Dee and I have been in Mooloolaba for nearly two weeks, enjoying our time in this small, seaside city. It is a wonderful place with friendly people, great seaside promenades, and more coffee shops than even in Victoria. We would live here in a minute!

But, we are not moving to Australia. Our main purpose here is to prep Speakeasy for sale.

Yes, this is the end of this adventure for us. We are currently going through the expensive process of importing Speakeasy to Australia and then we will be listing her with Multihull Solutions. Some lucky buyer is going to have one heck of an awesome boat. We looked into shipping her back to Canada, but it made more financial sense to sell the boat here. Cats are hot properties in this part of Australia due to the great, and shallow, cruising grounds close by.

For us, this is a chapter of our lives that is closing pretty quickly. We are saying good-bye to lots of good cruising friends as we prepare to leave Australia this weekend. After a visit to New Zealand, we'll be back in Victoria by Christmas and look forward to seeing all of our BC friends again.

In the new year Mark will be rejoining his team at RE/MAX Camosun and Dee is contemplating stepping back into a career again as well.

Thanks to everyone who read and commented on our blog these last several years. We enjoyed having you all along for the ride, and what a great ride it was!

Picture: Speakeasy all spic & span with her new sailcovers in Mooloolaba Marina. This will be her home until she is sold.

Tonight, we are anchored deep in Tin Can Bay. It was another very hot day, and that means more thunderstorms tonight. It looks like it will be another doozy!

Tomorrow morning, at 4am, we will start our final leg to Mooloolaba. The only slightly stressful part is the bar crossing heading out of Wide Bay. But, the forecast is good and we will be going out at the top of the incoming tide - the recommendation for this bar.

As the sun came up this morning at around 5am we left the Port Bundaberg Marina and headed south towards Mooloolaba.

We had a great time in Bundaberg and can't say enough good things about the marina staff, the boatyard staff, and the businesses in the area. Everyone was definitely "open for business" and did a great job to meet our needs. We've got new bottom paint, new sail covers on the way, and a few other little issues corrected. Our wallet is a lot lighter! Darn, these first-world prices!

The town of Bundaberg was great and we did our best to fit in some sightseeing between the boat jobs. Besides visiting the koala's and kangaroo's at a nearby zoo, one of the best tours was to the Bundaberg rum distillery. We drank a lot of rum there, and of course, forgot to take any photos! But, the rum was excellent, even if most of the bottles were well out of my price range.

Today, after leaving Bundy, we had a great 60 mile sail south across Hervey Bay and into the Great Sandy Strait. This strait is exactly as it sounds. Lots of winding channels, lots of sandbars, and not much deep water anywhere. It was a very nice sail with 15-18 knots of wind from behind for most of the day. Of course, just as we came to our anchorage a thunderstorm and squall moved in with nearly 30 knots of wind! It was a bit of a fire drill rounding up and getting the sails down in the narrow channel, but all is now good and we are comfortably anchored. We can't get out of the wind here, but the water is pretty flat at least.

There are a few thunderstorms about, and more forecast for tomorrow, so we may stay here, or move another 30 miles south, depending on the weather. We have a bar crossing coming up the day after that which we will need good weather for!