Catching up

Just to fill in the gaps...

Last November in Phuket, we traded our old boat Malaika for a younger, larger yacht, designed and built by Phil Atkinson, and sailed by Phil and his wife Fay for the last 9 years. She is a 54 ft centre cockpit monohull, built of strip-planked western red cedar and composites, and is beautifully finished. Light and fast, she's a head turner of a boat, and one that people are constantly coming up to look at more closely. She won the "Wow factor" prize in the recent Dragons Abreast charity yacht race in Darwin.

We had intended cruising in Malaysia this year, but Lex ruptured a disc in his back in December, just before the Hart family arrived for a three week sail with us. The Harts opted for a driving holiday in Thailand instead, while we left Tramontana in Phuket and returned home. We decided to stay in Darwin for a while and Lex went back to work at his old Chambers. By March he was too busy for us to sail the yacht back ourselves, so Stuart McPherson brought her down from Thailand for us. We moved back on board in early May, and have been living in Tipperary Marina ever since, gradually getting her ready for another long voyage.

Now the list is almost completed, and we're down to the provisioning and saying goodbye stage. We hope to cast off the mooring lines in a few days, perhaps the 8th September, and head east to Cape York, stopping off at New Year and other islands near Coburg Peninsula, then the Wessells, and maybe Gove along the way. Hopefully the north easterlies will kick in on time to take us down the east coast.

It feels strange leaving without Ali this time, but once we get out to sea again it should all fall into place. In 2008 we were planning a circumnavigation, via the Ambon rally. This time we have much less of a plan - well, we're not even making plans any more, just cruising and seeing where we feel like going at the time. The general vague intention (GVI) is to head to Tasmania by early February for the Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart, and then perhaps New Zealand for starters. We'll let you know.

2009 was a pretty confused and aimless year for us as we tried to come to terms with losing our girl. But we had unflagging support from our family and our friends, and the Darwin community generally, and we are very humbly grateful for it all. Now it's time for us to climb back on the horse and have another go.