Yesterday morning we scooted around our new anchorage at Gili Trawangan in the tender, weaving our way through a stack of local boats. Markito and I pointed out rogue mooring ropes in the water that Simon artfully dodged. Sometimes boat owners here drop the anchor and then pull their boat up on shore and tie…
I’m in the cockpit gazing longingly over at Gili Trawangan. The boat is gently rocking through the swell that’s coming in from the north. We just arrived back on Red Dragonfly after a few hours spent walking around the eastern tip of the island, an area we hadn’t explored yet. The twins are inside playing,…
We’ve spent the last 5 months and a lovely summer at home in the mountains of Northeast Victoria, while Red Dragonfly has been on a swing mooring at Marina Del Ray at Gili Gede in Southwest Lombok, Indonesia. We had two big questions in coming back to the boat: How on earth were we going…
Last year we sailed from Hastings (Victoria), up the east coast of Australia, turned left at the Torres Straight Islands to Darwin, then hooked a right up to Dili (East Timor), where we meandered westward through East Nusa Tenggara (Indonesia) until we got to Lombok. We left Red Dragonfly at a little island called Gili…
It took us 3 days to sail from Darwin to Dili. We expected to have around 10-15 knots of south-easterly winds pushing us across the Timor Sea and then no wind for the last 24 hours as we traveled along the north coast of Timor. In fact, the opposite occurred. We motored for the first…
I try not to listen to any podcasts during the day on long sails. I save them up. Savour them. They are my special treat, my midnight audio-snack. When Simon gently rubs my shoulder at 2am, quietly waking me up for my night watch shift, I am only groggy for a second until I realize…
Check out these links to two newspaper articles about our sailing travels this year. The Saturday Herald Sun: Living a Life Less Ordinary (30 Sep 2017); and The Shepparton News: Family Living Their Dream (19 Oct 2017) Also – we made a little cameo appearance on our friends youtube channel. Subscribe to Sailing Catalpa for some great videos following…
We had our first encounter with an Australian Border Force boat in Darwin. They came out to Red Dragonfly one morning and asked us a few questions. The uniformed officers were friendly and polite. We aren’t sure exactly what information they were looking for, but once we explained that we’d just arrived and would be…
We celebrated Markito’s 9th birthday on Thursday 26th October, halfway through our sail from the Torres Strait Islands to Darwin. We were just off Cape Wessel, 280 nautical miles west of our last port of call and sailing at 6.27 knots through the Arafura Sea, when we sang happy birthday. Markito blew out the candles…
Friday 13 Oct – Cairns to Low Isles “It’s a bit rolly today Dad”, Zach said as we left Cairns. “Ooh Dad. The boat is too wriggly!” It wasn’t really. The weather was beautiful and the ocean was calm. But as we motored away from Cairns a few big tourist catamarans zoomed past and our…