Cargos, tankers, fishing boats, busy seas, drizzle, cool weather…..and then Falmouth. That first day a big surprise awaited us when the first owners of Moondance, Sally and Chris Longstaff arrived from Plymouth bearing a bottle of champagne to celebrate our arrival in the UK! So kind! They had been following us on our website. It…
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During our sail from Martinique to the Azores André fished but then had to stop because of all the Sargassum seaweed. We saw dolphins, André brushed up his Portuguese and Fione carried on learning. After 26 days sailing we arrived in Horta, the capital of Faial Island, anchoring at 1.20 am with the help of…
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The 18 day sail from Recife to Port Louis in Grenada was uneventful. There was sargassum seaweed which meant we could not fish and when nearing Trinidad we cut all transmissions to avoid attracting the attention of pirates. Over the next few days we stocked up on food and did repairs including on the lifting…
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. We decided to cross directly from Cape Town to San Salvador in Brazil, 3780 nm which took us 33 days. The time flew past with diy, cleaning, fishing, reading and intensive Brazilian learning. André who had worked in Portugal needed to brush up and to learn Brazilian which is different especially the accent. Fione…
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We had long wished to visit Namibia, with its vast deserts, the highest sand dunes in the world, canyons, the skeleton coast, prehistoric sites, rock engravings and game reserves. Namibia, at the time called South West Africa, became a German colony in 1884 which was deposed by SA troops during WWI. It became Namibia in…
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Crossing the Indian Ocean is a challenge due to the rapidly changing weather conditions. We enlisted the help of Des, a router in SA who helps boats free of charge. His daily advice was invaluable during our 14 day crossing and afterwards each time we left a port to sail to another. We arrived in…
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Arriving in Darse Titan in La Réunion staff from the marina office were awaiting us on our berth and gave us all the necessary papers and called customs to come to do immigration. It couldn’t have been easier! Le Port marina is conveniently situated only a couple of minutes walk from the town and public…
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Rodrigues Maurice Our 15 day crossing from Cocos Keeling to Port Mathurin in Rodrigues was far from plain sailing. We often had a lot of swell and huge waves crashing over the boat causing a window to leak and a big rip in the cover of the windvane used for self steering. We therefore used…
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André’s cousin Brigitte and her husband Eric joined us in Bundaberg to sail up the coast to Townsville. As they own a yacht and sail, spending just over 2 weeks together was not problematic. We sailed north through the Great Barrier Reef anchoring at several islands, walking on white sandy beaches as on Haslewood Island…
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We visited both the South and North islands of New Zealand. Staying with people gave us an insight to life, for example whilst watching the evening news on TV (there are only 2 channels which do not broadcast at weekends) and discussing with them. News and weather presenters start by welcoming in Maori. New Zealanders…
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