... try and find us

  Wow, 2026!  That came around quickly.  So what are our plans for the year?  As you know, plans continually evolve but this is our thinking for now... March:                                Back to the boat, organise, splash and head to Cherbourg via Amsterdam April:                                   Cherbourg for some warranty work and north through Kiel Canal to Sweden May/first half June:         West coast Sweden June/July:                           Åland/Finland/Estonia/Latvia/Sweden/Norway August:                               Scotland (Caledonian Canal), Irish Sea  to Scil...

Celebrations are afoot here, although there is a bit of controversy around it. One of the many things that makes Australia great Two hundred and thirty-eight years ago, the First Fleet came ashore at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson and ended up establishing Australia as a country.  As there was already a native people here, it was an invasion and a fair bit of violence ensued. The fact that the invaders decided to rename the land Australia and took to celebrating the new culture that arose from the initial clash on THE ANNIVERSARY of the first landing does ruffle the feathers of the descendants of those involved. It might be more sensitive to move the date of the celebration to another date, but I'll leave that to the resident population to work out.  There seems to be lots of flags and other symbols of happiness and gratitude about being connected to this sunburnt country , so I'm just going to run with "standard operating procedure until notified otherwise" and ...

The smoke and sunset contributing to this stunning, but scary scene. And January rolled on, the days became hotter and drier, the paddocks dried off to summer brown and bushfires became the leading news.  Towns that had once been just a sign on the highway became headlines - Harcourt, Longwood, Ruffy, Gobur, Natimuk - as the fires roared through destroying homes, farm buildings, livestock and fences.  Surrounded by tinder-dry paddocks, we had our fire plans in place and kept a close eye on the emergency updates.  And we were fortunate and we did not have fires close enough to be of concern. Our hearts go out to those who lost their homes, their livestock, their livelihoods.  And especially to the family and friends of the gentleman who lost his life. 

Ross, a childhood friend of Kate's, bought a new yacht in Pittwater (just north of Sydney) and wanted to bring her back to Melbourne.  Due to the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, it seemed all the professional skippers in the country were committed to racing or delivering Hobart yachts.   So, who do you think he called? The good ship Vámonos After a couple of conversations with Ross discussing logistics and the like, we found ourselves winging our way to Sydney. We met him and Vámonos at the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club so we were able to say a g'day to Popeye! Vámonos is a 2004 Sayer 44, an Australian-built, aluminium, lifting-keel, blue water cruiser-racer - with a tiller!  We had a great deal of fun crawling around, opening lockers and generally poking about.  She was extremely clean and tidy, well maintained by her fastidious previous owner.  As Ross had only spent a couple of days aboard, we checked all the safety gear, radios, bilge pumps and e...