Greetings from Australia! We made it! 8 months and approximately 9,200 nautical miles. For those curious, each nautical mile is about 1.15 miles so we covered a distance of about 10,600 miles and all at an average speed of approximately 6.5 knots (or 7.5 miles, about the speed of an average jogger) per hour. To put this in perspective for you, at that speed it would take our East Coast friends about 375 hours to travel to Los Angelos by car or about 37 days if you assume 10 hours of driving a day. Of course, we sail 24/7 during a passage — you can’t anchor in the middle of the ocean — so that drive on a 24/7 basis would only take about 15.5 days. If you decide to go straight through you would need to take turns driving and sleeping which is precisely what we do — though we guarantee you that most of the time it is more pleasant to sleep in a moving car than a boat being slammed by large waves! Now multiply that cross country trip by 3 and you will get close to the miles we covered (at a snail’s pace) on the first half of our circumnavigation. (At approximately 10,600 miles, our trip was actually longer than that and took 1,410 hours, the equivalent of 60 nonstop sailing days.) Probably doesn’t sound enticing but just think of all the wonderful and diverse places you would be able to see, experience and visit along the way if you didn’t fly over most of the country — big cities, small town Americana, bucolic farmland, Great Lakes, mountains, gorgeous red rocks and so much more. Your trip would be about the journey and not the destination. That pretty much sums up our experience since leaving St. Lucia in mid-February. (More on that in our final remarks at the end of this entry.)
When we left off in our last blog entry, we were just getting ready to depart for Australia. We were hoping to to make it all the way to Brisbane but we were watching a low pressure system that threatened to make a nonstop sail challenging. We know, from very direct experience, that it is not fun to sail in confused seas with towering waves. As a result, we sailed south down the east coast of New Caledonia to give ourselves the option of stopping there if it looked like the low pressure system would form as predicted. Unfortunately, it did form so we detoured to Nouméa, on the southern tip of New Caledonia, arriving there early afternoon on September 21 — about 52 hours after we departed Port Vila in Vanuatu. Truth be told, though we had a great excuse for our New Caledonia visit, regardless of that weather system, we were all ready for a respite. The short 300 nautical mile sail from Vanuatu to New Caledonia was horrid. While we had great winds from the east in the 20 – 25 knot range right on our beam (Che Figata loves a beam reach!) for the majority of our passage, the sea state was wild. We encountered healthy sized waves for most of our sail with a period of about 34 hours when the waves were between 10 – 12 feet and hitting us hard broadside. Some waves hit us so violently that it sounded and felt like we hit a rock. Little sleep was had by the Che Figata crew as the boat pitched over steeply from side to side, forcing our mattress off the frame of our bed while we attempted to sleep on it. And while we are very adjusted to ocean passages at this point, which means that we really don’t get seasick, neither of us had much of an appetite during the 2 day passage. (Note to worried parents — no matter how miserable the sail was, these are the conditions our boat was designed for and we were never in any danger!) So, we were only too happy to stop in Nouméa and enjoy a reprieve from an experience which can best be described as similar to being a human squash ball, constantly hurled towards a wall with great force and then bouncing back. After comparing notes with others in the fleet that joined us on this passage, many felt that it was worse than our highly unpleasant passage from Tonga to Fiji.
Our first order of business upon arrival to New Caledonia was going through the customs and immigration process. New Caledonia has strict rules about what you can bring into the country and forbids all fresh fruits and vegetables, honey, dairy and meat products unless they are from designated countries (like New Zealand) and seeds capable of germination. And this is not an honor system. A bio security officer comes on your boat upon arrival to inspect and confiscate the “contraband.” Of course, we knew this before our arrival so it wasn’t a surprise. We had researched the rules just in case we needed to stop. Unfortunately, however, because our desired plan was to sail straight to Australia we needed to provision for the entire 6/7 day passage even though there was a possibility of a New Caledonia stopover. Jill pre-cooked 4 meals to reduce the fresh fruit and vegetables but we still had onions, scallions, tomatoes, limes, beautiful large red peppers and carrots, cilantro, and eggplant for dishes we needed to make fresh (e.g., tofu scramble) or to enjoy as crudités with hummus at lunch. It was truly painful watching the officer load our bounty into bags, filling two of them! Oh well, following check in, with one trip to the local market — and $77 USD later — we had replenished our supply!
As always, a few words about New Caledonia. One of our favorite things about visiting new places is learning about their history and, unfortunately for you, we like to share! New Caledonia originally got its name from the British navigator, James Cook, who “discovered” the island in 1774 because the mountainous terrain on the main island reminded him of his native Scotland. (Caledonia was the Latin name used by the Roman Empire to refer to the part of Great Britain which includes most of the land area of Scotland.) Located south of Vanuatu, north of New Zealand and east of Australia, New Caledonia is a currently a French territory (similar but not identical to France’s relationship with French Polynesia). Often described as a “little piece of France in the heart of the Pacific,” New Caledonia is an archipelago comprised of more than 140 islands, most very small, though its large and narrow main island, Grand Terre (situated in a north/south direction) is about 250 miles long and 30 miles wide. New Caledonia is most well known for having the world’s largest lagoon which is a UNESCO World Heritage-listed site. Though it is still considered a French territory, New Caledonia enjoys a somewhat unique relationship with France. France took possession of New Caledonia in 1853 under the orders of Napoleon. (He wanted to beat Britain to the punch!) Being on the other side of the world from France, Napoleon decided that it would be the perfect place to send political dissidents so, starting in 1864, France shipped thousands of convicts (about 5,000 in total) to the colony. (The penitentiary was abolished in 1897.) In 1946 New Caledonia’s relationship with France began to shift. That is when France changed New Caledonia’s status to that of an overseas territory. Soon thereafter, in 1953, all New Caledonians were granted France citizenship, regardless of ethnicity. (That means that all New Caledonians have dual citizenship.) In 1998, however, there was a big shift towards independence from France. That was when France and New Caledonia signed the Nouméa Accord which created the framework for a gradual 15 – 20 year transition to independent governance with a big asterisk — the final separation to full independence was subject to approval in a referendum. There have now been 3 referendums to ratify full independence, most recently in 2021, and it was voted down each time. (There is a some controversy over the legitimacy of the 2021 vote which occurred during COVID though the “no” votes were overwhelming.)
We ended up staying in New Caledonia for 5 full days. The low pressure front did not move forward and dissipate as quickly as the original weather models predicted. Having arrived on a Thursday afternoon (September 21), we had hoped to depart for Brisbane on Sunday or Monday, which quickly became Monday and then Tuesday and finally Wednesday. Particularly after our sail to New Caledonia, no one was anxious to go back out into the open ocean and face unsettled seas with high waves. In fact, we all commented that the idea of a few no wind days of motoring in calm seas sounded quite appealing. And this from a group that generally would rather sail at 4 or 5 knots than turn on the engine! By Wednesday the seas were predicted to have a very manageable maximum wave height of about 5 feet with winds ranging from 10 to 18 knots. As an added bonus, if we had departed earlier in the week the models showed us hitting a lull with very light winds after a few days but with the later departure the winds were predicted to remain mostly in our sweet spot (15 – 20 knots) throughout of passage, maximizing our sail time. [Spoiler alert: That did not actually happen. Ugh!]
The challenge with the unplanned arrival and changing departure dates is that it made it very difficult to plan anything (e.g., tours) and definitely prevented us from cruising the islands as we ordinarily would have done if New Caledonia was a part of our formal itinerary. The intersection of a national holiday that had almost everything closed down for 2 days (Sunday and Monday) added to the difficulty. Still, we kept busy and, by now, you know the drill. There was provisioning, laundry, cooking and cleaning to do in advance of our upcoming 5/6 day passage. In addition to checking in, we had to check out which required trips to immigration, customs and the harbor master, in that order. Naturally, these offices could not be near the marina or each other (that would be too easy) and the round trip — on foot — from the marina was about 4 miles. As a funny aside, the immigration office closes at 11:30 AM each day so we assumed that the other offices (customs and the harbor master) also closed at around the same time, 11:30 AM. Even though you must visit immigration before you can proceed to the other two offices, customs and the harbor master office close at 11 AM. (The logic on that one escapes us.) Thinking that we had plenty of time, we had a leisurely morning the day we planned to check out that included Jill enjoying a 50 minute chat with her sister. It was 10 AM by the time we left the boat. As we were headed towards the marina exit we ran into our fleet mates Traci and Andrew from Walkabout. They were on their bicycles and just returning to the marina following their check out process. Given the hour and knowing that we, too, needed to check out, they were clearly surprised to see us casually sauntering off our dock. So, in an effort to be helpful, they shared with us when each of the various offices closed and a map showing the office locations with the last of the offices, the harbor master’s office, being quite far away — they estimated 2.5 miles. At this point in was 10:05 and, as they say, we hoofed it! We arrived at the immigration office at 10:25 and were out of there by 10:35. We arrived at customs about 5 minutes later and were out by 10:45 and, even after a wrong turn, we arrived at the harbor master’s office at 10:56 AM as they were clearly getting ready to close up shop. After we completed the process at the harbor master’s office we looked at our steps on Zack’s iPhone and it clocked our trip at about 2 miles. (Thankfully, a bit shorter than Traci’s and Andrew’s estimate!) We were quite impressed with our ability to hustle — that was two miles on foot plus going through checkout paperwork and other formalities at three offices in 55 minutes! Naturally, we celebrated with a great lunch at a vegan friendly restaurant right on the water front. When we got back to our boat we receive a WhatsApp message from Traci asking us if we made it and, of course, we responded “it was no biggie — we completed the process with time to spare.” We think we earned new respect from Traci and Andrew who are both runners and quite athletic. Not sure they thought we had it in us.
Aside from these usual pre-passage activities, we made time for some exploration and fun. We walked all around Port Moselle, the city center of Nouméa, visiting local shops, a few boulangeries (we could not resist the French baguettes!) and a wine store where we bought a few more bottles of affordable (and superb) Côtes du Rhône. Port Moselle was very reminiscent of Papeete in Tahiti but on a much smaller scale. It is best described as a modern city with an inconsistent presentation; surprising for a touristy area and definitely different than what you expect when you read about the city. There were a few lovely streets featuring high end locally owned shops and boutiques but most streets were somewhat run down. We also took a long walk (5 miles round trip) past Lemon Beach to an upscale part of Nouméa, enjoying a coastal path and visiting more local shops, until we arrived at our destination, the aquarium. (It was small but really delightful and allowed us to finally identify some of the South Pacific fish we couldn’t find in our Google searches.) Finally, in addition to our victory lunch mentioned above, we sampled a few really excellent local restaurants enjoying lunch at a Thai restaurant, dinner at a tiny and very quaint Japanese restaurant (with a lovely French Twist) in Port Moselle and a standout dinner in an oh so French restaurant near Lemon Beach (Bouches Des Gout) that nonetheless indulged Jill with some great vegan choices.
On the social agenda front, we joined 4 other boats (Aliena, Elsie I, Mary Doll and Walkabout) for “Gin & Tonic” night on Casamara. Casamara’s owners, John and Susie, are Brits who don’t like gin (scandalous!) so they were anxious to deplete their supply from gifted bottles and we were all too happy to oblige. And last, but certainly not least, we had fabulous dinners on Manuia and Elsie I. The evenings on Manuia and Elsie I were particularly special though they could not have been more different from each other. On Sunday night (September 24) we were invited by the owners of Manuia, Andy and Claus (from Germany), to join them and the Aliena crew, Carmen and Miguel from Spain, for a dinner of Bouillabaisse. (Andy, the chef, kindly reserved some of the vegetable soup for Jill before he added the seafood.) It was a very intimate gathering (we were so honored to be included) filled with great conversation, wine and an after dinner shot of rum for sipping. We particularly enjoyed hearing Andy and Claus talk about their experience on the island of Erromango in Vanuatu. It was an island we didn’t get the opportunity to visit when we decided to extend our stay on Tanna. In short, very few people live on this island and not being a tourist destination or on the regular beaten path for yachties, there is little opportunity for the locals to generate revenue. With the lack of any real government assistance, this has made their recovery from the two cyclones and earthquake mentioned in our last blog entry particularly challenging. At any rate, Andy and Claus visited the island and attended the local church service while there because they found it is a great way to meet the villagers. After meeting the local chief at the start of the service they were invited to join the receiving line following the service. One woman going through the line had a bandage around her head and jaw so Andy, a retired dentist, asked her if she had a tooth ache and she responded that she did. Andy carries his dental equipment on his boat (you never know) so he offered to get his dental tools and take a look. He also offered to examine anyone else who might have a toothache. When he and Claus were back at the church after retrieving Andy’s tools they ended up running an impromptu dental clinic. Before he was done for the day Andy had extracted 4 teeth. (For those curious, Andy had Novocain on board his vessel. We asked!) What was really interesting though was that as word traveled that these visiting yachtsmen were at the church, people arrived with all sorts of problems from medical issues far outside Andy’s expertise (e.g., an eye injury) to problems with smartphones. They spent the afternoon seeing patients and trouble shooting a variety of non-medical concerns. We have such admiration for Andy and Claus. They are wonderful human beings whose compassion showed no bounds.
Of course, there is a post script to this story. Following the clinic, at their request, Andy and Claus were treated to a traditional kava experience which is reserved for men only on Vanuatu. (In Fiji, women are allowed to partake but in Vanuatu women are not even allowed to be nearby and watch the men drink.) Not having graters or other implements to create powder from the kava root, the locals prepared the kava by chewing up the roots and spitting this gruel into a bowl lined with something similar to cheese cloth, in essence, creating a large kava “tea bag.” The men then added water to the bowl and, with their hands, they would let the kava bag absorb the water and they would then squeeze out the water, repeating the process (almost as if they were hand washing clothing) until the liquid was the desired color. Claus and Andy were good sports and participated in the drinking ritual notwithstanding the less than sanitary preparation. This, too, earned our admiration for these guys!
On the other end of the spectrum was the dinner on Elsie I which our kids might describe as epic. Willo and Elsie, the owners of Elsie I (a very large and beautiful catamaran) invited all the World ARC Pacific boats in Nouméa to their boat for a potluck dinner on Monday evening (September 25). Dan and Deb from Escapade brought steaks from a large blue marlin they caught while the rest of us (about 25 in all) brought appetizers, side dishes, dessert and wine. In addition to 2 bottles of wine, we brought warm black bean dip, lemon garlic hummus and salsa, all prepared by Jill and received with rave reviews. Everyone had a wonderful time socializing before and during dinner and, as dinner was drawing to a close, John from Casamara got out his electric guitar to play a range of songs from popular rock tunes (all the usual suspects) to sea shanties. Susie (John’s wife) joined John on vocals with us all singing along regardless of whether we quite had the words right. It was just a really fun evening and with everyone in what we are calling the World ARC Pacific splinter group (some in our group have dubbed us the World ARC Pacific rejects) in attendance it was a meaningful (albeit somewhat raucous) celebration of the friendships formed during our 7 months together.
And before we knew it, it was Wednesday, September 27, and time (finally) to depart. Having had lots of time to prepare for this departure, we were ready to go by 9 AM so off we went. Overall it was a good passage though we motored much more than we would have liked — first due to wind conditions and next due to an issue we discovered with our boom. The passage started on a great note for the first three days with fairly (though not entirely) calm seas and winds generally from the Southeast (so largely on our beam) varying from 8 – 20 knots but mostly in the 12 – 15 knot range, a Che Figata sweet spot! The wind did seem to die down a bit at night forcing us to motor sail for portions of the late evening/early morning but the weaker winds meant calmer seas which definitely made sleeping easier. Unfortunately, at about 10 PM at the end of day 3 the winds died down and just didn’t seem to want to recover. Zack, who had the night shift that evening, tried at various times to shut down the engine as the wind kicked up a bit but the wind never got quite strong enough to propel us forward at a reasonable speed. And that was the start of a significant dry spell. In fairness, the wind did start to pick back up by the end of day 4 but it had shifted east — so right on our stern — and we didn’t have our sails set up for downwind sailing. As a result we motor sailed for a straight 36 hours. By mid morning on our 5th day the wind shifted to the northeast, a perfect angle for a beam reach, but then we discovered that 2 of the 4 bolts securing our boom to the fitting that attaches to our mast had fallen out. All of the repeated banging from the combination of light wind and waves allowed the bolts to shake loose over time. (Note to ourselves for future reference: we should have been inspecting our boom and rigging and continually tightening those bolts!) At that point we had to retire our mainsail completely (the sail put too much pressure on the boom) and complete our passage with just our head sail (our genoa). [MacGyver Zack was able to execute a temporary repair involving several points of reinforcement including Gorilla tape but there was no sense testing the efficacy of the repairs by putting the mainsail back out when we were only a day away from our destination.] This pretty much guaranteed a motor sail for the rest of the passage which is what we did. Still, we had some great sailing for the first half of the passage and, while that is always our first choice, we will take motor sailing in relatively calm seas over sailing in highly confused seas with big waves any day of the week.
All of that said, there are two things that we will remember most from this passage. The first is the moon, the glorious moon. This passage coincided with a super moon. That’s the term used to describe the situation when there’s a full moon at the same time that the moon is closest to Earth. And, of course, the full moon slowly wanes so we experienced what appeared to be a super moon (or close thereto) each night for our entire passage. According to NASA, during the super moon, the moon appears about 5 per cent bigger and 13 per cent brighter than the average full moon. We believe it! The moon rose a few hours after sunset and brightly lit the sky, almost like a baseball field during a night game, for a large portion of the evening. Without light pollution, you could really see how the moon alone illuminates the sky. In fact, it was so bright that we didn’t have to turn on our foredeck lights in order to furl or unfurl our genoa sail overnight. The moon supplied all the light we needed. It was really magical and, as we have said before, this closeness with nature is one of the joys of sailing. We used a picture we took of the moon one evening as the feature photo for this blog entry. It beautifully captured the luminescence of the moon and the brightness of the enveloping sky.
The second thing is the most amazing green flash we have ever observed as the sun set below the horizon. It happened on our last evening of the passage. As we settled in for the night we noticed the sun setting over the ocean on a particularly clear evening with just a few thin wispy clouds hovering above the water. We thought the conditions would be perfect for the “green flash” that sailors always watch for as the sun sets. Quick green flash 101: when the light from the setting sun travels through the Earth’s atmosphere it bends the sunlight passing through it like a prism separating the light into its different colors. Think ROY G BIV from high school. The colors of the rainbow bend different amounts based on their wavelength causing varying effects as they are separated. Basically, blue and violet light are scattered by the atmosphere while red, orange and yellow are absorbed. This leaves the green light, making it the most visible when the sun sets and creating the “green flash.” Generally, when we see the green flash it appears as though that last ever so tiny sliver of sun you see just before it dips below the ocean changes to a neon green color, almost as if the sun was part of a string of LED lights and someone turned the color selector to green. This evening though we didn’t see that pop of green as the sun said its farewell. Instead, fractions of a second after the sun set it was as if the sun started to boil and a green bubble peaked back up over the horizon for several seconds. It was magnificent. Of course we had to Google it and apparently there is a rare phenomenon called a “green ray” — where the green flash shoots up from the horizon — which sounds very similar to what we witnessed. How special to see this natural wonder on the eve of our arrival in Australia. Like a small pre-arrival gift!
We arrived in Brisbane, at Rivergate Marina, on October 2 at 10:30 AM — that was day 6 of our passage. As always, before we could do anything else we needed to meet with the “welcoming” committee from Australian Customs, Immigration and Biosecurity. Australia, like many other countries we visited, has very strict rules governing entry into their country. You are not permitted to get off your boat for any reason. You must stay on your vessel until customs and immigration agents visit you on your boat to ask their series of detailed questions. Following their departure, agents from biosecurity come aboard to conduct an in depth interview covering everywhere the boat has been for the last 10 years (our blog really saved us here because we were able to recreate our steps with great accuracy!) and also inspect your boat for insects, vermin and prohibited items or items that you must declare and may or may not be prohibited. Between the customs and immigration agents (Officers Christine and Scott who boarded our vessel together) and the biosecurity officer, agent Dino, the process took just about a full 4 hours. (The fee for the biosecurity agent is $85 aud per every 15 minutes. Yikes!) Despite the length of time we were interviewed or our boat was torn apart (the biosecurity agents looks everywhere for signs of insects or prohibited food items including the bilges), our clearance process went relatively smoothly. We read the regulations during our passage and had depleted most of our fruits and vegetables by the time we arrived in Australia through consumption or by tossing questionable products (e.g., opened pasta) over the side of our boat. (We hope the fish were hungry for carbs!) Rather than bore you with the complete and lengthy list of items that must be discarded before arriving in Australia or declared, here’s the link to the government’s rules around what may be brought into Australia from outside the country: https://www.agriculture.gov.au/biosecurity-trade/travelling/bringing-mailing-goods#wheat. You should definitely take a look but, we warn you, it is dizzying! We had hoped to sail from Rivergate Marina — where the check in process was conducted — to our new home at Scarborough Marina the same day as our check in. Unfortunately, by the time we were cleared in and allowed to leave Rivergate Marina it was nearly 4 PM and too late to go anywhere. As a result, we stayed on the “Q” dock (that’s the quarantine dock) until the next morning, Tuesday, October 3. Having been cleared into the country we did get the opportunity to enjoy dinner on shore at a lovely nearby pub and brewery that had a great craft beer selection and wonderful food including a separate innovative vegan menu!
We were up early the next morning so we could depart Rivergate Marina by 7 AM. The channel we had to motor through to get to Scarborough Marina has very strong tidal currents so we wanted to leave as close as possible to slack tide. It is never fun to have a 3 knot current pushing against you! At the same time we didn’t want to arrive at Scarborough Marina too early because the channel we would have to pass through to enter the marina is fairly shallow with a silty bottom and we wanted to avoid getting our keel stuck in sludge. We timed it perfectly. By the time we arrived at Scarborough Marina around 10:30 AM we had plenty of water under our keel to make it safely and elegantly to our to our reserved berth, H17 — a lovely side tie at the end of a long T dock. Captain Zack once again did a masterful job getting us to our slip like a professional — which at this point he is!
Naturally, we had a bottle of champagne waiting for us in our refrigerator to celebrate our arrival to Australia. We were too tired from our passage to open it when we arrived to Rivergate Marina and thought we’d crack it open when we arrived at Scarborough Marina the next day. Alas, as soon as we arrived we got in departure preparation mode. With so much to do to leave Che Figata for two months and only 7 days to get it all done we immediately started working the “list.” There was a yacht caretaker to retain, contractors to line up, Excel files capturing our Che Figata work list to create, extra cleaning to do (wiping down all wood surfaces with a vinegar soap solution, cleaning the refrigerators and freezer, washing the headliners with a mildew/mold cleaner as a prophylactic measure), a car to rent, a dehumidifier to purchase, etc. (If you really want to full list of pre items you can reread our blog entry entitled Our brief visit in Trinidad: Che Figata’s home for hurricane season — June 9 through June 21, 2022 (subtitle: getting ready for our sailing sabbatical) published June 23, 2022.) But having been through this process when we left our boat in Trinidad last year (and knowing that we’d only be gone for 2 months this time), made it seem much easier this time. Cocktail hours and dinners with our friends on Casamara, North Star and Walkabout — all staying in Scarborough Marina with us — also helped the medicine to go down. (We eventually popped that bottle of champagne at a BYO Thai restaurant we dined at our first night at Scarborough.)
Though our initial stay in Australia has been defined by a “to do” list and we have seen little beyond two marinas and the neighborhoods that surround them, Australia and its people have made a very favorable first impression. Everyone we met was so welcoming and friendly, from the marina staff, to the Uber drivers, restaurant workers, contractors and store clerks. People just want to be helpful. We were particularly delighted by our Uber driver Michael who is a professional poker player and also the #1 live male streamer in Australia. His winnings from poker are enough to live on but he enjoys driving Uber to keep busy and meet people in between poker tournaments and his live stream gigs. We are so glad he does. We peppered him with questions about the professional poker world and found it fascinating! We requested him as often as possible when using the Uber app.
One by one we all started to depart. First North Star on October 8, followed Casamara on October 10 and then us on October 11. Walkabout is scheduled to leave a few weeks later. As we put the final touches on this blog entry it is actually October 10 here in Australia. Our flight leaves very early in the morning on October 11 and our goal is to publish this in advance of our departure. Some final thoughts as we head off to the States for a two month visit. As Jill likes to say “there are easier ways to see the world than by sailboat.” As you know, we had our share of boat issues, some scary and others merely inconvenient and/or expensive (or all three). And we were traveling as part of a rally which had its own set of benefits and, shall we say, challenges. On the plus side, the rally provided a wonderful ready-made community, creating both a social and indispensable support network which we all leaned on. But, as with most situations, there were less positive aspects of being part of a rally, particularly one with a very formal schedule like the World ARC. Under the Thumper doctrine (forgive the Bambi reference), other than that general statement we plan to keep those opinions to ourselves and won’t be sharing them in this blog. Finally, we missed our family (particularly our granddaughters) and friends, more than we can adequately express. That has actually been the hardest part of being away for so long though our Starlink acquisition, giving us incredible and affordable video call capabilities — even from the middle of the Pacific Ocean on passage — definitely helped to ease that pain. (Incidentally, we took full advantage of those capabilities — best friends Bear and Bee had many video conferences!) But all of that aside, would we do this again? Truthfully no. Though we know many sailors who have circumnavigated 2+ times (among others, the crews of Aliena, A Plus 2 and Manuia are on their second World ARC adventure), if we come back to the South Pacific (and there are definitely places we want to revisit) we would likely charter a sailboat and do a combined land/sea tour so that we can have a different experience. Many say that this is a once in a lifetime experience and we would agree!
But let us pose that question in a slightly different way to put our feelings in better perspective: Do we want to continue our voyage? The answer to that question is a resounding yes! Though we have set a tentative end date for our full time sailing life, we are excited to explore Indonesia aboard Che Figata (with land based tours of Southeast Asia) and then complete our circumnavigation, crossing the Indian Ocean, sailing down the east coast of Africa, back across the Atlantic and up the east cost of South America until we reach St. Lucia, visiting some wonderful spots along the way. Despite the challenges, we have had incredible experiences and visited some amazing places, many uniquely available to those traveling by sea, that have delighted us, inspired us, made us laugh, had us in awe, made us feel proud and honored and touched our hearts. We also grew as individuals and as a couple — nothing tests your “think outside the box” muscles quite like a sailing adventure and, after overcoming may problems that we initially thought were insurmountable, we have developed a resilience that will stay with us. As a couple, we have been reminded how similar we are in so many ways important for marital harmony and developed a renewed appreciation for each other’s strengths and a greater (though maybe still not complete 😀) tolerance for our respective weaknesses. Neither of us could have done this without the other from both a practical or emotional perspective. We are a true team and complement one another. As we head off to the States we are signing off for a few months. You won’t hear from us again until we are back in Australia and ready to depart for our 6 month land based tour of Australia and New Zealand. Until then, we hope everyone enjoys their Fall and, for our American friends and family, has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. With so much to be thankful for this year, we know ours — shared with our three children, their partners and granddaughters — will be especially sweet.
Post Script: Keeping with a time honored tradition, and by popular demand, we are sharing the menu from our 5/6 day passage. For dinner Jill served these Che Figata crew favorites:
• Evening 1: Black bean and chorizo tofu burritos smothered with house made salsa and topped with a dollop of cashew lime and garlic crema
• Evening 2: Black bean, corn and jackfruit chili garnished with green onions and cilantro and topped with cashew lime and garlic crema
• Evening 3: Roasted tomato (made with the most beautiful vine ripened tomatoes) and white bean stew served with a whole grain baguette
• Evening 4: Mongolian tofu with onions, red peppers & mushrooms and garnished with green onion and sesame seeds, served over brown and black rice
• Evening 5: Rigatoni with rich and creamy vegan bolognese sauce
And, for breakfast — the most important meal of the day 😀 — we enjoyed:
• Freshly baked whole grain toast with vegan butter and jam
• Avocado mash, covered with tomato slices, scallions, alfalfa sprouts and hot sauce and garnished with sesame seeds served on freshly baked whole grain toast
• Tofu scramble cooked with sautéed onions, tomatoes, red peppers, eggplant and fresh garlic, topped with avocado slices, a cilantro garnish, a dollop of cashew lime and garlic crema and a dusting of hot sauce
