As you know, after 3 months away from Che Figata traveling through Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia and Vietnam, we returned to Che Figata on February 22, 2025. Our travels through Southeast Asia exceeded our expectations. It was just the perfect combination of travel with friends and family, experiencing different cultures, exploring the local countryside, waterways, villages and cities — treating us to spectacular geological formations and bucolic scenery as well as historical (in some cases ancient) and modern architectural wonders — amazing food and learning. So much learning. We felt incredibly privileged to have had that amount of time to visit 4 countries. We particularly appreciated our nearly 6 week residency in Chiang Mai (Thailand) which gave us the opportunity to immerse ourselves in that city and the surrounding area, allowing us to see things through the lens of a local.
We were still on a “high” from our travels when we landed at Brisbane International Airport early in the morning of February 22 after a red-eye flight from Singapore. We were tired but we assumed that was because our basic economy seats were not conducive to a good night’s rest. Our plan was to do what we always do when we are sleep deprived and adjusting from jet leg — just power through the exhaustion, without a nap, and go to bed early. Generally, when we do that we wake up refreshed and energetic the next day. Unfortunately, as the day wore on we both realized that our extreme fatigue was not merely a function of sleep deprivation. We were sick, with respiratory symptoms developing fast and furiously as the day progressed. And that was just the start of a re-entry to our cruising life that quickly reminded us that living our “best lives” on a boat doesn’t stop ordinary life from happening though it does come with the added bonus of constantly fixing broken stuff — as the salt water and UV rays slowly take apart our boat — and dealing with threatening weather conditions.
In other words, our upper respiratory infections were just the start of a series of cascading unwelcomed events that collided with one another, pressure testing our resilience. When we arrived back at the boat we do what we always do — start the systems to test them. We were expecting everything to be in a good shape. In fact, we had been lamenting that we decided to return to the boat on February 22 rather than spent an extra week in Vietnam — there was so much more to see. When we made these plans back in May 2024 though we knew we wanted to start our sail up the Queensland coast by the end of April and that we had a lot to do to get Che Figata ready after her 18 month sailing hiatus. That included sailing her to another marina capable of hauling her so she could get a fresh coat of bottom paint and take care of some repairs that could only be accomplished with our boat out of the water. (Or “on the hard” as us sailors like to say). So we wanted to leave plenty to time to test and, if necessary, trouble shoot our systems. When we arrived back to the boat in November though (our brief post-USA and pre-Thailand visit) we had worked though a number of lingering issues and we thought that we were just about to cross the finish line. So we maybe didn’t need the 6 – 8 weeks we were planning in Brisbane afterall?
Wrong! We turned on the engine and the alternator overheating alarm sounded. We turned on the generator and it was overheating. (We knew it was overheating when we were visiting our boat in November but, supposedly, our mechanic diagnosed the issue as a faulty cap. He replaced the cap while we were away and reported that the problem was resolved.). We won’t bore you with all the details but suffice it to say that making the adjustment to our alternator to resolve the overheating and diagnosing the real issue with the overheating generator (a loose wire connection) after many (many) false starts took 7 weeks. While those were big ticket items we also had the pleasure of addressing a lot of smaller niggling issues like replacing a dinghy starter battery that died and bringing our nearly dead generator starting battery back to life.
And, of course, while all of this was going on and we were recovering from our upper respiratory illness, we both contracted food poisoning. Yep, we travelled thought Southeast Asia for 3 months, not being particularly careful about what we ate, and didn’t have an issue but we ate at a local highly rated Japanese restaurant that we had dined at many times before and we were both down for the count! Between both ailments neither of us was 100% for the first 2 weeks of our return. We think it is safe to say that it had been a long time, if ever, that we had been so sick for so long. But there was no time for lounging around because we were expecting a cyclone! No, you truly cannot make this stuff up! Cyclone Alfred was headed our way around March 5 or 6. We should note here that the main reason we found a marina in the Brisbane area was because Brisbane was supposed to be relatively “safe” from cylcones. The most cyclone prone area in Australia is along the west coast. While not as cyclone-prone, the Northern Territory and the northern part of Queensland on the east coast can also see cyclones. Brisbane is located in the southern part of Queensland. It is not that cyclones never track as far south as Brisbane. Cyclones have hit Brisbane but it is highly unusual. The last cyclone to hit Brisbane (and it really only qualified as a tropical storm) was Zoe in 1974 — over 50 years ago! This is because as you move south down the Queensland coast the weather systems blow towards the east, taking most systems out to sea and away from Australia. Just our luck, Alfred was tracking as a category 2 storm with a projected path right over us. Having lived and sailed in the northeast of the USA we know what to do to prepare for cyclones. (Of course, we call them hurricanes). We secured our boat with extra lines and protected it with extra fenders. We took down the tarp that was protecting our canvas from UV rays and removed all the canvas as well. (That’s the royal “we” as in Zack did all of the heavy lifting). You can expect wind gusts between 78 – 102 mph during a category 2 cyclone. That’s enough to rip our canvas right off our steel frame. In the end, we dodged a bullet. Alfred was heading right for us — that is undeniable. Fortunately, however, there are some barrier islands off the coast right in front of the bay where our marina is located. As Alfred hit those barrier islands as a category 2 cyclone it picked up speed but lost intensity so that by the time it hit us it was downgraded to a tropical storm. We did gets lots (and lots) of rain and some high winds (gusts to ~ 35 mph) in the aftermath of the storm but that was nothing like what was originally predicted. So no harm to Che Figata and our boat got a great power wash out of the deal.
There was one silver lining in the cyclone (in addition to the fact it was less severe than protected): we discovered that the canvas in our bimini top was showing signs of fatigue. When we took down the tarps protecting our canvas in preparation for the cyclone, sunlight was shining directly on our bimini for the first time in a long time. With the benefit of direct sunlight we noticed a few areas where the sun was able to shine through. Clearly, not what you want to see in a supposedly solid piece of canvas. Though, on closer inspection, we determined that there were no tears in the canvas you could see where the frabric weave had been pulled apart from constant pressure allowing light to seep through the tiny (but enlarged) pin holes. With a sail across the Indian Ocean in our future, we needed a bimini top capable of withstanding strong winds. Trust us, it is a bad day when your bimini top blows apart! We know this doesn’t sound like a silver lining but there is one! The silver lining is that the lead time for canvas work can be months. If we had not taken those tarps down when we did in preparation for the cyclone we would have lost precious time locating a canvas shop that could fit us in before our desired departure date. And doubly fortunately, we reached out to the canvas shops before the cyclone, getting in the queue ahead of all those boats that had their canvas damaged by the gusty post Alfred winds.
Then, suddenly, about 2 weeks post-Alfred — after what seemed like a succession of plagues — everything got easy. We assume we passed the resilience test so the cruising gods deemed us worthy and ready to complete our circumnavigation. After a 10 day cyclone delay, we were able to motor Che Figata to Rivergate Marina on March 20, 2025 to be hauled out for bottom painting and the other miscellaneous maintenance and repairs that couldn’t be done while the boat is in the water. This included, among other things, straightening our prop shaft, replacing our coupling and making sure our sea cocks were operational. We also had the boatyard do some touch up detail painting and polishing on our black hull, making Che Figata look beautiful and refreshed. We have to give a huge shout out to Rivergate for not only doing a great job, paying attention to the tiniest of details, but also getting the work done efficiently. We are used to riding herd on the work being performed at Shipyards. Not at Rivergate. The manager there was an incredible orchestra leader getting all the right tradesmen involved at the right time so that the work flowed harmoniously.
The added bonus of Rivergate’s self-sufficiency is that it gave us a lot of free time during our two weeks on the hard there. We rented an apartment in the City of Brisbane for the 2 weeks our boat was out of the water and expected to be doing lots of back and forth to the shipyard. We definitely made several trips to the boat to check on things and ran lots of boat errands (e.g., picked up our new life raft and other safety equipment and took our radar dome to an electrician to get a belt replaced and later our chart plotter to the same electrician to address our freezing screen) but we had lots of unexpected free time. That meant daily walks around the City of Brisbane, along the curated river bank and across the glorious pedestrian bridges, including the newest one, the Kangaroo Point Bridge. We easily got in 5+ miles of walking each day. We rewarded ourselves with amazing meals at some fabulous local restaurants every night (some very casual and others date-night caliber) and, on occasion (well, maybe a little more than that 😀), treated ourselves to the best sorbet on the planet house-made at Messina. (The salted coconut mango salsa sorbet is to die for). Some of our favorite restaurants include Donna Chang (excellent eggplant and Dan Dan noodles — including a delicious vegan version), Longwang (serving Zack’s favorite tooth fish), El Planta (amazing plant-based Mexican — between their elote, chilaquiles, mushroom skewers and palmetto tacos you do not miss the meat), Felon’s Brewery (gourmet magazine worthy wood fired pizzas with perfect crust), Greca (great dips, eggplant moussaka and kingfish) and Adda@Oxford (just all around flavorful authentic Indian food). (We listed them just in case any of you visit Brisbane — which you definitely should on a trip to Australia). We continued to be so impressed with Brisbane’s urban planning and how the city incorporated the large winding river (some would say unwieldy with its hairpin turns) that runs right through the center into the design to make it an asset rather than a liability. This includes the sculptural pedestrian bridges and riverfront walkways we already mentioned as well as the ferry system adding to the ease of crossing the river and getting around town. Between the bridges and ferries ($0.50 AUD per ride with free transfers within an hour) you really don’t need a car to get anywhere in the city. We could continue to wax poetically about Brisbane but having already done that in our blog entry entitled Our visit to the USA and brief return to Che Figata — September 29, 2024 through November 30, 2024 (subtitle: A wedding, visits with family and friends and a presidential election (but we don’t talk about that) or Sometimes the best adventures are close to home) we will simply refer you there if you (or we) need a refresher.
Once we passed the resiliency test, the positive vibes just kept coming. Our new bimini was completed and delivered about a week early and the canvas shop did a fabulous job. (Props to Goodline Trim!). We now have a new, improved and gorgeous bimini with the latest Sunbrella fabric features including built in water-proofing. It is just wonderful to have work completed to specifications and delivered even earlier than promised! It was after our return to Scarborough Marina from Rivergate Marina that the mechanic working on our generator finally diagnosed what was causing the generator to overheat, allowing them to correct the root cause. Meanwhile, Zack, inspired by all the paint touch ups and polishing at Rivergate, decided to do some Che Figata “spiffing” up of his own. He repainted the inside of our dorades to return them to their original, shiny, fire engine red and cleaned and polished all of our stainless. (Nothing warms Jill’s heart more than watching Zack polish stainless steel which we have in copious amounts on Che Figata!). Between the work at Rivergate, the new bimini and Zack’s efforts, Che Figata got quite the make over. She was ready to face the world! This period where everything ran smoothly was about as close to Camelot as you get on a boat.
The final good fortune bestowed upon us during this lovely period best characterized by the absence of unwelcome surprises, was the very welcomed surprise visit from one of our best law school friends, Deb Carlson Wood. Deb was in Zack’s law school class and we bonded quickly. We lived in the same St. Louis neighborhood while still in school, Soulard (which is off the beaten track for law school students), had our first babies months apart and Jill and Deb ended up working at the same law firm for a number of years before they both moved on to other opportunities. As these things happen when you are busy raising families and building careers, we stayed in touch but hadn’t seen each other live in about 30 years. This was because Deb moved away to Iowa, then Illinois, followed by California and, ultimately the Middle East for her job as the Dean of Students at various universities. We moved to New York and then Connecticut. At any rate, Deb has a daughter living in Melbourne (we took her daughter to dinner when we visited Melbourn about a year ago) and Deb travelled to Australia for a 3 week visit with her. When Deb saw on FaceBook that we were in Brisbane she reached out. After heroic and much appreciated scheduling gymnastics on Deb’s part we arranged a 2 day visit on Che Figata. We had such an awesome time together. The best part, of course, was having 48 hours to really catch up on each other’s lives. In between none stop talking and reminiscing, we spent our first day together showing Deb the wonderful City of Brisbane. It was the Zack and Jill 6 mile walking tour with a final stop at El Planta followed by sorbet and gelato at Messina. (We extolled the virtues of both places above.) The next day Jill took Deb on a walking tour of Recliffe (including a visit to Bee Gees Way — yes, as in The Bee Gees band whose members hail from Redcliffe) and Scarborough. It was another nearly 6 mile day during which they played chicken with intermittent rain clouds. Eventually they had to declare defeat when a large squall released an unrelenting deluge of water. Jill and Deb were quite drenched by the time Zack recused them in our rental car.
When Deb left after our too short visit 😢, we got into serious departure final preparation mode. We now had only 5 days before “take off.” We needed to finalize our itinerary for the sail up the coast, make marina reservations, do non-perishables provisioning to get us to Darwin (and beyond for some items that are difficult to find outside cosmopolitan areas), buy a few more odds and ends for the boat, pick up the panel that attaches our bimini to the dodger (our cavas fabricator inadvertently tore a part of it when stretching it to attach to the new bimini), transport Che Figata to the fuel dock to top off our tanks, fill the water tanks, do a last minute grocery store run to buy the perishables (we will be eating lots of meals on the boat once we depart) and, importantly, return our rental car. (And, of course, we had other day-to-day chores like cleaning and laundry). Jill, as always, kept us on track with her check list and it all got done.
During the final sprint to the finish line we only ran into one not so minor glitch. The day before we were supposed to leave, as we were planning our itinerary and reaching out to a few marinas to make reservations, we learned that most marinas in Australia require yachties to hold $10 M AUD in third party liability insurance. (That’s equivalent to ~ $6.5 M USD). This is not a suggestion. Many marinas — as we experienced first hand — would not even confirm the availability of a berth until you submitted proof of insurance at these required limits. That level of insurance is not customary outside of Australia so we certainly don’t carry it. In discussions with other sailors, we learned that this is a well-known marina requirement in Australia. So much so that many global marine policies have a special rider that gets automatically issued to insured vessels while in Australian territorial waters. Unfortunately, our marine insurer did not provide this coverage and would not quote additional coverage to bring us in compliance. Making matters worse, our broker would not work with us to help us secure this coverage. (Though she did provide the names of a few Australian brokerages who might be able to help us). One international calling plan day pass and about 10 hours later (and $1,000 dollars poorer), were the proud holders of a compliant third party liability policy. All the time spent purchasing the coverage meant that we didn’t have time to complete all the last minute items on our “day before” checklist so we delayed our departure by a day. While there was a time that this might have invoked some frustration or panic (will we be able to get this insurance???) we are far enough along in our in our “recovery” that we simply focused on checking that box and when the mission was accomplished we were on to the next thing. (A BIG thank you to the team at CoverForce who quickly responded to our urgent outreach and reduced the standard 48 hour underwriting process to a few hours! Our marine broker and insurer have a lot to learn from these people.)
As we add our final flourishes to this blog entry and do our proof-reading we are enjoying a quiet night aboard Che Figata before our early departure tomorrow, May 1. After 18 months of no sailing (if you exclude our brief trip to Rivergate for our annual haul out) and lots of time away from Che Figata as we travelled, it’s both exhilarating and a little daunting to think that we will once again be full-time cruisers for the next ~ 15-16 months, save for one trip home back to the States in July after we reach Darwin and before we rejoin the World ARC rally for the second half of our circumnavigation. It’s also a touch sad. Though were were in and out of Scarborough Marina between travels, collectively, we spent almost 4 months here. In that time we developed relationships within the owners of our favorite restaurants (Thai Redcliffe, The Rustic Olive and Maple INdian Gourmet, to name a few) and local gelato shop, Miss Sprinkles. The staff at Scarborough Marina became family. We will be forever grateful for how they responded when we called them from the New Zealand hospital after Jill broke her knee. We only had 1 1/2 months left on on our berth rental agreement and its the time of year that marinas in the area have already committed berths to sailors wanting a cyclone safe place to keep their boat during the upcoming cyclone season. Despite this, when we let them know that we couldn’t sail to Indonesia in May as planned and would likely want to spend another cyclone season in their marina they told us not to worry — they had us covered. And they did. Thank you Scarborough Marina! We will periodically post as we sail up the Queensland coast, chasing the warmer weather and beautiful beaches. In the meantime, for those of you in the USA, enjoy your own warming temperatures and the magic of “blooming” season as nature transitions from its dormancy back to a vibrant, colorful life.
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