Itâs Sunday morning early, which is my habit to get up early let the family sleep, I can get things done.

I am on the front wooden deck of the family home, the surf laps up  on the shore 100 m away and makes a soothing sound, the kookaburras laugh away up in tree, and whip bird does it distinct whip call. The eucalyptus trees tower 100s of feet above the house all around and looking out to my right and left it is green but you look through a sea of massive tree trunks. The sea is blue in front of us. with the beach and rock point extending to the right abut a mile, providing 100s of places for the boys to fish, and play. Probably one of the biggest tings for the boys was having their cousins and friends their age around for a couple weeks, they could explore the pools, the fishing holes, surf and just be kids growing up on a beach. It was nice to see as this is the beach I grew up on with my brother and sister, and lots of friends from around the coast, on a beautiful beach with the tall trees coming to beach side, the white sand of a small beach 100 m wide but our own beach, everyone who comes onto it has a location and we know. 

Sean has pent every day doing a couple of hours surfing he now stands up on a board 6 foot I bough t him, he has come a long way from Mexico last year. Yesterday we went up to a beach north of us to explore, and found lots of kangaroos just roaming, Sean spent a lot of time just (see photos), we then went surfing reminding me of the evenings I surfed as we came down the coast last year.

But life here is still cruising in many ways we in Batemans Bay south of Sydney by 300 nM we are exploring the local area and settling in, buying a car for our land cruise up the coast over the next couple of weeks.

The boat is in good shape and gets picked up this week, we are still determining where it comes in, but not really worried as we can deal the likely choices we will be travelling and moving for the next 2 to 3 months. We have had out the cruising guides and maps, called the bays spoken to other sailors looking at the weather and getting know it, gathering the best weather sites, all a familiar exercise just on the otherside of the world. As I look at the ports I am starting to drill in on them from Google Earth and see them Tracy is looking at schools and kids activities, as our plan is to work our way up the coast by land seeing the ports by land and investigating just in case we want to move from our plan of going to Yamba. The trip up the coast is about 1000 km, from where we are to Yamba, we friends on the way, and I will drop into Sydney for meetings, but we are in no rush so will not pushing the trip.

I hope to get back to regularly updating the blog as we explore this coast. When the boat lands we will meet it, get it through customs and have some things done on it, and have it cleaned, before we start sailing it to Yamba again with no real rush.

I have been back at work full time for just over a month, I have spent 3 of those weeks in the USA, and next week I will visit Melbourne and the teams down there. But I am enjoying it, I have adjusted my daily routine to be a productive one starting work at 4 to 5 am in the morning usually with calls to USA until 10 am, I then deal with local calls, and allocate lunch with the family, and then 3-4 hours in the afternoon is focused time on a task at hand, which I enjoy as I get productive and deliver items (unlike the time in the office where I had interruptions), I have allocated the second half of the afternoon to surfing with Sean so we go to beach for 2 to 3 hours until dinner, when I work after dinner and do calls to India and Europe. This allows me to me productive and with the family, and have real time to get actions done, while fitting into my lifestyle, I do not need to be fixed I have spent a lot of time making sure we can be mobile, which has increased my efficiency. So I feel like I have really started to achieve one of my goals that of combining my cruising life with that normal life so the kids can have some base, yet not loose a lot of advantages of last year.

Stay tuned as we go north