Watcha doin'?

Our new strut/P-bracket

Since we arrived back in Darwin after our awesome road trip, we have been busy trying to get through our checklist of boat fixes. Matt's been making impressive progress on the 'Big 3' Projects that we need to get done while out of the water. He is also sweating an impressive amount (as are we all). Warning, boring boat work blah blah blah ahead.

FOR SALE: Lofrans Progress 2 Windlass Motor 1200W 12V

Pictures from our Australian road trip - continued

I couldn't fit all the pictures from our road trip in one post, so here are the rest.

Road trip around Australia - The fast track (redone)

This post has been republished due to some strange formatting I couldn't fix in the original post.

The kids are officially sick of the car. When we first bought it, they jumped at the chance to go for a ride, even if it was just to the store. Now there is zero interest. Being stuck in it for 11,976 kilometers (7442 miles) in 28 days has officially killed the novelty.

Civilized Darwin

From the Darwin Military Museum,
like most of the pics in this post

A big reason we went cruising was to see places different from the U.S. So I almost feel guilty writing this. But after spending so long in  areas where many people live in grass-covered huts and your choices in stores (when you can find one) are limited, it has been a nice break to spend some time in what we think of as civilization.

Indonesia to Australia

It's a bit rainy in Darwin this time of year.

We left Saumlaki on a wind forecast that was higher than we would have liked (first 12 hours was still up to 25 knots and the apparent wind would be creeping just forward of the beam).  However,  the trend was that the wind was moderating and, more importantly, there was an almost zero chance of a major low forming and turning into a named storm in the next few days. So it was time to put on the big girl panties and get to Australia.

Banda to Saumlaki

Saumlaki from really far away. The wind is blocked a bit
where we are. There are some really big Catholic churches.

Before we left for Saumlaki, Matt showed me the various wind prediction models. Two of the 'base' models were fairly consistent with strong winds of 25 to 30 knots. Another model called Predict Wind, which has been pretty accurate in a lot of cases recently, showed much more moderate winds. We decided to leave regardless, because the forecasts continued in a similar vein for at least a week and we needed to start heading towards Australia. At least all of the models showed a deep downwind sail, which would make strong winds less of an issue.