Good Queensland Casual We are enjoying an old copy of ‘100 Magic Miles’, the classic sailor’s guide to the Whitsundays, first published 1985. Ours is the fifth edition from 1997, found in a Mackay Op Shop by our new friends Michael and Shylie. It’s full of great pilotage information, but some of the advice seems […]
Author / escapadesailing
Are we having fun yet?
So here we are, half way round the world, almost ten years since we set off from France. For me the joy of sailing and living on Escapade is as strong as ever. For my patient wife Dawn, not so much. Dawn has spent the last couple of years wondering when I will finally […]
Travelling to the land down under.
Notes from the captain’s log, December 2023. Day 2 I’m lounging in the cockpit, it’s a warm afternoon and I’m slightly groggy from lack of sleep. We’re a couple of hundred miles west of New Caledonia, empty ocean, nothing out here. The SE breeze died this morning at 2am, we have been motoring across a […]
Nouvelle Calédonie
02.11.2023 Another new country already! Not really Escapade style to be moving so fast. But here are the red hills and pine clad shores of New Caledonia. Our passage planning worked out perfectly and we arrived at the entrance to the Havannah Pass at 6am with the sun rising and the tide flushing us in. […]
Vanuatu Part 2: Lola
So with the threat from that tropical low we reluctantly left our favourite anchorage off the island of Pele and headed south toward Port Vila. We were joined by a pod of pilot whales who played around our bows like dolphins, rolling onto their sides to look at us and talking to us with loud […]
The Vanuatu Voyages
Landfall! Soon after sunrise the volcanic peaks of Tanna island rose above the horizon, our first glimpse of Vanuatu. The last few miles of a passage always seem to take forever. The destination slowly reveals itself, more details of the landscape gradually appearing to the impatient crew. In this case a grey smudge of land […]
Farewell to Fiji
Back on board. Dawn and I returned to the boat after our summer holiday in Guernsey. We were soon joined by good friends from home, Alex and Arabella. I’ve been hoping to get these guys on board for years, now it’s finally happening. They made the long trip from Guernsey to Fiji and we welcomed […]
The untold Fiji story.
This post got stuck in my drafts folder. Here’s the last part of our Fiji adventure in June. Better late than never! June 2023 We said farewell to Auriane at the tiny airstrip on Tavenui. She flew away on the first leg of her long trip to Paris. Bryan and I were now short-handed, planning […]
Haere rā Aotearoa. Bula vinaka Fiji
Sorry about the long silence there. This blog is an account of our sailing adventures and there really haven’t been any to report, until the last couple of weeks. In early January, Dawn and I finally escaped from that rainstorm. It was described as a ‘once in 50 years’ event. But then the same thing […]
escapade sailing 