Bay in preparation for departure East. It looked like a window of very light N/NW winds would give us a chance to get away at least to Tikehau on the NW end of the Tuamotus. So, firstly, the last minute stock up …
It had become increasingly noticeable (and frustrating) to see how much the performance of the boat was being affected by the dirty hull. In regular sailing conditions (ie +/- 15 knots and an albeit conservative sail plan) we were struggling to get the boat to sail well. Even motoring we were losing at least half …