In Sydney during a one day stop-over on the way to Indonesia... Nicky had fun with this street artist making giant soap bubbles in Hyde Park. It will probably be our last visit to Sydney for quite a while. We tremendously enjoyed our time here, especially when we were here on Namani over Christmas and New Year. Glad we got to see Tab, Jez and their kids again this time. Until we meet again in Germany ;-)

...are small when compared to life on land. In four years and close to 30,000nm of cruising in some remote places aboard Namani, sunburn has probably been our biggest health hazard. Give us a day ashore on a playground in civilized Cairns, and Markus manages to fall off one of the contraptions and manages to break his collar bone... Luckily it's the left hand side and not too painful so it'll hopefully be just an inconvenience for a few weeks.

It's a good lesson learned though: While sailing you regularly make very conscious risk assessments and decisions based on them: Weather for an off-shore passage, anchoring in unfamiliar places, commercial shipping crossing your path at night, and many more. In contrast, back in our shore based life, we have the illusion of safety and regularly take significant risks - like getting in a car - without even noticing. Of course accidents and illness also do happen on the water. But on average, we're convinced that we lived a safer life on Namani than we did (and will again) in our so called regular life ashore.

The picture on the left was taken by Cath Byrne when we made landfall in the Aeolian Islands as our first stop after leaving our home port on Sardinia in 2007. On the right you see us almost seven years later, off Fitzroy Island, near Cairns on the Australian East Coast, while doing some hand-over sailing last weekend with Janet, Namani's new owner. Nicky's feet do touch the deck on the right hand side picture....

Since we bought her in January 2006, we've had eight fantastic years with Namani, including four years of full-time cruising. Thank you Namani!

Now go and look after your new owner ;-)