The next leg of our adventure takes us through the inland waterway known as The Broadwater, which connects the Gold Coast to Moreton Bay. This whole area is basically estuary-land, and the water here is very very thin.  I vividly remember the stress of navigating through here on our previous monohull ‘Illusion’. Her draught was 2.1 metres and we had to carefully work the tides to avoid being snafued on a sandbank somewhere (the official terminology is ‘going aground’, also known as ‘hitting the bricks’, ‘bottoming out’  ‘on the rocks’  ‘foundering’.…and a whole lot of other less savoury terms, but if you own a boat it’s only a matter of time before it happens to you).  This time it’s a different story – Toucan’s draught is a teeny weeny delightful 1.3 metres and suddenly a whole world of opportunities awaits us. Just because we can, we decide to explore the shallower, eastern channels of Tippler’s and Canaipa passages.  But first I need a wee rest…

Continue reading “Into The Shallows”

Everyone knows that if you want to take a girl out you need to find somewhere that will impress her, a first-class joint, otherwise you might as well say goodbye to the whole relationship thing.  Seeing as Toucan has looked after us so well for the past 4 1/2 years it seemed only fair to reciprocate, and The Boat Works on Coomera River seemed to fit the bill. It didn’t disappoint.

Continue reading “Splashing Out”

After two years or thereabouts of inactivity, it’s time to blow off the cobwebs, oil the rusty wheels and crank up the blog again. Yikes! It may take a while to get back into the groove again, so bear with us…

Continue reading “April Fools”

One More Year…..of Make Believing.

It doesn’t seem like twelve months ago that we had to make the hard decision to leave our cruising life and return to the hard facts of reality (running out of money will do that to you). So we made a short stop in Santo, Vanuatua, on the way home to catch up with Rehua, one of our cruising buddies who have become very good friends, enjoyed a short stay with them and then headed home to face reality. Continue reading “One More Year…..of makebelieving”

So here we are, back in our home port of Pittwater and back at The Royal Prince Alfred Yacht club, having completed “Part One” of our amazing adventure around the world – two and a half years and 19,000 NM from the East coast of USA to Australia. What an incredible journey it’s been. It feels very surreal – almost as if we’ve been time-travelling – as everything and everyone still look exactly the same as when we left! Continue reading “Home Again – Pittwater, Australia”

Several international cruisers we met on our travels expressed reluctance to visit Australia because they’d heard horror stories of how difficult the clearance process is, and how expensive it is. Well, maybe the latter, especially if you break the rules….but if you follow the rules it’s really not that hard and in our case it’s been a relatively easy and pleasant experience. So for those of you who may be interested in how it all works, here’s our story of checking in and importing our boat into our home country… Continue reading “Border Force – Newcastle, Australia”