Christmas Kiwi Greetings from Richard and Jen 2018

Early seasons greetings to you… we hope your year has been one of happiness and prosperity.

From our end, we have been somewhat remiss in our correspondence over the last year (if not 2!), however, we can reassure you we are alive and well and continue to live life to the max!

Our travels over 2017 and 2018 saw us continue our sailing journey aboard “Our Rose” from the East Coast of Australia, up to Thursday Island, across Indonesia Archipelagos, and up the west coast of Malaysia and Thailand.

Highlights of these areas were:

*New Years and Australia Day on Sydney Harbor

*5 week land trip to New Zealand (1^st time in 5 years)

*Helping with stricken monohull s/v Balikcil across the Indonesia Islands, involving 7 boats (amazing comradeship!)

*A month’s scuba diving in the amazing Komodo Marine Park (world class)

*Exploring the Hongs in Thailand (huge natural Island Caves)

*Enjoying the Islands of Koh Phayam (Hippyville) and the Similan & Surin Islands for more diving

*Having Julie & Martin, then Anne and Neil join us on Our Rose, and meeting up with Hils and Doug in Malaysia and meeting up with Matt and Jono in KL.

We also enjoying quite a bit of land travel during the Monsoon season (March – November), Hanoi, Siem Reap, Cameron Highlands, Penang, KL and Jen did a trip to Port Douglas to spend some time with our dear friends Julie and Martin.

The Future???  well, we have been invited to help with a Boutique Ski Lodge in Madarao Japan over the coming winter season.  As we have not seen a winter for 6 years and love skiing, we decided to say Yes!  So we will be in the best snow area of Japan (10 – 13 meters average snow fall) from December to March.  Look up http://firsttracksmadarao.lodgify.com

As for “Our Rose”, she is in the capable hands of a broker and yacht care company in Rebak Marina during this time.  As much as we love and will miss her, we hope she sells so we can continue our land travel journey in 2019.

The Boys… as mentioned, we met Matt and Jono in KL during the year.  Matt was on his way from New Zealand to Scotland, utilizing the opportunity to work in the UK  for Kiwis under age of 31.  He is now working at a science museum in Glasgow and also continues to enjoy his passion of swing and blues dancing.  Jono has been travelling and working in Vietnam since early 2017 and has qualified with TEFL as a foreign language (English) teacher and is now based in Bangkok.  We are very proud of them both.

So, that’s it from us.  We hope you have an amazing Christmas and New Year.  Maybe see you in Japan!  Keep in touch; love to hear all your news

A few pics of Our Journey in 2017/2018 (in no particular order)…

A Very Merry Christmas from us to you…

Goodbyes...

Sunrise at Scarborough Marina.

A tribute walkway to the Beegees, having come from this area

Waiting for a weather window to head north from Scarborough Marina was taking longer than expected, so we hired a car and headed up to see Carola and Jim (Koza) and Fay and Phil (Jigsaw)

We had had so much fun coming down through the Pacific with them 

and it was yet again time for goodbyes...  we will miss them as we travel on.

Middle Percy Island...

where there was a structure built for the cruisers to use, 

 

with flags and parafanaleia from all over the world,

so we left our mark of having visited...

There was a lovely walk up to the original homestead, where they had put sayings along the way attached to trees...

Near the A-Frame on the beach  is a "Tree House".  This is presently lived in by a young couple who are volunteering on the island, and also on occassion offering coffee and goat stew to cruisers - if they were lucky enough to catch a goat on the right day...

Sailing passed Hamilton Island you are directly deside the airport

At the time of arriving here, it was only about a month after the Cyclone and you could see it had hit some of the islands with a vengeance.

At Sawmill Bay, Whitsundy Island we went ashore for a walk to the top

The damage from the cyclone very evident...

The views at the top were spectacular

Spectacular sunset at Airlie Beach...

Anchored off Mantes Resort Cape Glouchesr it was time for more goodbyes...

Another sad goodbye to Sea Adler... It was a delight meeting you all...

Arriving at Magnetic Island we were struck by how the island is made up of boulders

We went on some really lovely walks here, being lucky enough to see Koala in the wild

along with Kookaburras and Wallabies

The scenery was spectacular...

We made a day stop at Zoe Bay, and walked to the waterfall...

So the time had come to be even more vigilant and definately no going in the water

Heading to Bluewater Marina just north of Cairns it was time to reprovision before heading to Indonesia and sadly we also had to get a new outboard our Yamaha having corroded with a cracked block from the inside out.  Considering this was flushed regularly we were pretty disappointed!

The new outboard above, and a few boxes of essentials below hahaha

Leaving Cairns area

The fort lockout at Thursday Island...

We had various other anchorages we stopped at.

We had to cut short our time and head urgently to Horn/Thursday Island with a major problem with our inverter.  We have had to replace this.

 We are now checked out and heading off to Indonesia on Sunday.

So it is "Goodbye to Australia"...