Category: Uncategorized

November 7, 2016

We’re motorsailing down the east coast of Australia, from Coffs Harbor to Nelson Bay, about 150 miles, and daylight this morning was slow coming. The smoke we were in was so thick that in the dim morning light, visibility was reduced to well less than a mile.

We were within range of internet rays so we checked the news. It was reported that there were 57 fires burning in New South Wales. They’ve had high temperatures, strong winds and their share of crazies starting fires. It feels just like we’re back in Southern California! -Rich

November 6, 2016

 

After a six day, two hour passage, we’ve arrived in Coffs Harbor, Australia. It wasn’t too bad a passage as they go. We had almost four days of pretty nice sailing, 24 hours of nasties as we passed through a trough, and then some motoring into port. No real complaints, but in hindsight, it might have been better to wait and try to get a weather window without the trough.

During the passage, we convened a meeting of Legacy’s governing body and came up with the following:

Legacy’s new rules for picking a weather window

If there’s a trough, call it off!
If there’s a low, just don’t go,
If there’s a front, for better weather hunt.
If the wind’s from ahead, just stay in bed.

Behind the beam, twelve to fifteen,
That’ll be just nifty-keen!

All that aside, we’re here now and already enjoying ourselves. The dreaded Australian check-in went really well and pretty quickly. As we started off on the long walk to town, a nice man asked us where we were going and offered us a ride. We got to town and had big-time culture shock: We haven’t been in a modern, large mall in almost two years. That “new” experience, coupled with some left over passage brain, was almost more than we could take.

Streets, malls, people and huge, Jurassic produce!

P.S. Now that we’re in Oz, below are a bunch of new posts from Cyndi about the Able Tasman in New Zealand. Go figure! -Rich

October 28, 2016

It’s that time again to run from cyclone season in the tropics to the relative safety of New Zealand or Australia. This year: Australia – because we’d stayed so long in New Zealand last season. We’re limited to nine months out of eighteen months in NZ. We’ve sailed in Australia before, but this season, we’re going to try to make it as far south as Tasmania.

But first things first and first we just need to get to Oz. We’re going to try to get to a city called Newcastle, about 70 miles north of Sydney. The weather looks like it’s touch and go for that plan. Plan B is Brisbane, quite a ways further north. We’ll see what happens.

You can see what happens too. We’ll check in with YIT during our trip to Oz. Here’s a link.

October 27, 2016

We’re getting ready to leave New Caledonia and sail to Australia. Today was route plotting and satellite image downloading day. I ran across this beautiful (and slightly scary) image of the sandbanks inside Morton Island near Brisbane.

I say “scary” because of how fluid the sand banks and channels look on the image. They don’t look like it’s safe to count on them being in the same position two days in a row! Here’s our planned route winding through the maze…

Brisbane is actually our plan B (or was that C, D or E?) destination. We’d like to get all the way to Newcastle, about 70 miles north of Sydney. We’ll see what the weather lets us do. -Rich

October 15, 2016

We’re in a big bay called Baie de St. Vincent, anchored at an island called Ducos in its Baie des Moustiques (how’s that for a location?!).

If all this island had were its beautiful savanna vegetation, rolling hills, and fantastic views, it would be well worth visiting. But it has something more: wild horses. We went ashore yesterday to see them, and they let is get fairly close. Seeing these magnificent animals has been one of the highlights of our time in New Caledonia.

That made us very happy! –Rich and Cyndi