The Hynes Honeymoon!

Author: Seth
Picture: New anchorage drinks aboard Honeymoon (just before the 180 degree wind shift that turned this peaceful anchorage into a lee shore).

Although Brisbane may be looked down upon by Sydney-ites, Elizabeth and I certainly warmed to the place. It's filled with parks and public use spaces (including climbing walls, public pools, beaches and gardens with electric BBQs everywhere - how Australian!). But it was also great to meet up with old friends that now call this wonderful city home. We had an excellent sushi dinner with Suzzie, a good friend I met years ago while backpacking in Peru. Then Richard and Laura, friends from Grad School, invited us to their home for a traditional porch side BBQ out in the suburbs. And finally, Tom and Emma, two more friends from England, invited us to their beach side home in Currumbin, a surfing destination on the Gold Coast. And as you can imagine, they didn't have to twist our arms to make us join them.

But then it was time to pay them back for their hospitality and Tom and Emma joined us for a two day journey down the coast to Surfer's Paradise (a seaside town that could be compared to Daytona Beach, but with more skyscrapers). We promised them a joyous cruise, filled with peaceful anchorages, but Peel Island had something else in mind for us. Just as we were going to sleep the wind shifted 180 degrees and put us on a lee shore and with growing seas. We made a run for more protected waters in the dark and were thankful when we finally picked up a mooring ball a good three hours later. Exhausted, we went to bed and all slept like rocks.

Our second day was also eventful, with shallow anchorages everywhere and the near threat of spending the night aground in the mud with an ebbing tide (like our friends on Nemesis almost did) we eventually made it to safety in a beautiful marina just north of Surfer's Paradise. Surely Tom and Emma thought we were mad for taking all these risks, but we tried to reassure them that it was not always this way.

From Surfers we began our final off-shore push. Although still a good 400 miles away, our destination now was Sydney with a few stops in between. Much like the US, it's easy to forget just how big this continent really is and we pushed ourselves to keep going overnight in order to put more of the final leg behind us.

We stopped after 32 hours in Port Macquire, a small seaside town located south of Byron Bay. With the wind still out of the northeast we departed early the next day for Forster, where we tied up to a riverside dock next to all the local fishing boats. Honeymoon was certainly out of her element, so we pushed on again the very next day and have finally arrived in Port Stephans, a bay even larger than Sydney's and just 80 miles to the north. With any luck, we'll be in Broken Bay by the end of the day tomorrow and in Sydney in a week...

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Vessel Name:	Honeymoon
Vessel Make/Model:	2004 Lagoon 380, Hull 279, Owner's Version
Hailing Port:	San Francisco, CA
Crew:	Seth & Elizabeth Hynes
About:	Seth & Elizabeth met in 2004 and have long since agreed that they did not want to live "the typical life. [...] More
Extra:	OUR EXPERIENCE: Seth is a lifelong sailor with over 25 years of boating experience. His family taught him to sail via ASA instruction and through many weekend trips on their family boat, a Benateau 35, sailed on Lake St. Clair, Michigan. He then moved to San Francisco where he raced with two [...] one-design sailing teams before joining his families racing boat "Shadowfax," a classic Wianno Senior design based in Osterville, Mass. Elizabeth is an adventurer by spirit and has traveled all around the world for both pleasure and work. While living in England she sailed in Croatia on the Med and also with the Hynes family in the Grenadines. Elizabeth is also part of the "Shadowfax" racing team and she looks forward to becoming a more confident Captain over the course of the next year. THE BOAT: Having never sailed a catamaran before in our lives, choosing to purchase one was very difficult. However, the more we researched the boats the more we liked them. Catamarans are great for cruising with their shallow draft and large living accommodations. They also feature inherent back-ups which improve safety; like two hulls, two rudders, two engines and props. Once we learned that Cats crossed the oceans regularly, we took a solid look at the options out there, of which there were plenty. In the end, the Lagoon 380 stood out from the rest of the fleet for its dependability, successful production history and interior comforts. Our boat is a three berth "Owner's Version" that has never been chartered and has a larger head with a standing shower. When this was discovered, the search was over. After all, if Elizabeth is happy, Seth will be happy! THE ITINERARY: From the beginning it was always our plan to sail from the East Coast of the US to Australia, stopping along the way in the Caribbean and Central America. However, being new to the cruising life, we didn't want to force ourselves to do anything we didn't want, so the itinerary was left open. Not surprisingly, we loved our time cruising in the Caribbean but yearned for more of an adventure and opted to cross the Pacific Ocean in search of islands less visited. What we found was exactly what we were looking for. And in the end, Australia was a perfect boat market for a Catamaran and an end to an incredible 18 months of sailing. Below was our itinerary: SEPTEMBER, 2008: Refit boat in Norfolk, Virginia USA OCTOBER, 2008: Refit and sail Chesapeake to Annapolis, MD NOVEMBER, 2008: Caribbean 1500 rally to BVIs British Virgin Islands, Caribbean DECEMBER, 2008: St. Martin, St. Barts, Ile Fourche, Statia, St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat JANUARY, 2009: Dominica, Antigua, Barbuda, The Saints, Guadeloupe FEBRUARY: Guadeloupe, Bonaire, Curacao, San Blas Islands, Panama MARCH: Cross through the Panama canal, Galapagos APRIL: Pacific Ocean Crossing, Marquesas French Polynesia MAY: Marquesas, Tuamotus, Tahiti JUNE: Moorea, Huahine, Ta'haa, Bora Bora JULY: Bora Bora to Suwarrow, Cook Islands AUGUST: Niue and Vava'u Tonga SEPTEMBER: Tonga and Fiji OCTOBER: Fiji and Vanuatu NOVEMBER & DECEMBER: Eastern Australia, Bundaburg to Sydney JANUARY: Fly home from Sydney to San Francisco. Quickly get jobs during a recession. Start a family. Buy a house. Start fanatically reading other sailor's blogs. More
Home Page:	http://www.sailblogs.com/member/honeymoon/