Category Archives: Passage

Time spent between destinations travelling on the water.

Welcome to Lizard Island, Queensland, Australia

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We only had 18 hours left to go to Lizard Island, so we didn’t need to leave yesterday until the afternoon. We realized that in the small slip we could easily reach the rub rail and miscellaneous external metal pieces that can’t be reached in a full size spot, so Christi spent a couple of hours polishing the metal on the starboard side of the boat. We have to admit that we have been incredibly lazy about the metal and, until today, haven’t polished it ourselves once since we left home. In Fiji the people who waxed the boat also did the metal, but it was looking pretty bad again already. The areas that Christi did are sparkling and shiny, which makes the rest of the dull and partially rusted metal look that much worse.

We pulled out at about 13:30 (1:30 pm). The ride to Lizard Island was wonderful. The views were pretty, with mountains similar to Port Douglas along the coast most of the way up. There were lots of Continue reading →

Off to Lizard Island — But We Wound Up in Port Douglas, Instead

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It will take us about 24-hours to get to Lizard Island, so we headed out a little before noon, figuring noon was the ideal time of day to arrive at Lizard Island. The seas were incredibly calm and it was a nice ride.

Eric was constantly checking the shaft. The collar of the shaft was still running too hot. He started running water from the hose on it to cool it off and pulled out some of the stuffing material. It was still running too hot, so he kept the water on it. After a while, the water pump overheated and shut off. We slowed down, hoping that would help. It didn’t. The shaft seemed to be OK temperature wise, but it was making friction on the collar and the collar was just too hot. After being underway about 2 ½ hours, we decided Continue reading →

Welcome to Cairns, Queensland, Australia

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On days 6 and 7, the seas went from really uncomfortable to quite miserable. Seas were 10 to 12 feet and confused, with lots of those nasty big beam waves. While Eric was in the shower we were hit with one of those big waves. Eric said the boat rolled over so far on its side that the porthole (window) was completely underwater. Jaime said one of the most memorable moments of his time with us is standing at the back of the boat watching the huge waves go up way over the top of Kosmos.

On days 8 and 9 we had several neighbors drop by to say hello. Here are shots of a couple of them (notice the lime green feet).

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Of course, they were kind enough to Continue reading →

Vanuatu to Cairns Dolphin Show

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Today is day five of nine on the passage from Vanuatu to Australia. To celebrate making it to the halfway mark, we had a pod of dolphins come and do a show for us. Eric and Jaime spotted the dolphins at about 14:30 (2:30 pm). We went outside to get a better look. There was a big pod of them surfing the waves around us. Many of them stuck their noses out of the water and dived down, arching their backs out of the water, as they surfed along. A couple of them even turned mid stream so we could see their belly arch out of the water instead of their backs, which was exciting because we haven’t seen them do that before. Out of nowhere, one of the dolphins fully jumped straight up out of the water, fully vertical to the sea, and several feet up. We were all stunned. After that initial breach, the dolphins put on quite the show for us. There were several more fully body breaches like the first one. There were several partial body breaches where they seemed to stick their heads up out of the water to say hi. They would sometimes dive forward off the top of a cresting wave, which would send them flying up about a foot above the descending water level before they plunged back into the ocean. They seemed to be having a lot of fun playing in the waves and showing off for us.

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All the other dolphins we have seen seem to Continue reading →

Passage from Luagnville, Vanuatu to Cairns, Australia

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We left for a nine day passage to Cairns, Australia. Being that it is such a long passage, we had some serious getting ready to do. We spent all day Thursday and most of the day Friday doing chores.

Jaime volunteered to scrub the waterline, which delighted Christi. Christi thinks that the waterline is by far her hardest job duty. She was pretty happy about passing it off onto Adrienne, and even happier to have gotten out of it a second time in a row. He hopped in and hopped right back out, realizing that there was no way he could fight the aggressive two knot current. At slack tide he hopped in and got to work, but wasn’t able to finish the job before the tide picked back up. When the tide was slack again, he got in to finish the job. Jaime is planning on buying a Nordhavn and is trying to decide between a 43 and a 47. After finally completing the waterline, he came inside and announced that he had decided on the 43 he couldn’t possibly take doing the waterline of the 47, which is actually 50 and a half feet

Christi did the bottom when Jaime finished the water line. As she prepared to get in, she managed to break Continue reading →