We have often been asked what our cruising plans are – cruisers typically don’t really like plans, but must plan.
“Plans are best written in the sand at low tide”
It’s taken the better part of two years to define, decide and implement our plan to upgrade our yacht to one suitable for long-term cruising. The next step was to extricate ourselves from the working world and relocate on to the boat, whilst renting out our home to fund our travelling and cruising.
We have already explored the coastal waters around Sydney and the Hawkesbury since 2008, and so it was time to venture northwards to explore the nooks and crannies of the East Coast of Australia. After that, we wanted to sail to the Louisiades in Papua new Guinea to do some longer distance sailing.
In between. we would do some travel to the UK and Europe to spend the Oz winters there – having done that and having spent three months in PNG, we thought “now what next?”.
So one thing led to another and we signed up for the “Sail Indonesia Rally” which took three months after leaving Darwin, followed by the “Sail Malaysia Rally” which took another month. Before we knew it, we had made a lot of new friends, seen a lot of new places and were in Thailand.
Annie said “Why don’t we go to the Med? – it will be more interesting than going back to our house in Sydney”. So, on we sailed to India, then through the Red Sea to Eritrea, the Sudan, Egypt and through the Suez canal to Cyprus.
Having then spent the European summer of 2018 cruising Turkey and Greece, we visited South Africa and Australia over Christmas, before we continued to sail in the the Mediterranean during the summer of 2019. We cruised Croatia, Venice, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, France and Spain before departing Gibraltar.
By the end of 2019 we sailed down the Moroccan coast to the Canary Islands and the Cape Verde Islands, before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to arrive at Antigua in the Caribbean Islands, early January 2020. Since then, we have cruised the Leeward and Windward Islands, before the Covid-19 virus stopped us in our tracks at Martinique.
We spent three months in Martinique waiting for some of the other islands to open. When they did, we visited St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and then crossed to Curacao in the ABC Islands. Colombia opened up and we enjoyed Santa Marta and Cartagena before sailing to the San Blas Islands north of Panama. We transited the Panama Canal in February 2021 and spent some time in Panama City and the Las Perlas Islands to the South, before we did a 27 day passage to the Marquesas Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
The Tuamotu atolls of French Polynesia and the Society Islands of Tahiti followed, where we spent three months, before doing a 28 day passage across the western Pacific Ocean to Cairns in far northern Queensland, Australia. We had to do 14 days in quarantine for Covid-19 before sailing south along the Queensland coast to the Whitsunday Islands. We arrived back in Sydney in January 2022.
After this, “Who knows what happens next” – the Corona virus has impacted on most sailor’s plans.
Follow our blog to stay updated on the next phase of our cruising agenda.
