Tag: travel
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Kaimana and the hiu paus (whale sharks)
The kids decided to stay on board, so we took a handheld VHF radio, and headed into town to provision and visit the Quarantine office to get our green book (apparently a necessity to clear out of the country). We left them a card with how to say, Jangan datang! (Don’t come) or Mohon pergi!…
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Tual and Ngurbloat beach
This is the view of Tual from where we tied up our dinghy to the back of a coast guard boat. Then we climbed over two other boats and had to jump down onto a huge black fender and step up again to get to shore. After we cleared in on Wednesday and said goodbye…
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Passage to Indonesia
Our autopilot died about an hour after we left Thursday Island. Riki put the spare one in, and it worked, but it was super loud. It sounded like a pinball machine, and we nicknamed it Pinball Wizard (sure plays mean pinball!). We used the wind pilot when we were sailing, but often there was no…
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Reflections after (almost) one year living aboard
Luz (6) During the past year we flew to New Zealand, and then we sailed to Fiji, and then we sailed to Vanuatu, and we came to Australia on our longest passage, which was 9 days. We saw lots of cool animals. We saw a mama orca and a baby orca in NZ. We also…
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On the Eve of Indonesia
We have been in Horn Island, across from Thursday Island for 5 days now, preparing for the voyage to Indonesia. I’ve been provisioning and pre-cooking meals. Riki fixed our starboard winch and the manual bilge pump. We have been across to Thursday Island 3 times on the ferry: we took Jade to the doctor for…
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Cairns to Thursday Island
Riki met David & Millie on SV Penny Oyster, a British couple in their early 30’s, on the dock in Cairns. They left the same day we did, and we both overnighted to Lizard Island. We ended up buddy boating with them all the way to Cape York, the northernmost point of the Australian continent.…
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Whitsunday Island to Cairns
We sailed from Airlie Beach, a lovely town where we re-provisioned, to Whitehaven Beach. We ended up motoring in a narrow channel right through a race for Hamilton Island race week. I was steering while Riki told me where to go. So many boats in a small space! It was stressful! We spent 2 days…
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and, our other neighbors came to visit!
We have a pretty tight-knit neighborhood community back home. Thanks to Covid for that! Our neighbors Mary, Erik, Hannah & Simon bought tickets to come visit in Fiji before we left the States. 🙂 They also schlepped a lot of stuff for us, like home school textbooks and a new laptop to be used only…
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First few weeks in Fiji
Fiji is a special place for Riki and I — we met in Savusavu in July 2012. We also cruised in Fiji for 10 months on Riki’s old boat, SV Guava Jelly, in 2014-2015 when Tomu was a baby. It feels like a treat to come back to Fiji. The people are so kind here.…
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Opua, NZ to Savusavu, Fiji
It took us exactly 6 days to sail to North Minerva Reef. The first few days were pretty mellow as far as waves and wind — I was even playing Doppelkopf (a German card game) with the kids down below. I used half a patch of Scopolamine for sea-sickness, and I gave the kids each…
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