We have intrepid cruiser friends who dutifully blog every day. They are inspiring (in many ways) but if I tried to do that not only would I get behinder and behinder every day, I fear I would bore the pants off everyone. That being said, I am flattered that many of you keep asking when the next blog post is coming so I am determined to try to be better about doing it.

In the last post we discovered we had made it past the half-way point in our slow journey about the world. That got me thinking about how many miles and countries and islands we've actually logged, questions we're often asked and never can answer (like a few nights ago in an impromptu interview with a local radio station). So before I make good on my promise to get caught up with past events, here's a short end-of-year retrospective on the voyage so far.


An impressionist's rendering of our route so far


Since leaving South River on the Chesapeake Bay on October 10, 1999, Asylum and crew have logged 32,991 nautical miles. That's 37,940 highway miles.

By rights, after nearly 33 thousand miles we should be well past the halfway point. In fact, if all those miles were wrapped around the fattest part of the globe like a big red belt there'd still be plenty of belt left over to tuck into a second loop. But our bow hasn't always been pointed west around. We've also spent a fair amount of time northing and southing and backing and forthing as well.

The country count we've sailed to so far is 39. Sometimes it's a bit gray as to whether a new port is new "country"--like Puerto Rico or American Samoa--but I figured if it has its own courtesy flag or we had to clear in/out of Immigration and Customs it was. If we also count the countries we've left the boat behind to visit, what we call "land travel," it goes up to 47 plus Antarctica.


Someday when we "dress ship" these will be the first 39 well-worn courtesy flags to fly:

Bahamas
Dominican Republic
Puerto Rico
U.S. Virgin Islands
British Virgin Islands
St. Martin/Maarten
St. Barthelemy


St Bart's harbor

Antigua
Guadaloupe
Dominica
Martinique
St. Lucia
St. Vincent & the Grenadines
Grenada
Trinidad and Tobago


A Tropic Bird over Tobago's rugged coast

Venezuela
Bonaire
Curacao
Aruba
Haiti
Caymen Islands
Cuba
Colombia
Panama


Transiting the Panama Canal with nephew TJ on bow duty with me

Ecuador
French Polynesia
Cook Islands
American Samoa
Tonga
New Zealand
Fiji
Vanuatu


Jim is always a bit like the Pied Piper with village kids

Solomon Islands
Papua New Guinea
Palau
Philippines


A close encounter with a rare thresher shark at Malapascua Island

Brunei
Singapore
Malaysia


It doesn't get much better than this


It's been a great ride so far!

As for actual islands visited, we never kept careful count but our best-guess tally comes to about 125. One of them, Borneo, is the 3rd largest island in the world; many of the rest you could leap in a single bound.




After How long did it take you to get here? and How many countries have you sailed to? the other questions we get all the time are:

What's your favorite place?
This one's almost impossible to answer because they're all so different. For sure Vanuatu and the San Blas in Panama have been highlights for experiencing traditional cultures and village life. But there was our amazing lovely time in the village in the Solomons...
For city life, Cartagena and Kuching both get enthusiastic nods. Of course Auckland was great, too...
See what I mean?

What about pirates?
We've had two unpleasant run-ins with thieves who boarded the boat. Were they pirates? Not according to Webster, who says that pirates do their dirty work "on the high seas." We were anchored close to shore both times. Ours were just land-based opportunists who happened to have access to a boat. The real "high seas" piracy threat comes down the road a ways and is causing all kinds of routing consternation for everyone who wants to get from here to Europe or North America. But that's a topic for another time.

What about bad weather?
We do our best to avoid it! "Waiting for weather" is one thing we do well. That being said, sometimes you get it wrong (or the forecasters do) and some passages have been less pleasant that others. We've had our share of wet, lumpy, rolly, bruising, maddeningly tedious rides, but nothing really dangerous. Asylum is a tough, patient and forgiving old girl who looks after us well when we find ourselves out there when all 3 of us wish we weren't.


A squall at the equator. At least the orchid seems happy in this weather.


Fortunately, there are more glorious days at sea:


Had you told us when we left the Chesapeake 15 years ago that we'd still be out here now, barely halfway around, I would have guffawed. But here we are, not quite ready to swallow the anchor and with many miles to go before we close the loop. If we make it that far...

At this point, we're not sure what our next course will be. What we do know, though, is how phenomenally fortunate we are to have been able to live the cruising life, slowly driving our house this far around the world, in and out of remote, exotic, jaw-droppingly beautiful places, meeting and being befriended by warm, gracious, curious, interesting, helpful, generous people everywhere. Still so many tales to tell.

Which brings me back to where I started: I resolve to be a better blogger.

And now, having managed to noodle over this into the end of December, we add Happy Holidays and Merry New Year to everyone!