Firefly is currently moored at the Bay of Islands Marina
in Opua and her crew have flown home for a brief spell in ‘Blighty’.
Several jobs including the servicing of the sails, replacing the water maker
membranes and testing the alternators are underway in Opua and in the UK Paul
and Susie are stocking up with the few things that can’t be bought in NZ and
at the same time as catching up with family and friends.
The short term plan is that we are leaving New Zealand at the beginning of May and will be
bound for Tonga,
sailing with the Island Cruising Association on the first 2 legs of their
Pacific Circuit Rally. Heading north east it is about 750 miles to Minerva Reef
where we will stop, anchor and rest before sailing the remaining 300 miles onto
the Haapai Group of Tonga.
After a week or so re acquainting ourselves with the tropics we will move onto
the Vavau Group of Tonga that we have visited previously, in June last year.
From Vavau we sail directly to the Lau Group of Fiji and a special customs and immigration check
in will be arranged for the ICA
fleet. It’s really beneficial to be able to check into this eastern group
of islands as they are very remote, untouched and apparently extremely
beautiful. Being east of Fiji
they are a considerable distance back upwind from the official port of entry
into Fiji
at Savusavu, so the special check in is very worthwhile to save a potentially
difficult trip into the wind. When we reach the west of Fiji at the
beginning of July we are looking forward to joining the World ARC 15/16, the rally
that we originally joined for our circumnavigation.
With this, the next edition of the World Cruising Club rally
we will go onto Vanuatu,
sadly featuring in the international news very recently following a direct hit
by Cyclone Pam. We spent a month in Vanuatu last year and having spent
time in the very traditional villages our thoughts are often with the friendly people
who live there as its clear that the damage the cyclone has inflicted has been
immense. Firefly will carry as much food and other supplies as possible that we
will take to the southern outer islands in order to help them.
Mackay will be the port of entry into Australia and will be our next stop after an
1100 mile passage from Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu. From there we head north
to cruise in the Whitsunday Islands for 2 weeks and then sail north, inside the Great
Barrier Reef to the NE tip of Australia
where we will stop at Thursday Island at the
entrance to the Torres Straight. A passage of 800 miles to the west follows and
takes us onto our next stop at Darwin
where we will arrive late August. There we have arranged to drop off the World
ARC rally again and will do so at the point the fleet leaves Darwin on September 1st 2015.
Firefly will actually head west with the fleet but will
check into Kupang about half way to Lombok,
their destination. We are joining the Sail2Indonesia Rally, also organised by
the ICA, part way through and with them are
going to head up through Indonesia
for about 10 weeks. We will be stopping at many places including Komodo, famous
for its dragons and Kalimantan for its Orang-utans.
Leaving that rally mid November we will then spend time in Singapore before sailing to Malaysia and Thailand via the Malacca Straight.
Christmas 2015 is scheduled to be spent back in the UK and following
some extended cruising around Thailand we are then planning to leave the boat ‘laid
up’ in May 2016 to spend a summer at home. After a good spell as a ‘land
lubber’ we should be very keen to get back on the boat and undertake some
of the longest passages of the whole circumnavigation. From September 2016 we will
be going from SE Asia via South Africa
and Brazil back to the Caribbean. As we prefer doing the longer distances with
the support of the World Cruising, our plan will be to join the World ARC
(edition 16/17) rally again in Cocos Keeling, an Australian Island well off to the
north west and the best departure point across the Indian Ocean for Mauritius. From
Mauritius and Reunion, the
rally sails to South Africa
and reaches Cape Town
for Christmas and New Year. Leaving early January, it then goes onto Brazil, having called into St Helana, coinciding
with the street carnivals in Recife in February and
then arrives back in the Caribbean, finishing in St Lucia in April 2017. If we achieve
this plan it will have taken 3 years and 3 months to get from St Lucia to St Lucia –
2 years more than the original!
Paul and Susie