12-1-99 It is the first day of summer here in Australia, and Christmas only 3 and 1/2 weeks away! Strange for us northern-hemisphere-raised folks to comprehend Christmas in summer, but we're getting excited all the same. We are hauling the boat in a couple days, 12/3, and fly home to Philadelphia on Tuesday, 12/7. Looking forward to the reunion with family and friends back home. We've had alot of fun so far in OZ, even though we haven't seen much of this immense country. It's somewhat intimidating after visiting all the small island nations across the Pacific. Australia is massive, about the same size as continental USA. But we've been content, just being in one place for awhile. We've reviewed our ship's log for our journey so far and here are a couple interesting sailing/fishing statistics:
1. We've sailed 11,368 nautical miles (nm) in 453 days, averaging 25.1 nm/day.
2. Of the 453 days, 79 of them have been offshore days - out of sight of land.
3. We've visited over 100 islands.
4. We've caught a total of 71 fish, 25 lobster, 3 crabs and 1 octopus. Mother Ocean certainly had fed us well!
We've cleaned and polished the boat, ordered new rigging (we'll re-rig ourselves when we return in March '00), had some electronics repaired (depth sounder/autohelm), one sail re-cut (110% jib), and copied all the charts we'll need for the northern Australia - Brisbane to Darwin- for next season. We also walked, biked, and partied with friends. We've enjoyed the local parks with free electric "barbies" , picnic grounds and bird life. Our Aussie marina neighbors, Matthew and Donna, have been wonderful. Each weekend when they come to their boat DREAM WEAVER (they do still have jobs and work during the week), we get together for a cultural exchange - usually drinks, dinner, tea. They've been very helpful in teaching us the Aussie way. They've invited us to their home while our boat is out of the water and offered to drive us to the airport Tuesday morning. What great friends!
12-7-99 We're in Brisbane airport, waiting to board our plane back to the States. We're a little melancholy about leaving SIMMER, she's been our home for such a long time. Feels strange leaving her behind. We did have a great last week in OZ - barbecuing with sailing friends and sight-seeing with our Aussie marina neighbors Donna and Matthew. Colleen even had a chance to cuddle a koala and feed kangaroos at a koala sanctuary outside of Brisbane. Koalas are so cute and cuddly. They eat eucalyptus leaves and sleep the majority if the day. The sanctuary had heaps of them, all perched in the crooks of tress, peacefully snoozing. Their sleeping positions were comical and we laughed the morning away. See a picture of Colleen and Pat cuddling "Gary" the koala and feeding roos in our photo album.
12-14-99 We've been home for a week now, catching up with family and friends. Nice to be home for the Holidays. We had a long, long trip on 3 planes to get here - 21 hours total airtime. We left Brisbane at 10:30 AM and arrived in Philadelphia at 10:30 PM the same day thanks to the international dateline and times zones. We were elated to see 20 cheering family members when we stepped off the plane. What a home-coming. We're now focused on Christmas and New Year's with the family and will take a short break from updating our webpage. We will resume our updates on our trip back to Brisbane via New Zealand in March. Happy Holidays to all!!!!
Back to Log Book