Greetings from the sea! When we published our last blog entry on July 7 we had just arrived at Darwin, Australia following our somewhat inauspicious sail up the east coast of Australia and we were a few days into the throes of preparing for our departure back home. With an expected September 9 launch date for our sail to Indonesia upon our return to Darwin, and lots of rally events between our return and our departure, we knew we wouldn’t have much time for trouble shooting and repairs once back in Australia so we crammed in as much of that as we could before we left for the States. Fortunately, we were largely successful and what didn’t get complete before we left was scheduled to be done during our time away. Without too much nudging, those remaining tasks did get completed while we were in the USA so all we needed to do when we got back to Che Figata was double check the work to make sure things truly got fixed. (Unfortunately, we have had too much experience with things being “repaired” while we are away only to discover upon on return — or, worse, after we left the marina — that the repairs were not successfully executed. 😕 As a result, we have adopted a distinct “trust but verify” approach to working with local tradesmen.) So fast forward to our return to Darwin on September 2 after a 6 week, USA coast-to-coast, visit with family and friends. With much joy we will spoil the suspense and report that everything was in good working order this time around! We are so impressed with everyone who worked on our boat: Nafea (engine, watermaker and miscellaneous maintenance and repairs), Wayne (installation of new davit motor and new auto pilot computer), Gary (orchestrator of the electronics work including ordering parts), Aiden (rigging work including repair of our boom and fabrication of a new snubber), Josh (bottom cleaner) and last, but certainly not least, Robbie (GM of Tipperary Waters Marina and Che Figata caretaker extraordinaire)! To a T everyone went above and beyond in their assigned jobs and delivered a work product that reflected a deep expertise and pride in their work. We are so grateful.
But back to our first tour of duty in Darwin . . . . Though we were very busy with our pre-departure punch list during the day, our evenings were free so we had an opportunity to visit a night market (very popular with the locals — we think everyone from Darwin was there the evening we attended), explore the city center of Darwin, including the waterfront, and eat at some really fabulous restaurants. Who knew that Darwin could be such a foodie capital. We particularly enjoyed dinners at Meraki (amazing Greek food), Hanuman (Indian and Thai fusion — sounds strange, we know, but it was amazing — their Jackfruit curry was to die for!) the Moorish Cafe (an amazing tapas restaurant with Spanish, Mediterranean and North African influences) and Ella by Minoli (a Sri Lankan restaurant with dishes served in the most velvety aromatic sauces). As always, we got through our task list with little time to spare and were glad that we had time to scope out Darwin in the evenings so we could put together a Darwin itinerary for our nephew Dax when we returned to Darwin together that focused on the highlights. We kept him busy! More on our post USA return below.
Our USA visit was also a success. We literally and figuratively, covered a lot of ground. We started with a visit to NYC to spend time with our daughter and her wife who live in Brooklyn. (We were delighted that good friends from Asheville flew up to NYC while we were in town so we were able to get in time with them as well.) From NYC we progressed to Connecticut to see our doctors and spend time with friends. While in Connecticut, we were able to fit in a lovely hike to Wadsworth Falls as well as a brief side trip to Rhode Island to visit dear friends there. Following Connecticut we flew to Chicago to visit our older son and his family for almost a week and then we all drove up to Michigan to visit Zack’s family (parents, siblings, nieces and nephews). We had a great time playing Northern Michigan tourists with our son and his family for an extended weekend (a visit to Sleeping Bear Dunes was one of the many highlights) and some alone time with Zack’s family after our son and his family returned to Chicago for work and the start of school. While in Michigan, in addition to lots of quality time with family, we were able to arrange several visits with our architect, kitchen cabinet designer/builder — who happens to be our talented son Tristan — and general contractor. These meeting were super important since we purchased the Hummel family homestead, the “Barn,” and plan on renovating it to serve as our primary residence when we complete our circumnavigation in the summer of 2026. Last, but not least, we traveled to Seattle to spend time with our youngest son Stefan and his wife, Monique, as well as Jill’s side of the family (her dad, step mom and her sister and sister’s family). Stefan and Monique are expecting their first child at the end of October — a little girl — and we were fortunate that Monique’s baby shower was scheduled to coincide with our brief visit. Especially since we won’t be around when the baby makes her debut we were thrilled to celebrate the joy of the upcoming arrival with Stefan and Monique along with family and friends. After a jammed packed six weeks, we hopped on a plane to Australia on August 31. We connected through San Francisco where we met up with our nephew Dax and all flew together to Darwin, arriving the afternoon of September 2, after the date change. The only thing of significance that occurred during our State-side visit that we did not mention was that Jill had very successful surgery to remove the hardware placed in her knee during her New Zealand patella repair surgery. In just a few days Jill could tell that the hardware removal made a huge difference. No more pain while walking up and down stairs and her range of motion improved considerably. It may never quite get to 100% but it will not interfere in any way with her activities of daily living and, importantly, she will be able to achieve her post patella break goals including the ability to ride a bike. Yay!!!!! (Also noteworthy is that the surgeon who removed the hardware, and is not known as one to compliment the work of other surgeons, gave Jill’s New Zealand surgeon 2 thumbs up.) It is hard to believe — after living on the boat for 5 years and organizing these annual return visits — that this will be our last across country marathon. Of course we will continue to visit our family and friends but we won’t need to schedule them back to back.
We hit the ground running when we arrived in Darwin on September 2. As noted above, high on the agenda was checking the work of the various tradesmen to make sure all our mechanicals worked properly. This included a sea trial with Wayne to calibrate the new auto pilot computer. We also needed to do a major provision similar to the one we did when we embarked on the first half of the circumnavigation in February 2023. About 10 bags filled to the brim with non-perishables, tofu and produce, $800 poorer and 5 hours later we had created our meal plan for the Indonesia passage, purchased a good chunk of the nonperishables that will allow us to get to South Africa as well as the fresh ingredients for our upcoming passage meals and inventoried and stored our bounty. Trust us, it was a chore! Finally, we needed to get our boat ready for departure — set up the jack lines, organize and secure the jerrycans, get the safety equipment in a deployable ready state and review our safety procedures as crew. Check, check, check.
When not ticking off items on our to do list we enjoyed several activities. As always when on a World Cruising Club rally, this included several social events. There was the welcome cocktail reception the night of September 3, the “Jumping Crocadile” tour during the day on September 4 and a sausage sizzle at Tipperary Waters Marina that evening. These events were fun and we were glad to see that Dax connected with a group of 20 somethings. While we sure that spending time with us 24/7 is more than Dax could ever wish for 😀 it’s nice that he can spend time with young adults closer to a peer group.
The Jumping Crocodile tour deserves some detail. The tour takes place on a boat that cruises along the Adelaide River — home to Australia’s famous saltwater crocodiles. Saltwater crocodiles are huge prehistoric looking creatures with adult males reaching 20+ feet in length. In the wild these powerful and agile creatures exhibit a hunting technique known as “porpoising.” Basically, the motionless crocodile (in stealth mode with its steely eyes on a prize) can suddenly propel itself forward with a strong stroke of its tail, allowing its body to surge forward and upwards out of the water in an arching leap. This enables them to launch ambush attacks on flying birds or mammals on shore. On the boat — almost completely encased by protective metal bars — the tour guide gets the crocodiles to display this behavior by dangling a large piece of chicken high above the water. Watching these crocodiles thrust themselves out of the water, and hearing the loud snap of their jaws as they took a hold of their “prey,” really illustrated that no human in that river would be a match for the resident crocs. We left the tour totally in awe (and in fear) of these apex predator eating machines, perfected by millions of years of evolution, and very glad that we heeded all of those signs we saw as we sailed up the east coast of Australia and did not jump in the water for a refreshing post anchor swim. We had our “Jaws” moment. Our feature photo for this entry captured the magical moment that one of the crocodiles rose out of the water, jaws open, ready to strike.
In addition to these World ARC Rally events, we reprised for Dax some of our favorite experiences from our initial Darwin stay. This included repeat dinners at Hanuman Restaurant, Meraki Greek Taverna and Moorish Cafe as well as exploring every inch of Darwin’s downtown and riverfront areas and visiting the night market. Between boat chores to get Che Figata ready for her next passage and the fun we sprinkled on in between we packed a lot in our seven day return Darwin visit. So when September 9 arrived we were ready and excited to re-launch our circumnavigation with the sail to Lombok, Indonesia.
As we close out these entry we completed our final weather and routing checks, left Tipperary Waters Marina and crossed the World ARC Rally starting line with our cruising family for the next 7 months. In other words, we are off! It looks like it will be a mostly windless “sail” for the first few days (though we are sailing on a lovely beam reach at 8.2 knots at the moment) but that the wind should fill in nicely, albeit on the lower end of the sailable range for Che Figata, after that. We will write all about our sail (estimated to take about 6 days) and visit to Lombok in our next blog entry which we will publish around mid to late September. Until then, wish us Fair Winds!
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