Happy Halloween to everyone at home! We celebrated yesterday with some Halloween candies on the 30nm motorsail from Coffs Harbour to Trial Bay. Along the coast we saw three sets of humpack whales and were visited by dolphins every hour. Wonderful! Trial bay turned out to be a perfect place for Halloween with an old prison out on the … Continue reading Trial Bay
Thank you for your comments on the last post! We really appreciate your thoughts and we’ve loved sharing this voyage with you via the web. The blog is far from being over… we have many more cruising and sailing adventures ahead of us on Australia’s east coast. We’ve had a wonderful first week in Coffs Harbour, … Continue reading Coffs and Kangaroos
We did it!!! It feels incredible to be safely berthed in the Coffs Harbour Marina in AUSTRALIA after sailing across the biggest ocean in the world to get here. After I posted ‘Frustrating Day’, we had the most wonderful sailing conditions. The wind was soft but enough to keep us moving at 7 knots (HQ loves her light … Continue reading Landfall AUSTRALIA
Tonight will be the final night of our Pacific ocean crossing. We've covered 7,000 nautical miles in the past seven months since we left Mexico, and now there's only 130 to go. 130!! It seems ridiculous. We've spent 47 nights at sea, and tonight will be the last one (on this trip 😉 ). The … Continue reading Final night at sea
This passage has given us a very mixed bag of conditions. Yesterday afternoon's wind blew itself out by 7pm so the engine went back on and has been running ever since. This morning an E swell came up from behind us, but without any wind to help us sail. Frustrating, motoring in lumpy seas. Right … Continue reading Frustrating Day
Last night we entered a cloud bank and line of rain squalls. Not the scary kind, thank goodness, just the annoying kind. The rain washed all the salt water off Hydroquest's decks but meant that we were stuck down below on watch once again. The wind continued to drop throughout the night and by 7am … Continue reading Sailing at its finest
Hello everyone on land! The seas here have started to flatten out a bit and the wind has dropped enough that we are far more comfortable today than yesterday. With the current help we're moving extra fast and have been doing about 8 knots all day. Unfortunately I've had a bad headache since the morning … Continue reading 25 20S, 161 12E
We motored out of Noumea on Tuesday (yesterday) in the early afternoon. The anticipated winds filled in as the sun went down and by 9pm we had 25 - 30 knots on the beam. Since then we've had two reefs in the main and hardly any jib out but Hydroquest is still doing over 7 … Continue reading En route to OZ
Oh, baguettes and croissants – we missed you! When we left French Polynesia I vowed never to eat a baguette again (we had consumed far too many) but, of course, this silly idea wore off quickly and the cravings were in full force by the time we pulled into Noumea, New Caledonia. Being back in … Continue reading Noumea and Ilot Maitre
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