Category: Uncategorized

December 28, 2016

My sister asked us “what happened to Tasmania?” Nothing, as far as we know. It’s still there. Oh, that’s probably not what she meant. “Why aren’t you there yet?” and “Are you still going?” is probably what she meant and what we’ve been asked by other people who are incredulous that we’re so slow. Here’s the reason…

If you look at equivalent latitudes, you’ll see that Sydney is about even with Los Angeles. We came from LA. It’s too cold there for us! Where we are now (Gippsland Lakes) is about equal to San Francisco and I’m pretty sure no one lives in San Francisco because of the extreme cold. And where we’re going, Hobart, is at about the same latitude as Eugene Oregon – that town is just a rumor as no one’s ever braved the conditions to explore that far north.

OK, maybe I’m exaggerating about the cold a little bit and it is summer here while it’s winter up there, but it really is pretty cold still in Tasmania. Waiting a while will give us not only warmer days, but should also give us more settled conditions.

Another reason for our snail-like pace is that it’s nice here! We’ve learned that when we like a place, we linger. The next place may not be as nice, despite advanced billings.

Oh yea, it’s also a bloody long way between stuff in this giant country! You try driving the length of California at 5 miles an hour.

UPDATE, December 29, 2016

OK, while I was complaining about potential cold in the rant above, the heat snuck in yesterday and clobbered us. Below is a map from earth.nullschool.net showing what they call “The Zone of Misery!”

Here it is zoomed in with our location circled…

You can see the misery just creeping into Gippsland Lakes.

So it’s not only the cold we’re avoiding by not getting too far south, too quickly. It’s also the heat we’re running from by getting south quickly enough. Sheesh!

(On earth.nullschool.net, the zone of misery is labeled MI on their website map controls. I assume that’s “misery index.” The red area is where it’s miserably hot, and the blue area is where it’s miserably cold. Hopefully blue is not the subject of a future post.)

-Rich

December 27, 2016

A while back, we posted this picture on the page about our plans showing what we thought our future might look like. It was mostly a joke, hastily drawn in crayon. But as time went on, we realized that it was more accurate than we expected.

Below is the real deal, carefully drawn with our set of Crayola navigational plotting crayons (part no. CR 2324/nav). It shows what we’ve done (red) and what we hope to do in the near future (purple).

Pretty similar, huh?

Beyond the purple line plan is at least one more trip to the tropics from New Zealand and then who knows? Great Barrier Reef? Palau? Indonesia? Only time will tell. For now, we’re loving this area we call the cul-de-sac.

-Rich

By sunset, the seas were calm.

December 25, 2016 (down under, at least)

We left Eden, Australia for an overnight trip to The Lakes Entrance, about 130 miles away. What a wonderful ride! We started about 7:30 AM. By 10 AM we were sailing in slightly bumpy seas, but making 7 knots thanks to the help of the current. The wind died in the early afternoon and the seas turned flat and glassy through the night. We timed our arrival for 6:30 AM so that we would be entering the narrow channel with incoming tide.

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What a beautiful night! What a beautiful morning. Here are some pics from our trip.

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Love,

Rich and Cyndi

December 22, 2016

Since we arrived in Australia, I’ve been looking in every liquor store we’ve been in for a rhum we found in New Caledonia. Silly me. It’s not to be found here (at least so far).

We found it in a small store near Marina Moselle in Noumea. The rhum is called Terre du Sud and it’s made in New Caledonia. The kind and brilliant man in the liquor store told us about adding a little bit of cane syrup. He even gave us a sample taste. (“Hey kid, the first one’s free!” or rather… “Hé kid, le premier est gratuit!”) What a concoction!

I guess we’re just going to have to go back to New Caledonia. Shucks! (It’s not like there aren’t 10,000 other good reasons to go back.) -Rich

December 12, 2016

I’m not sure whether to level this complaint at Simrad, the maker of my chartplotter, or Navionics, the maker of my electronic charts. I suspect both share in the blame. (The issue is almost as bad on the iPad using Navionics charts so I suspect that I’m justified in using two fingers to point blame.)

My complaint is the way text is handled on the these electronic charts and chartplotters. We were looking for a spot to anchor a few days ago in Jervis Bay. The place suggested by our guide book said “no anchoring” on the Navionics chart. See screenshot below…

We scrambled around for a while trying to figure out where we might anchor and why it said prohibited in our spot. On the internet, we found a map with the Jervis Bay rules. It said nothing about an anchoring prohibition in this area. I zoomed into the chart to look at other areas and when I did, the note moved to the area that our rules agreed was a no anchoring zone.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen magically moving (or changing text) but this is ridiculous. This would be like the timestamp moving over our faces when we zoomed in to take a picture with our camera…

Most often the text error I see is that it’s broken up into multiple sections and sometimes those sections are disarranged, so interpretation becomes an unwelcome game.

And maybe the best text-blunder of all is when the spelling of a place changes as you zoom in and out. See it here in Fiji’s Southern Lau…

Today, we’re headed to Batemans Bay. This is what I found when I fired up the chartplotter this morning…

It seems we have three Batemans to choose from. Oh wait…

There are two more Batemans further north. Five?!

Come on guys, you can do better. It’s not like someone’s life might depend on your product! (Oh, I forgot, each time my chartplotter powers up, I have to acknowledge that this it’s for entertainment purposes only, like a video game, and not to be used like a multi-thousand dollar navigational tool!) -Rich