Hooray....QuickStar made it to Australia

Yahoo….QuickStar sailed in to Coff’s Harbour yesterday around lunchtime with a tired, but happy crew.  Since I have been here for the week, I arranged everything with customs and immigration, as well as reserving a berth in the crowded marina.  I got to know the customs officer (Mick) quite well, so he allowed QuickStar to come right in and tie up rather than having to anchor out and wait for them. (he even helped with the lines as they were docking, which is a definite first for a customs officer).  

Very cool for me to watch from the top of Muttonbird Island, as QuickStar made landfall.  They had an added bonus of seeing humpback  whales and dolphins as they were nearing Coff's Harbour

 

Australia is quite strict about their quarantine procedures, so the officer took off all fruit, vegetables, meat, nuts, and seeds (including unopened popcorn).  Sadly for Barb, she had been collecting seeds and nuts from around the world to make in to a necklace once her world tour is completed. These were taken away.   For some reason he didn’t take her sour dough bread starter which she has been using for over five years. All in all he took off over 15 kilograms of supplies.

Flying the Australian flag and removing the yellow quarantine flag

I have had a fabulous week here.  Just love Coff’s Harbour.  The weather has been hot and sunny, which is a little unseasonable, as it is still winter here.  It has been great to see so many people – old and young - out and about at all the parks, walkways and beaches.   Everyone has been really friendly, even though whenever I talk to the locals, I am asked to repeat myself– which I do much more slowly.  I guess I have a strong Canadian accent, eh?

Lots of signs about the "half-men" here, but so far haven't seen a live one, ha,ha

 Very grateful for these warnings to help us cross the street with cars

 driving on the "wrong" side

 I can't get over the great number and variety of birds.  When I remark about this to the locals, many of them say "they are just noisy".  I love the birds singing.

 The beaches and walkways are endless.  They have a 78 kilometre coastal walk/bike path here.  Would love to do it, but can't walk that far right now.

 

Coff's Creek - a lovely 9 kilometre circle walk

 

It’s been a relaxing week in my little cottage, getting lots of projects done in the mornings and then heading out for long walks in the afternoon.  At the end of the day I’ve been enjoying the solar-heated hot tub and I am the only one using it since the guests in the other 6 cottages think it is freezing!  

 

We’ll have this cottage for two more nights because it is so popular I had to book right away when Peter thought he would be arriving later.  He had been in touch with me daily and admitted that they had a prop shaft leak, which might have resulted in not being able to use the motor.  There was no wind for the last 4 days of the crossing, so this would have meant bobbing out in the ocean for an unforeseen amount of time.  I was quite concerned about this, but he insisted that it wasn’t that serious and he asked Barb not to put this problem in the blog as he didn’t want people worried (especially his Mom).   Now that he is here safe and sound he  told me that they also had a problem with the gennaker, so they were unable to use that sail and could only motor sail with the main sail.  Other than these two glitches, and the fact that they had to motor for 4 solid days, they had a good crossing.  

Peter said he couldn’t have had a better crew.  No one got sea-sick nor did they miss any of their watches.  Barbara also did the daily blog update, which was quite impressive since her first language is German.  As an added bonus, they did all the cooking and cleaning and were great company.  I snuck a cake mix on board and Barbara baked it for Peter’s Australia birthday (since we are a day ahead here, he got to celebrate for two days).   Last night for Peter’s Canadian birthday, and to celebrate a successful crossing, we took the crew out for dinner.  It is always great fun to rehash the crossing.  Both Barbara and David were going on and on about what a great, safe, patient Captain that Peter was.  All in all a memorable birthday for him. (Unfortunately, my camera battery died, so I didn't get our final night celebration photos).

We’re not sure what our plans are now.  Peter has to fix the damage once the marine stores open on Monday.  For the weekend, we will be watching the offshore racing championship, which sounds pretty interesting.  Tomorrow is Father’s Day here in Australia, so another excuse for a celebration!

 

Until next Friday……Enjoy the last long weekend of summer!

P.S. You know it's hard for me to do a blog post without a sunrise or a sunset.  This was the morning I flew out of Brisbane airport to Coff's Harbour.

 

We're back in Fiji

Bula from Fiji This has been the longest stretch (almost a year) since we have been onboard QuickStar. We had to leave a few months early last Fall, but will be eternally grateful that we were able to fly to Ontario and spend the last six weeks of his life with Peter’s father. During this time, I was also busy organizing the travel details for the Mexican wedding of our son Danny and daughter-in-law Ashley. There were 47 of us gathered for the week in early December for this amazing wedding celebration. It was so wonderful that all four of our kids and their significant others could be there with all of us.

After the big Christmas celebration and get togethers, our daughter Kylie and son-in-law Taylor’s wedding was coming up quickly in early March. I helped Kylie to organize this, which was held in our home village of Silver Star Mountain, B.C. There were 70 people who came from all over including Australia (since Taylor is Australian), Ontario and within B.C. and Alberta. This was a great weekend celebration and the contrast between Danny’s sun wedding and Kylie’s outdoor snow wedding made both events special and memorable in their own way.

We had decided to delay our return to QuickStar, which is normally early April to be the beginning of July. This was to give Peter some “cowboy” time as he was missing being part of brandings and wrangling duties. He did get to spend a lot of time riding, but he also really enjoyed helping to build a barn for a really good friend (this was after spending about 3 weeks in the early winter helping another friend build a house…hmmmm….sounds a bit like a trend…which he absolutely loved!) During this time, I focused intensely on launching my book – which is the first marketing I had done for it, even though it was already in its third printing. I was extremely gratified that Financial Fitness for Beginners became an Amazon #1 best seller on both Amazon.com and Amazon.ca on June 12th. It has been really rewarding hearing about all the success stories from my readers, and due to this I will focus more energy on the book and doing the radio interviews that have been requested when we return from this cruising season

We still had intentions of returning to QuickStar at the end of June following a week in Ontario for a friend’s wedding and a family ceremony of planting a tree in memory of Peter’s Dad. In the meantime, however, our son Danny and Ashley bought an 80 acre ranch in Pritchard, B.C. One of our lifetime goals was to buy land with our kids – affectionately known as Whoville, so we bought 20 acres from them and purchased a second hand trailer and over the summer we set up our SeaHorse homestead. It was wonderful to spend time again on the land, and the special bonus was visiting with our granddaughter Addison (20 months) almost on a daily basis.

After the final wedding of the season we left right after Labour Day and flew back to Fiji. We lost a day travelling over the international dateline, but it seems like we go back in time by at least 50 years here. I can’t tell you how much I love the people, the culture and the simple pleasures that can be experienced here. I’ll be writing more about the lifestyle during the weekly blogs ahead. When we arrived after the overnight flight, we were somewhat disappointed that QuickStar was on the hard (that means out of the water and in a cradle). We were getting the bottom cleaned and painted and had expected this work to have been completed, but there was stormy weather for the past few days, so they couldn’t do it. Being on the hard is inconvenient and expensive and not terribly comfortable since you don’t have running water, washrooms, showers or the ability to cook onboard.

It’s not all bad though, as during my middle of the night jaunt down the ladder, I was rewarded with seeing the amazing southern hemisphere constellation (Southern Cross) and a cute little gecko in the shower house. We hope to get the boat in the water later this afternoon, as the bottom is now freshly painted and the last minute scrub and polish has been completed – as has the four loads of laundry to freshen up the linens and clothes we leave on board. We are on Fiji time though, so we’ll be happy with whatever happens.

One of our boat neighbours, also on the hard, is a Manta 42 MKIII which just sustained major damage after dragging on anchor and crashing on a reef. It was a very serious situation and it cost over $48,000 U.S. dollars just for the salvage company to get them safely off the reef. During this time, one of the pontoons on this catamaran was completely submerged and the motor was punched right in to the boat. In addition all electronics were destroyed. The boat is now going through a significant refit and the bill will be in excess of $200,000. Thank goodness for insurance. It also makes our little “woops” of hitting the reef last September look a little insignificant, even though it cost almost $7,000. The sailing territory in Fiji is amazing, but considered amongst the most dangerous cruising area in the world, due to the fact that there are no accurate charts and many, many reefs.

We are not sure of what our plans are for this cruising season. We may head to Australia, or New Zealand, or leave the boat in Fiji since we will only be out for 3 months rather than our normal 6 months. We might even sell the boat, so this might be our last cruising season. We are finding it harder to leave Canada now with little Addison plus Danny and Ashley are expecting a second child in late January. This is our little cutie here with Kylie’s one-year old Great Dane mix.

I apologize for the length of this blog posting, but it was a bit of a catch-up. I will continue to post each Friday sharing with you our sailing adventures and the beauty and warmth of the Fijian people and wherever our travels take us. We love to hear from you, and keep up with everything that is going on in your life,so please email us at svquickstar@shaw.ca. Until next week….. In calm water every ship has a good captain." -- Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th U.S. President