As we weren’t going to be able to sail to Tassie, due to Amanda’s accident - I was invited to stay with Tom and Christie - who we had kept bumping into since French Guiana. With the Wooden Boatshow coming up, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. We really packed the days full... I arrived late in the day, and drove down to Woodbridge (a few kms south of Kettering), and was welcomed by Tom and Christie. They have a gorgeous place right on the coast looking over the d’Entrecasteaux c

Happy Australia Day everyone - another excuse for Aussies to get out on the water and demonstrate just how crap they are at anchoring! I’ve spent the day on a mooring in Athol Bay, near the zoo - and we’ve had a stream of boats demonstrating an series of interesting approaches.Anchoring in 6m of water? How could you possibly need more than 6m of rope? The gap between moorings is fair game but if they’ve managed to put down a bit more scope, they’re now surprised by the different swinging

Happy New Year to everyone - I hope 2019 is good to you all. We enjoyed the full on Sydney experience. The anchorage was rammed, with the late arrivals playing fast and lose with anchoring scope, which led to some fun in the storm that hit before the early show - but we all survived without bumping anyone, even if we did need the odd bit of engine to do so.

Nabbed a spot in Farm Cove. It’s a bit rolly (really rolly in fact) but we’ll put up with it if we have to :). Golden Glow are slightly closer in than us, and having been here for a couple of weeks already, no doubt have some good tips for us.

Leaving Gold Coast and heading South. Jadean not far behind us. We plan to be in Sydney for New Years Eve - a bucket list item if you have such a thing :)

After what felt like ages, but was only 19 days, we have escape from Boatworks - Australia's Greatest Boatyard. I have to say, that though the statement is marketing blurb, it really is the best boatyard we've experienced. Usually, when living aboard, its a fairly torrid affair, especially for us as our fridges don't work ashore. The heat is inescapable, the toilets are miles away and, for want of a better word, 'crap' - and the service isn't. What you get at The Boatworks is utterly different

Sunset over the anchorage near Jumpinpin. We are headed this way to haulout at Boatworks in a few days....

We heard the tsunami warnings on the VHF, but didn't feel the quake itself. We didn't notice any tsunami-type effects. All well onboard, thanks for the e-mails!

The trip from Minerva to Fiji was fairly straightforward. Not enough wind, as usual, meant we were being careful about motoring but still making reasonable progress. It changed on Thursday night. We passed Koro island around 10pm with just a 25 miles to go to the reef pass that leads to Savuavu, our point of clearence. Amanda came off watch with the comment that it looked a bit black behind. I came out, and had a look - it was positively evil! We began to hear comments from friends on Blue Lil

What a last night! The wind didn't stop building until we had nearly 30knots at times. We abandoned plans to go into North Minerva and instead turned and ran towards South Minerva, timing our arrival for dawn. As we arrived, Amanda went up to the bow, and was getting soaked every other wave - but by this point we just wanted to get the hook down and get some sleep. We knew the entrance from overhead video - so came in slowly and once we were safely inside, we dropped anchor. Sleep did not tak

Finally got around to fixing the blog. It’s a bit behind, so I’ll be catching up slowly over the coming weeks.... Suffice it to say we have been in Fiji for a while having a great time. More of that later....

Penultimate night at sea was a bit of a mixed bag. Some sublime sailing in light winds on flat seas, followed by lots of squalls with their wind shifts and wind holes. I ended up doing quite a bit of Amanda’s watch, so she let me sleep an hour longer for my morning watch. So we have 130nm to go, with a westerly setting current and some NE winds forecast. We are east of the rhumb line but possibly not far enough. And we don’t want to arrive in the dark (or much before 8am) otherwise it’s

Day 4 saw the end of the wind. We chased it around a bit but our course tended to French Polynsia, or New Caledonia, so we stuck the donkeys on. We have been motoring or motorsailing since early afternoon and all through the night. The seastate has been very light with a reasonably long period swell, so very comfortable onboard. Forecasts suggest we will be without wind until early evening, so another 10hrs of motoring or so. We get occasional excitement with the wind reaching 10-12 knots for

Yesterday was fish-mageddon. Not only did we get the lovely mahimahi first thing, later on we caught a 1.6m sailfish. This yielded over 3kg of meat most of which is in the now very full freezer. Fishing is banned for now! We are not sure on the legalities of taking fish into Fiji. Packaged meat seems ok if it has the country of origin labelled, but line caught fish? Fortunately it looks like we may be in Minerva for a while so could share a few meals with friends or give the fish away. On that

Making good progress. We covered 168nm through the water and got 157nm closer to the reef of Minerva S. Under 490nm to go. Looks like we get some wind today and part of tomorrow before we have to motor for 24hrs. We are trying to build a bit of east in as the wind is due to turn NE as we get closer so the angle will help. We won’t go too far in case the NE fails to arrive. Been caught like that too often :) Then it looks like 5 days to a week at the reefs (based on today’s forecast yada yad

Almost 7months to the day since we arrive, we hauled our anchor up out of Opua’s sticky mud and pointed the bows out to sea. We got hit by a squall almost immediately but it soon passed and we were sailing NE towards Minerva reef. We had a bit of fun with the gennaker but as the wind piped up we furled it and went back to genoa. Then we caught a lovely skipjack tuna. We loved our time in New Zealand. There are many highlights but meeting up with Colleen, hearing her stories and getting to kn

Not seen fog whilst on the boat for a long time, and this morning we wake up to a reasonably thick covering. Its clearing a bit now - we can see the next pontoon over. It was very lovely to have a duvet on the bed last night. Until we left the tropics, we’d just been using the cover, but as we came south from Tonga, we put the duvet back in but used it on our ‘pilot berth’ where the off watch person sleeps whilst we’re underway. Last night was our first night back in our proper bed and

We are now legally in New Zealand. The complex and onerous procedures we’ve all read about are applied by thoughtful people with a nod to common sense - which means that all our preparation was greatly appreciated and we flew through the paperwork. We lost a few food items which we knew we would and had fished out for the guy. Mostly things that could grow (eg. popcorn) and fresh meat. Suprisingly all dairy was fine, as were our tins of fish and meat. We also lost our fresh fruit and vegetabl

My phone has just roamed into a NZ network. The first time roaming in 7 months due to EEs inability to sign roaming agreements. That aside it means we are very close. So close we've slowed down to arrive at dawn... More later..