REPEAT WARNING: Once again, this is not a sailing related entry. This, as well as future entires through April/May 2025, reflect our effort to capture our experiences while we explore Australia, New Zealand and other places in the southern hemisphere across the world from the country we call home by land with some air travel assists. We are metaphorically putting our memories in a bottle to savor on some future date. If you are not interested in reading an amateur attempt to document travel experiences you may wish to skip these entries. No offense will be taken. You were warned!
When we published our last blog entry we had just returned to Che Figata in Scarborough Marina (Brisbane, Australia). And, in what seemed like a blink of an eye, we are off to South Korea, followed by Taiwan. In fact, as we type this, we are at the Brisbane International Airport waiting to board our 0:55 AM flight on September 1 to Hong Kong. After our unexpected (but delightful) 4 month absence due to our extended visit in New Zealand we had a lot to do in a, relatively speaking, short period of time. This was compounded by the fact that since we left Che Figata in October 2023 to return to the States (which was also supposed to be a brief visit) we had only returned to her once, for 6 days (from March 3 through March 9), before we took off for Tasmania. Suffice it to say that after nearly 10 months away our boat chores had piled up and we had plenty to do to keep us out of trouble. Uncharacteristically, we will not bore you with all the details. We will simply summarize by saying that we had to check on all the work that was performed on Che Figata during our absence (we had a long list of projects for riggers, engine mechanics and electricians — we definitely supported the local economy!), run all the systems to see if they were still operating properly, take care of some DIY repairs and maintenance and give Che Figata another really good clean (this included washing the headliners with a powerful mildew/mold cleaner as a prophylactic measure) like we did when we left her in October 2023.
As always, we “forced” ourselves to take some breaks from the drudgery to enjoy this really special part of the world. Most memorable was the 3 nights and 2 full days we spent in the Ballina/Byron Bay Area in New South Wales visiting our friends Kimmi and Chuck of SV Sidetrack. They were part of the rally that took us from St. Lucia to Australia. Kimmi and Chuck have a lovely home right on the Richmond River in the heart of a stunning coastal community. Conveniently, they have an apartment in the lower level of their house and they graciously allowed us to stay there while we visited the far-northeastern corner of New South Wales they call home. They are both incredibly generous and radiate joy — it’s just hard to be anything but happy around them. During the evenings we enjoyed their company, getting caught up on each other’s lives and on the exploits of our mutual rally friends. By day we were off on our own exploring the area. On our first full day we took a long walk along the coast near Lennox Head taking in the pristine sandy coastline punctuated by incredible rock formations rising up from the ocean to tall cliffs that book-ended the bays. Our feature photo for this blog entry captures one of these many gorgeous views. We also strolled around the beach town of Byron Bay with its plethora of locally owned restaurants and shops. On Kimmi’s and Chuck’s recommendation, we spent day two visiting other nearby towns including Mullinbimby, Lennox Head, Brunswick Heads and, our personal favorite, Bangalow which was overflowing with galleries and shops selling ceramics, exquisite tapestries and accessories created by local artists. We capped day two with a hike down to Killen Falls which took us through lush forest along a river and, ultimately, to a somewhat low but really wide and intense waterfall with a powerful gush of water. We posted pics from our weekend visiting this beautiful part of the world on our @sailingchefigata Instagram account. Fun Fact: Byron Bay Cape is the Eastern most piece of land in Australia so between our earlier travels in Australia and this visit to Byron Bay, we’ve been as far South and East you can go on Australia’s mainland. We are not sure if that earns us any sort of badge but if feels like an achievement of sorts.
In addition to enjoying our brief excursion away from the marina, we had some fun at the marina itself because we met some really lovely cruisers. We met Gill and John on SV Mehala, a delightful British couple who arrived in Scarborough Marina just a month after us in 2023. Because our stay was very brief before we flew back to the states we were long gone by the time they arrived. Like us, it was not their plan to stay in the area. Unlike us, their prolonged stay was not due to an accidental injury. Their issue was termites. (Yikes! A cruiser’s nightmare!) They discovered the termites while on passage to Australia and they could not go anywhere without eradicating the pests and fixing any damage. Unfortunately for them, the damaged turned out to be extensive. Apparently, the termites had been there for years and came with the boat at no extra charge. Between that and some system issues they have found themselves long term residents of the marina. Though we had not met them before, we crossed the Pacific at the same time and figured out that we had seen each other in the Marquesas. We definitively noticed each other because we are both proud Hylas owners. We bonded over our love of Hylas yachts as well as our shared fate — albeit for much different reasons — and look forward to seeing them again as we return to the marina periodically between our travels. And we may have an opportunity to see them as we resume our circumnavigation as their revised plans closely align with ours.
In addition to Gill and John we met Candy and Rick on SV Independence, Lee and Steven on SV Pipe Dream and Sue and Paul on SV Meridian Passage. The crews of Pipe Dream and Meridian Passage are Aussies who still have houses near the southern coast of Australia but spend considerable time sailing to various wonderful destinations along the Queensland Coast like the famous Whitsundays. In one of these small world encounters, Candy and Rick are from Norwalk Connecticut, a quintessential coastal town just 2 towns east (~ 10 miles) of where we lived in Fairfield. Norwalk was one of our favorite weekend cruising destinations with its lovely quiet bays, beautiful surrounding neighborhoods (with gorgeous stately homes and impeccably manicured lawns) for walking, a dog park and one of our favorite restaurants, Rowayton Seafood, just a short walk from the Rowayton side of the bay. We never met them during the many weekends we spent in their port but Zack actually attended a presentation they gave at a local yacht club about their sailing adventures. They were a few years ahead of us in their departure for long distance cruising and were asked to speak at a local yacht club about their adventures to date. Being in such close proximity, the local yacht clubs all share information about these types of events and welcome each other’s members to attend. When we heard about this event through our yacht club we thought it would be a great idea for Zack to attend. (Jill, of course, was working her crazy hours and could not get from her office in Wallingford CT to the Norwalk area in time for a 6 PM dinner. Heaven forbid she should leave work early one evening! It’s amazing the place didn’t fall apart when she retired😀). Zack didn’t originally put 2 and 2 together but as we sat with them at dinner one night and they talked about where they had been and shared that they often speak at yacht clubs when they return home to Connecticut for their annual visit (Candy is a CPA and she returns once a year for about 2 months during tax season) Zack had an eureka moment. Just too funny that with all the time we spent in Norwalk we both had to sail half way across the world to Australia to meet in a small sleepy marina on the north side of Brisbane. Alas, Candy and Rick were only brief visitors and they took off for their next adventure just before we left for our trip. They are heading north and then making a passage east to reach Vanuatu. They are keen to experience the live volcano there. It is definitely worth the trip — we wrote copious amount about our visit to that active volcano in our blog entry entitled Our passage to and cruise around Vanuatu — September 2 through Sep 18, 2023 (subtitle: a magical visit punctuated by a cultural immersion, an explosive volcano — up close and in person — and the great dinghy debacle). Such is the life of cruisers. You form fast friendships and then say good-bye not knowing whether you will cross paths again — but what a treat it is when you unexpectedly reunite at some distant port! At any rate, while we were all together we enjoyed sundowners as well as dinner several evenings and Jill took a few long walks along the coast to Redcliff with the ladies.
With three weeks back at the marina we had just enough time to click through our to do list before heading off to the airport for our next adventure. (And Jill had time to make a dent on her assigned tasks in the color coded Excel project plan she created to manage wedding planning. Everyone would have been so disappointed if Jill didn’t create one of her Excel tracking documents. Oh how our daughter and her fiancé indulge her.) We will spend 8 days in South Korea using Seoul as our base and then we fly to Taiwan for a 2 week guided tour which will include a visit to Queenlong — the builders of Hylas yachts. You can count on us to post pics on Instagram and write one of more blog entries about these experiences.
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