SV Panta Rhei Retirement Trip

We have moved Panta Rhei to Newcastle, which is a town about 30 miles south of where we were in Port Stevens. It is a beautiful "coal" town. Ships are lined up for miles outside the harbor waiting to load coal (mostly for China). When we arrived, they were having a power boat race in the harbor and the race course included some pretty rough water at the harbor entrance. One of the boats flipped over! These boats weren't your garden variety fishing boats with big motors. They were full on thousands of horsepower ocean type racers. Think "loud with rooster tails". We waited about 30 minutes and then entered the harbor while a fleet of boats worked at uprighting the sinking race boat and towing it somewhere. As I passed by I thought, "That is salt water, so much for the engine and wiring in that boat."

Our goal here is to figure out when to leave for New Caledonia and to get checked out by Customs so that we can leave Australia. It's a thousand mile voyage across a dangerous ocean (Tasman Sea), but hopefully a little less dangerous with a good weather forecast.

We hope to be able to post position and welfare reports to the blog during the passage. I've recruited Barbara Cole to help with this. We are doing it through the iridium satellite link so the automated assistance available through winlink.org isn't available. I've asked Barbara to include photographs from our stay in Australia (especially at Port Stevens but also just general interest) that might add to the interest of the blog.

The photo with Barbara and Jim Cole was taken at The Anchorage Marina in Port Stephens right before we sailed to Newcastle.