Skipping ahead, because I never seem to get the time to actually catch up on the blog...
We finished our cruising in early September last year (2024), put the boat in storage, found a cat sitter for the cats, and flew back to the USA for October through early December.
We didn't make it up to the Red Sea this year. Dave started on an "upscale our electrical capacity" project when we got back to the boat in December. By early January 2025, it became obvious that we weren't going to get done in time to catch the right season to cross the Indian Ocean and up the Red Sea (must leave Malaysia/Thailand by mid January). I was pretty upset at first--another whole year's delay! But Dave talked me down, and we ended up (so far) having a pretty good year.
In between bouts of working on the boat, we did some travel...
- Tasmania for 2 weeks in February (Australian summer)
- Sri Lanka for 2 weeks in March Download Our Trip Notes
- A 10-day Dive Trip to Misool (Raja Ampat, Indonesia) in April
Yes, I should have blogged all this, but I was too busy traveling, and making arrangements for the next trip.
May through July, we worked on the boat. Dave decided he wanted to Coppercoat the bottom, and to get the best finish (critical to Coppercoat success), he wanted to put our boat in the "shed". (A covered space at the marina). To go in the shed, you have to take the mast down. While the mast was down... You see how the ball of string unravels...?? One day I'll post a full list of all the stuff we have done on the boat this year.
So, looking ahead, we'll want to be finishing up all of our boat work, in a full court press, in November, get launched, and head for a shakedown cruise to Thailand. So if we wanted to go home, we had to do it sooner than our normal Oct-Dec trip.
As soon as we started talking about being in the US in Aug/Sep, Dave signed us up to do a presentation at the Seven Seas Cruising Association Gam that is held in the Annapolis area (Maryland, USA) Sep 26-28. Details on the SSCA Website. So now we're committed to staying at least that long.
Note to our Melbourne Friends, the SSCA Gam is coming back to Melbourne November 14-16 at the Front Street Park Community Center. Put it on your calendar, and watch for details on the SSCA Website here.
We've been enjoying catching up with friends and family in Florida... a few Friday nights at Melbourne Yacht Club... a few beach walks at sunrise. Amazon deliveries nearly every day. A mix of critical boat parts, specialty food items we can't get in Malaysia, and tech items.
We've got our passports in for renewal, as we were starting to run out of pages. We are also in the process of renewing our Captains Licenses--another big paper chase! We had planned to let them lapse until we found they might help with the "Schengen Shuffle" in Europe. (Non-EU citizens are limited to 90 days in 180 days in the entire EU, and being considered "crew" on a "ship" you can get around this issue, supposedly).
Dave made a whirlwind trip with some other WW2-crazy friends up to Pensacola, FL to see the National Naval Aviation Museum, and the Naval Diving and Salvage Center in Panama City, Florida.
But our time in Melbourne is coming to an end. In a few days, we'll pack all our stuff back into the storage unit, and set out in our new-to-us car for a month of traveling around the SE US.
The current plan is to drive straight back to Florida the first week of October, put the car in storage, and fly back to Malaysia, with a quick stop in San Diego to see Dave's son Chris.
Meanwhile, we've been really studying the ins and outs of the trip across the Indian Ocean and up the Red Sea. And planning what we're going to do when we finally hit the Mediterranean around May of next year.
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