Passages crewed with 'art'

What a great time we've all had in Bali however, this is the last stop we have in Indonesia for this season. We're moving onto Malaysia to rest up for a number of months before pushing on across the Indian Ocean. Langkawi is a great stop as it's a duty-free zone so parts can get shipped in far easier than any other place. Although not as exciting of a location as Auckland, there will...

Once again, we're leaving a place we really love but we need to keep moving west and our next stop will be at Labuan Bajo which is the city at the entrance to Komodo National Park (yep, the big dragons!). At 4 degrees south of the equator, there is not that much wind so we motored for most of the way and had to keep a watchful eye out for fishing nets. The passage had some moments of...

It's hard to leave Banda Naira (The Nutmeg Island) as we've had such a wonderful time here but, it's time to carry on to the west and make progress toward our end-of-season goal of arriving in Langkawi, Malaysia. Indonesia is a huge country and the distances much greater than you think. The passage to our next stop-over is about 450nm and we'll take a couple of days to get there. Part...

Off to new places on our way (eventually) to Komodo and Bali. For now we went with the wind and did a nice overnight (30 hour) passage to the Banda Islands where we'll spend a few days relaxing (of course!) and checking out the local scene. Banderia is the island where the spice Nutmeg came from originally (the only place in the world). Other locations that have it now took original...

We are preparing for our departure from New Zealand on a very long passage to Indonesia. This will be our longest passage ever as it is about 3200nm but, of course, will be longer as we tack and gybe our way along the path. We are anticipating taking about 16-17 days for this passage and are all looking forward to being back out to sea. Our time in New Zealand has been wonderful and...

We may finally have a weather window that will allow us to make the passage from Vanuatu to New Zealand. At this time of the year, NZ has wild Spring weather with storm after storm coming in off the Tasman Sea (from the West). The storms are about 3-4 days apart so we have to time carefully to be able to do the passage and arrive in time to avoid running into the next storm coming...

Since we arrived in New Caledonia at the end of April, we have experienced a brush with Cyclone Donna, wonderful diving and island BBQ's, a visit from Eric and extraordinary islands, atolls and reclusive anchorages. New Caledonia has it all along with a vibrant capital city complete with any provision you'd like (as long as you are prepared to pay dearly for it!).

Ok, it's about time we were on our way. Our arrival in Australia was back in October of 2016 and we've been sitting in our berth at Rivergate Marina since then. Aside from Easter weekend when we got away from here to anchor out and test systems by Moreton Island, we've been just sitting in the marina waiting out the cyclone season.