Blogging Off!

Serendipity
David Caukill
Mon 30 Jul 2012 14:02

Monday  30th  July:  Hawkley, Hants.   

Today’s Blog by David

 

Serendipity is now put to bed, resting in Noumea, New Caledonia.   I have found someone to keep an eye on her while we are away and have brought a few bits home for repair. We arrived back in the United Kingdom to be greeted by unusually hot (sic) weather together with the wall-to-wall brouhaha of the Olympics which opened on Friday.  

 

Our return marks the end of an Odyssey – one marked by new challenges and new friends - as we covered nearly 17,000 miles in the space of one year. The boat has performed well and we made the journey with little damage to anyone or anything (save, perhaps, that hapless whale shark!)  

 

The next two months will be Blog Free.  Once the paperwork mountain has been scaled (tax returns etc.), there is the jungle in our garden to seek to cultivate again plus spending time with family and friends.   

 

We return to the yacht in mid-October, when we hope to cruise around New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands while waiting for a ‘weather window’ to make the passage to New Zealand. Thereafter, we will do some cruising in New Zealand (and also spend more time in Hawkley!) before heading back North late next April to Fiji, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands (and perhaps Tonga if the wind allows).

 

By the time we then set off back into the Pacific,  the WorldARC will be finished, the remaining fleet will have sailed the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans – i.e.  the rest of the way round the world – and will already be dispersing to the four winds.  (They are already in the Whitsunday Islands - inside the Great Barrier Reef off North East Australia).  And that, in a nutshell, is why we always planned to leave – theirs is a relentless race through the paradise of the oceans of the world – we wanted some time to ourselves and on our own schedule.

 

Our best wishes are with them all.  We enjoyed their camaraderie and their company;  we wish them all fair winds and flat seas in the future!  I am sure our path will one day cross some of theirs again.  A bientot!

 

 

xxxxxxxxxxxx000000000000xxxxxxxxxxxx

Footnote

 

This is the last of our Blogs that will be available on the World Cruising  site.  If  you want to continue to follow our progress (even if it is in the hope that we one day will be ship wrecked!) you will need to go to:

www.blog.mailasail.com/serendipity

 

And to find out where we are right now:

 

http://live.adventuretracking.com/serendipity