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Our Itinerary
This is something we have deliberately left open. We have a broad plan for where we want to go, a long list of places we
would like to see and a big blank space ready for all the other destinations we discover along the way.
For us cruising is not just about destinations, a tour of exotic locations interrupted by long wet bits in between. It
is equally about the journey. It is about travelling together, about moving when we want, stopping when we want and
freeing ourselves as much as possible from the tyranny of the schedule. Taking time to savour the present as well as
anticipate the future.
So we expect to be away from Sydney for some time and have a plan for the first 12 months.
Nov 04 - move aboard
Feb 05 - head north to Southport
Apr 05 - cruise north as far as we want to go, taking in all the special places we find on the Queensland coast
Nov 05 - back south to avoid the cyclones, in Mooloolaba, Brisbane or Southport and local waters
Apr 06 - who knows?
By then we will have worked out how all this works for us, what we want to do next, straightened out the bugs and cleared
up more than a few misconceptions, no doubt. We will also have a new itinerary.
Update April 2006
Well, that worked well. Now it is April 06 and we do (finally) have a new plan. We have decide to join the Darwin to Kupang Rally which leaves July 22nd and will take us through Indonesia over a couple of months before moving on to Singapore, up the Malacca Straits to Malaysia and Thailand. We should be in Langkawi by Christmas. The rally website is
http://www.sailindonesia.net/home/home.php
We've decided on the rally for a couple of key reasons. Firstly, they organise all the Indonesian cruising paperwork, which is a major task, and help us out with a very interesting route off the beaten track to explore some different places as well as favourites like Bali. Second, as our first trip offshore it will be good to have a bit of company from some experienced cruisers. There will be about 100 boats going, so although it may get a bit crowded from time to time, we will hopefully find some other families to travel with for a while.
While we don't have to troop along with everyone else and can do our own thing at any time the full itinerary through Indonesia looks like this:
Kupang 1 August
Roti 3 August,
Alor 10 August,
Babar15 August
Wetar 16 August
Flores 20 August
Sumba 25 August
Sumbawa 30 August
Komodo 1 September
Lombok 5 September
Bali 15 September
Java 22 September
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Bawean 25 September
Makassar 30 September
Bone Rate 2 October
Kalimantan 5 October
Ketapang 8 October
Kumai 10 October
Sumatra 12 October
Belitung 18 October
Singkep 20 October
Bintan 25 October
Batam 30 October
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After Christmas, again we'll see, but it is looking like over to Sri Lanka, India and then a trip up the Red Sea to the Med by April 07. One step at a time.
Update December 2007
Even a casual glance at the logs or photos on the site would have revealed that we did indeed move on from Indonesia, reaching Thailand, via Singapore and Malaysia, in December 2006.
Now it is a further year on, and 2007 saw us leave the Semilans off Thailand, visit Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Oman and Yemen before heading up the Red Sea visiting Sudan and Egypt along the way. We passed though the Suez Canal in April and had our first Mediterranean landfall in Greek Cyprus. The rest of the cruising season (until October) was spent in southern Turkey with a 6 week trip into the central and southern Aegean (Dodecanese islands, Paros, Sifnos, Milos, Ios, Santorini and Paxos).
The boat is now on the hardstand in Marmaris whilst we enjoy a winter (!) in SW England catching up with family and friends as well as replenishing the kitty a bit.
Future plans see us getting home to Sydney in late 2009.
In May we return to Marmaris, get the boat back in the water and make our way reasonably quickly up the Dodecanese again, across the Aegean to the Corinth Canal and then on to Corfu and neighbouring islands. Then it is on down to Sicily and up the Ligurian coast of Italy to spend some time exploring inland, based in the Rome area.
We want to be leaving the Med in the second half of September, so will visit Sardinia, Mallorca and southern Spain before our first ocean crossing in a long while. First off to the Canaries, then the Cape Verde Islands in November and finally along the trade wind route to the Caribbean by Christmas 2008.
Details get a little sketchy at this point and we will give an update later, but for now we are thinking of a landfall in Martinique, head down the Leeward Isles (St Lucia, St Vincent, Grandines and Grenada), to Trinidad then along the coast of Venezuela (Margarita, Tortuga, ABCs) then Columbia (Cartagena), San Blas Isles and Panama by March 2009.
Finally the small trip (!) across the Pacific to get home via the Galapagos, Marquesas, Tahiti, Cook Isles, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia.
Update December 2009
Well there we are. We're home in Pittwater, Sydney and the trip did more or less follow the plans above.
In fact, after the winter stop over in England (boy was that cold!), we did return to Marmaris and after a wonderful road trip up to Istanbul and Gallipoli, we set off west across the Aegean, briefly revisiting a couple of islands before using the Corinth Canal to reach the Ionian. Then it was on down the south of Italy and up the Straits of Messina to Rome where we parked the boat up the Fiumicino River for a month and went ashore to stay with friends and explore that wonderful country.
August saw us heading for Sardinia and then on to Gibraltar via the Balearics and southwestern Spain. A bit of a stop in Gibraltar to sort a few boat and family things out then we took the advice of friends and went down to Morocco, stopping in Rabat. That made the hop to the Canaries fairly short, and come the end of November we set off south to the Cape Verdes then west across the Atlantic to make landfall in Martinique.
Our Caribbean cruise took us as far north as Isles des Saintes in Guadeloupe and south to Grenada before visiting Bonaire and Curacao on the way to the San Blas. Passed through the Panama Canal in March,stopping in the Perlas Islands before following the Coconut Milk Run across the Pacific - Galapagos, Marquesas, Tuamotus, Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine, Bora Bora, Suwarrow, Tonga, Fiji and New Caledonia.
We made landfall in Australia in Bundaberg on October 25th, 2009 and made our way down the coast to Pittwater stopping at Fraser Island, Mooloolaba and Southport.
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