Back in San Francisco

Well, we are back in the San Francisco bay area and getting somewhat settled. We have a short-term furnished apartment rented in San Francisco, a hybrid rental car, and we are on the hunt for gainful employment.

The apartment is just south of Market near South Beach and on the 23rd floor of the new residential tower. The view is spectacular, and the building amenities are very nice. The apartment includes a very nice private gym with a lap pool. It’s nice to have this a 30 second elevator-ride away–no excuses not to go work out.

We’ve got our our home office(s) set-up now, including high-speed Internet via a cable modem! Sweet… We feel “connected” again.

Both Robin and I are pursuing our short-list of companies in the hope we’ll find some interesting, fun, and challenging work sometime in the next month or so. We have some excellent leads, but have no idea how things will evolve.

Once we land these great jobs, we’ll get a better idea of where we might want to live long term. Wherever we end up, our objective is minimum commute time (by car). A stress-free train ride or quick bicycle ride is just fine.

When we’re not working on our job search, we’re catching up with friends, reconnecting with work colleagues, learning some new technology stuff, and researching the cool companies we might want to work for.

We’re also spending a little cash to help stimulate the economy. We needed a few items to get established again. You know, clothes, shoes, a Bose 3-2-1 home theater system. The new iPhones are just too cool. We also needed a stock-up on some new movies and music. The iTunes Store folks must love me.

There are also some great restaurants nearby to sample, and we always keep an eye out for fun stuff to do in and around the City. I could get used to this city-living. Life is good…

NOTE: For friends that usually keep up with (or contact) us via Sail Whisper or our blogs, please come join us on Facebook!

Full Circle

On March 27, 2002, Robin and Duncan sailed Whisper sailed under the Golden Gate bridge heading out on the adventure of a lifetime.  Just over a week ago, we arrived back in San Francisco – via plane.  The trip to Australia took us close to seven years.  The return from Australia only took 13 hours.

Over the past seven years, Whisper carried us to places many people can only dream of visiting.    Not only has Whisper been a mode of transport, she has been our home for close to eight years.

With a desire to return to work/land for the next several years, we chose to sell our home and return to life on terra firma.   Whisper now has new owners from Melbourne, Australia.    Yikes, it all happened so quickly.

We are excited to begin this new chapter in our adventure.    So here we land having come full circle back to San Francisco.

Whisper is sold!

Well, to our surprise, Whisper did sell in Australia — to a nice couple from Melbourne. The deal happened rather quickly and the closing was perfectly timed for our return to the States.

Whisper will go out cruising with her new owners in the next few years. I hope they have fun in the islands — she was a very comfortable home and excellent passage-making yacht.

As far as our return to the USA goes, we will spend almost a week in Sydney visiting friends, then fly back to San Francisco on 17 January 2009.

We look forward to our re-starting our work and social lives [somewhere] as land-lubbers.

Update from Brisbane, Australia

Well, we finally made it to Brisbane and we are now settling Whisper into her slip in the Scarborough marina. She will stay here until she sells, or until we move her on to wherever we live next. With the world economy slowing and the AU$ exchange rate slipping against our US$ price, there is a good chance we will end up keeping Whisper as a very nice daysailer!

We picked up our rental car today and did some re-provisioning to carry us through the holidays, but tomorrow we start scheduling some of the work we need to do on the boat. This week we’ll focus on preparing the boat for sale and next week we’ll start our job search.

We have an American friend visiting us in Brisbane over the Thanksgiving holiday and will look forward to visiting some friends in Sydney over the Christmas holidays. We hope to get back to work first thing in the new year — somewhere in the world!

Right now, we are looking at possible opportunities in the San Francisco Bay area, Sydney Australia, and Auckland New Zealand. Until we get a better sense of our work prospects, we’re not quite sure where we will end up living. The good news is that our skills seem to be in demand down-under, so if the economy is struggling back home in the USA, we can still live somewhere fun and find some interesting work.

That’s about all for now. After it sinks in that two days ago might have been the last time we’ll ever sail on Whisper!

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Milestones

What is the origin of the word milestone? Perhaps there were stones marking each mile on a path to somewhere. Arriving in Australia is a significant milestone for us. If our guess at the origin of the word is correct, we have over 15,000 ocean milestones behind us.

We left New Caledonia on Sunday, October 19th, feeling a little anxious about our last ocean passage for a while. Six days later, we arrived safely in Bundaberg, Australia. Landfall in any new country after a passage is some combination of excitement, relief and curiosity.

Within minutes of tying up to the Quarantine dock, Customs, Quarantine and Immigration hopped on board for the entry formalities. An hour later, we moved Whisper to a marina slip and sighed in relief. We were officially in Australia.

Though exhausted, we went up to explore the marina complex. Wow. A restaurant, chandlery, store, ATM and boatyard all right here at the marina. We ran into friends and enjoyed a quick drink at the bar before heading back to Whisper for our traditional post-passage champagne.

We awoke the next morning not certain where we were. A bit of coffee helped us remember. Our neighbor started chatting with us. Before we knew what happened, we boarded his 65 foot motor launch and headed down the channel with a group of Australians embarking on a day of whale watching in Hervey Bay. Unbelievable. Wait a sec – what about the laundry and washing Whisper? Tomorrow.

In less than 24 hours in Australia, we have 15 new friends and several hundred pictures of whales. We are already in love with this place.

Do you think they put different size stones at miles that are more significant than others? For us, there would be a big stone marking Bundaberg. We sailed across the Pacific Ocean, the South Pacific Ocean and the Coral Sea to get to Australia. Yet, there is so much more to this journey than the miles we’ve covered or the oceans we’ve crossed. It is all about the experiences and people you meet along the way. If our first 24 hours in Australia are any indication of what is to come, we are really going to enjoy this milestone.

The Waiting Game

Here we sit waiting for the weather to make up its mind. What looked like a good window for making the passage to Australia deteriorated. The upcoming days looked good for a moment and now a potential tropical low appears on the weather charts. The path of the low is unclear and changes with every forecast. When the forecasts for the same period change frequently, it means the weather is unpredictable. One guy tried to leave on Sunday and turned around. So, we wait.

Without internet access, I am going through election & economic news withdrawals. Like reducing alcohol intake, this is probably a good thing. To supplant the overindulgence brought on by internet access, we are reading, reviewing weather forecasts, playing Scrabble, reviewing weather forecasts, watching movies and reviewing weather forecasts. Much healthier. By the time we get to Australia, I will need a detox from reviewing weather forecasts.

Oz Passage Preparation

Well, it’s passage time again. We’ll leave New Caledonia in the next week or so and move on to Australia. We could easily have spent a few months here on Whisper, but since we are selling the boat and wrapping up our cruising anyway, we are anxious to move on to Bundaberg, Australia and start the next phase.

We decided to focus our exploration here on the capital city of Noumea while getting Whisper listed and ready for sale. After a few days of washing, polishing, and waxing, Whisper is looking new again. Whisper is listed with our broker and now on several websites. We’ve had a couple inquiries here in New Caledonia, but so far, nothing so serious that we would leave the boat here for a local buyer.

Noumea has been fun; with great walking, shopping, restaurants, cafes, a movie theater, a movie festival, and a music festival. In addition, we went to three museums, the nice new aquarium, the architecturally stunning cultural center, and explored most of the city on foot or by taxi/bus. There are a few excellent beaches with great areas to windsurf/kitesurf. Duncan got a few decent photos some expert wind-sport enthusiasts that we’ll soon share in a new log.

For now, we are focused on getting ready for the passage. We received our new Volvo muffler from Hallberg-Rassy and I installed it last week (the old one had a few spots of pinhole corrosion through the stainless end caps). We are still waiting for our forwarded mail and a couple of new shower pumps to arrive this week. Today, I’ll change the oil and fuel filters on the engine and genset. Robin has already started looking at weather. The next few days will be spent getting the boat (and us) ready for the passage. Then it’s on to OZ.

It should be about a 6-day, 5-night passage to Bundaberg. We are signed up for the Port-2-Port Rally to Bundaberg, but may arrive in Bundaberg a bit before everyone else. We will hang around Bundaberg for the rally festivities, then move on down the coast toward Brisbane. When we arrive in Scarborough Marina near Brisbane, Whisper will get another spa treatment to keep her looking great prior to the sale. If all goes according to plan, we will be in Scarborough Marina around mid-November. Well, that’s enough for today; I’m off to get my hands dirty.

New Log: Diving the Mamanucas

Finally, the last log from Fiji is published.  Duncan took a ga-zillion great underwater photos making it difficult to choose the photos for this log.  We hope you enjoy:

• Diving the Mamanucas

I Love The French!

Contrary to most folks we meet while traveling or cruising, I love the French.  They get so many things right.  Cheese.  Wine.  Music.  Fashion.  Beautiful language.  Sauces.  Cafes.  Vegetables. Bicycling. Topless Beaches (Duncan made me put this one in).

Now I know there are things to put in the negative column.  Lack of cleaning up dog droppings.  Smoking in restaurants.  Aloofness.  I can forgive all of these because they do the positive list so well.

Being in New Caledonia is the best of France combined with a tropical setting.  In many ways, it feels much more French than French Polynesia felt.  This is probably due to the proximity to Australia.  Australia?  Shipping French things – people, food, wine – to New Caledonia is much easier than getting things to French Polynesia.  And, there is more money in New Caledonia, so the demand for French things is higher.

So, to those folks who hate the French, I have one word for you.  Pfft.

BIG NEWS!

Although many of our friends and family are aware of our decision to wrap-up the cruising life and return to our careers, it’s official, Whisper is FOR SALE!

Read all about Whisper, a 2000 Hallberg Rassy 42,  under the For Sale menu item on sailwhisper.com.