The Great Aussie Road Trip

Riverfire then the roadtrip

   Okay—so as epic journeys go 2000 km (round trip) isn’t that epic. And we didn’t even get that far off the beaten path. Though when we told a few Aussies that we were headed toward the outback they seemed more than a little surprised. It seems most people go to the beach, or a city or the mountains for holidays. But Ev’s mum Gail was with us and she was keen for an adventure. So we set off with the goal of seeing (and doing) a bit of everything.

Not all 80-year-olds would have embraced the adventure (and discomfort) the way Ev's mum did)

Our first stop was the NSW surf town of Ballina (which turns out is pronounced Bal-lin-na not Bah-leen-ah, or even Bah-een-ah.) I guess the Spanish/French influence is a bit diminished here… Every time we do something new in Australia it seems like it comes with a whole new vocabulary. And as we passed turnoffs for towns like Mummelgum, Dingadee and Dirranbandi we decided on a new rule: if we couldn’t (sort of) pronounce a name without assistance, we weren’t going there.

Giraween

After a dip in the ocean we continued on, mispronouncing our way across the Great Dividing Range to Girraween National Park. Happily Girraween is easy to say because the huge granite outcroppings and lovely wineries would have been unfortunate to miss! Then it was on to Moree (go ahead, give it a go) where we soaked off the bumpy miles in the bore baths, aka hot springs.

a town along the way

I think we’ve mentioned that Australia is expensive and our disposable income is already spoken for. So our road trip wasn’t luxurious. In fact, I may have rented us the cheapest campervan in the country. And with a few hundred thousand kilometers on Big Red, a door that alternatively fell off or got stuck while open (or closed), and a sad lack of shock absorbers it was a pretty uncomfortable excuse for transportation.

But after the second long soak we crammed Gail and Maia into the way back and continued toward our goal: the opal mining town of Lighting Ridge. Honestly? I’m not sure why this was the goal. Maia wanted to go to Coober Pedy, Ev wanted to see the outback, Gail wanted to see a bit of the country and I like shiny things. So Lightning Ridge seemed the logical choice.

 

baby emus!

There are a lot of dead kangaroos between Brisbane and Lightning Ridge. Recently there was a local headline, “Kangaroo Kills Girl”. The tragic story went on to describe a kangaroo bounding across the road, through the front windscreen and then out the back window; as though it was intentional. The truth is the bitumen (fancy Aussie word for road) holds heat at night which attracts animals and if you drive at night: bamm! Big Red wasn’t insured to be on the road after dusk, and considering the slaughter (we went through sections where there were dead kangaroos, emus and foxes every few meters) this was a good thing.

Despite containing our driving to daylight hours, we eventually made it to the Ridge and secured a campsite at the Crocodile (that’s local speak). From there we headed out to explore. With thousands of miners each inhabiting 50 meter square plots, the Ridge looks a bit like a moonscape. The really fascinating bit is when you take a tour underground. We chose to visit the Walk-in Mine (there was a particularly touristy mine that had been turned into an art gallery—but it seemed a bit too weird for us…) Down in the mine the tunnel was larger than I expected, at least for an opal mine I was told was dug by hand and once entered through a drainage tube. When I brushed my fingers along the seam, where the chunky red rocks might hide gems, I joked about accidentally knocking free an opal and pocketing it. The comment brought a dirty look and a lecture from Maia, “That would make you a ratter.”  Ratter is the name of a person who steals from another miner.

After seeing the mine and learning how to identify opal we had a go at fossicking (see what I mean? It’s a whole new language…).  Noodling through the scrap heap  we kept an eye out for potch: a grey form of opal that indicates some of the colourful stuff might be near.

in the mine

fossicking for opals

Maia did a great job of searching and found a few pretty pieces and then she and Gail befriended an opal cutter who gave Maia a big bag of rough opal to polish up herself. It turns out my only opal skills occurred in the shops—where I discovered how to trade money for them.

Aussies camp differently than us. Our tent is on the right. We thought it was pretty big until we saw a proper family-sized tent. Gail slept in the van.

A miner's castle in the Ridge

After a couple of days broken up by cool interactions with locals and a wonderful night time soak in a bore bath (nothing like looking up at the stars from a hot spring while kangaroos nibble the grass around its edges) it was back into Big Red and back on the road for the return voyage.

Sydney Siding

Cartwheeling around the World

Sydney is roughly a 1000 km from Brisbane. I mention this because one of the questions we’re frequently asked is whether or not we’ve been there. Or to Melbourne (1700 km), Adelaide (2100 km), Perth (4500 km) or Alice Springs (2600 km). The expectation is maybe we took a weekend jaunt by boat when no one was paying attention (well maybe not to Alice Springs). But at our typical cruising speed (if we could cut a few capes and sail as the crow flies) it would take us three weeks of non-stop sailing (provided we don’t get hung up on a mountain range) to reach Perth—the same length of time it took us to sail across the Pacific to the Marquesas.

 

Bondi Beach

Strolling through the Botanical Garden

Australia is big. Which means we probably won’t be seeing much of it by boat…

 

But our hope, thanks to a crazy invention called an aeroplane, is we’ll still get see as much of the country as our budget will allow. Which is how we ended up in Sydney. Evan was there to check out Vivid for work. Maia and I were lucky to tag along.

The city was lit up with images and lights for Vivid

Arriving in the midst of a view that you’ve seen a million times is one of the things I love about travel. No matter how many times I’d seen it in postcards, movies or on TV climbing the Opera House steps and looking out at the Bridge was enough to take my breath away. Actually, it was enough to make me trip and slice open my toe. And after I sorted out that I hadn’t broken the camera while a kind local thrust Dora bandaids at me and whispered I was missing part of my toe and might need a doctor, I quickly got Maia to move in front of the bridge so I could get her picture. Just in case I had to spend the rest of our trip in the ER…

Happily I think I cut through my toe’s nerves—so once it was taped up I never really felt it and decided to skip stitches and save worrying about it for a more convenient time. We spent the next two days hobbling through the city—admiring the mix of old sandstone, modern glass, gorgeous green spaces and cool creatures.

 

Fun with cockatoos

 

Maia fell in love with the museums—or one museum in particular. We made two visits to the Powerhouse Museum, a museum which defies description and categorization but still managed to bring together the Wiggles and the International Space Station in a cohesive way.

Maia and Sirena fulfill a dream and drive the Big Red Car

The last two days of our visit were spent with our wonderful US/Mexico cruising friends from Orca in their home on a river that looked (and felt!) more like the Pacific North West than I could have imagined. Then it was back on a plane, back to Brizzie and back to dreaming about the ‘where next’ in our life.

Sailor’s Perspective

The first sight of land is my favourite: the way it rises from the ocean first as a mirage, then as something solid, exactly where the GPS said it would be, but different. It’s a mysterious thing—looking at shore, trying to sort out what you are seeing, as the ocean distorts the angles, and the land ahead looks flat and confusing when compared to a chart.

It’s not like flying into a place when you look down and can pick out the park at a bend in a river or the shape of a church on a hill. Making landfall is perplexing, it’s an unfolding story that only makes sense as you sail closer and the hills separate from plains, and the uncharted straight lines give way to the expected curves.

I thought of this as we flew into the Whitsundays. Out in the distance I saw the pearl-necklace shaped reef. Below me were velvet islands and shifting blue-shaded water dotted with stationary sailboats. From our boat I could never see this all at once. I would only learn the shape of shore as I earned it—by sailing around each point: turning a map into a landscape and then into a memory. But flying is like being given all your Christmas gifts at once, unwrapped.

Whitehaven Beach made for a peaceful anchorage on a stormy day

Once we landed we jumped on a high speed boat—and cruised through the islands seeing more in two days boat travel than we would see in a week of sailing. Maybe more—because we’re inclined to find a place we like and stay, savouring it.

There is something odd about travelling at this quick a pace. A sense of when you’ve seen a place—if only from a distance and at high speed—you’ve experienced it. You’ve done it. And how could it change?

Maia in her stinger suit--leaping into the ocean

But when you sail the landscape constantly remakes itself around you. One moment it is bright in the sun, or there is a bird singing in that tree, or a friend waving from that boat. And, even if you stayed forever, you know you could never fully know a place.

Cockatoo on Hamilton Island--ruffled by the breeze

I thought of this as we flew away from the reef and the islands: feeling ready to check the Whitsundays from my list as “done”.

Then I reconsidered when I imagined the view from the little stationary sailboats far below—the view without answers, the one steeped in mystery and questions.

Is Mexico Safe?

 It probably shouldn’t surprise me so much—but a lot of the comments I’ve gotten about our life in Mexico this past year have had nothing to do with the incredible wildlife, or beautiful landscape, or even learning Spanish— but instead with whether a latent death wish is a requirement for sailing south of the border. Typically the comments come from people who haven’t delved beyond the hype and hysteria of headlines and are as likely to spend a vacation in Iraq as in Mexico. But enough of them come from people who would probably really enjoy Mexico that I thought I would share what I’ve learned.

Putting the headlines in context:

Mexico is clearly facing security challenge as the government grapples with the drug cartels. But this is not a country in the throws of a nation-wide violent war. Mexico's murder rate has actually been falling. The National Public Security System reports that in 2008, the murder rate was 12 people per 100,000. But in 1997, that number was 17. And most of these murders are concentrated in Mexico’s most dangerous locations: Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, Monterrey and Cuernavaca. Murder rates among average citizens continue to fall.

And because I tend to like looking up stats I can also tell you that Mexico's congress pegged the national crime rate at 1,248 violent crimes per 100,000 in 2007. There is no arguing that this is high — the average U.S. rate was 467 per 100,000 that same year. But parts of the United States are just as violent or worse; Detroit, Michigan’s rate was 2,289 per 100,000, while the big city we used to live near, Baltimore, came in at 1,631.

Looking at a map:

Mexico is a huge country that covers 758,449 sq mi—making it about 1/5 the size of the US. So reports of drug-related violence in Ciudad Juarez don't mean you're at risk in Cancun or Cabo. In fact both Cancun and Cabo (along with pretty much every other area popular with tourists (except Acapulco) are among the safest places in Mexico—and statistics indicate they’re often safer than similarly sized US cities. To put this in context, does knowing that Memphis has one of the highest violent crime rates in the US keep people from visiting Yosemite, or even Graceland?

We’re not the targets:

We’ve all heard the stories about innocent bystanders being hurt. But considering the surge in crime has been fueled almost entirely by a turf war over the lucrative trade channels that funnel drugs from South America into the US (Mexico itself isn't a big producer), the targets are rival drug dealers, police, political figures, and wealthy businessmen and their families. Foreign victims are usually caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Out of the more than 1.2 million Canadian tourists who visited Mexico in 2007, the Canadian Consulate received 97 requests for assistance related to arrests, 22 requests related to assault, 23 related to deaths and 117 for medical assistance.

Traveling Smart:

From a purely personal perspective, I’ve never felt unsafe anywhere we’ve traveled in Mexico. We use public transit, go out at night and often walk long distances through unfamiliar places. We’ve also crossed the border at both Tijuana and Nogales several times this year and have been impressed by Mexico’s rigorous security precautions.

We’ve found Mexicans to be friendly, hospitable and helpful. But we also know there are dangerous places—we’re skipping Mexico City for now, and when we reach Acapulco we’ll be cautious about where we travel. We also take basic sensible precautions: not driving long distances at night, not wearing flashy jewelry, avoiding protests… That sort of thing

Don’t take my word for it, but also don’t get your info from the headlines. The US State Department has an excellent section on Mexico—which is kept up to date and highlights dangerous areas. Canada's strikes me as a bit more sensationalized and doesn't highlight the safe from unsafe as clearly but it also has good info. 

If I had a Pony I'd Ride Him on My Boat

Maia and Jeeves

 We’re back aboard—painting, cleaning and catching up on work (for me). But occasionally the waves lapping the hulls sound a bit like hoof beats, and in the right light the mountains that rise up around Guaymas look like they have horse trails on them.

Me on Dusty--getting dusty

 All three of us were captivated (much more than anticipated) by our visit to the wild, wild west. It wasn’t simply that it’s darn fun to ride a horse through the desert—although it is. It’s that in many ways ranch life reminds me of the cruising life.

The night we arrived at the White Stallion Ranch near Tucson we began making new friends. Within minutes Maia and Kaia (both brown-eyed redheads with freckles and quick smiles) had everyone confused: Sisters? Old friends? Random chance?! Really?!

But our best friends? They are called Jeeves, Dusty and Buffalo—and by our second ride all of us understood that bond between a rider and her horse: So much like the bond between a sailor and her boat.

learning to pen cattle--a skill we'll no doubt need again sometime...

 Not all of our visit was a ride through the desert or songs around the camp fire. We went off ranch a bunch. Honestly considering how little we sometimes do in a day it astonishes me how much ground we covered: Old Tucson, downtown Tucson, Tombstone and Kartchner Caverns. But despite our packed schedule--or maybe because of it, we've come back to the boat relaxed and ready for the next adventure.

Our wonderful guides in Tombstone: the town historian and the Chamber of Commerce Prez...

Sailors' Hiatus

You may have caught on to the fact we haven't updated for a bit--the reason is we're not on the boat right now. After a year of cruising it was time to head home for a few weeks--catch-up with friends and family (especially my Nana who just turned 90), and buy stuff.

The trip home was relatively painless, we arranged for someone to care for Charlie and the boat, and then got a lift to the bus and spent 18-hours navigating winding roads while watching shoot-em-up movies in Spanish. I'm pretty sure the Transformer movies don't actually have a plot, in either language. In San Diego we parted ways--Ev and Maia headed straight for Vancouver and I went to Quebec for a conference and a press trip.

Maia made good use of her time at home to enhance her unicycle riding skills

Now we're in Vancouver and our days schedule runs something like this: locate and buy sewing needles, engine parts and watermaker bits. Repair electronics, engine bits and computers. See friends, family and doctors. Send Maia to circus camp. Repeat. It's busy, but lovely to be home amongst so many loving people.

The rushed pace is making me miss the boat a bit though. And the cool weather is definitely making me miss Mexico. We know this will all pass too quickly though and in a matter of days we'll be back 'home' in Mexico. So we're savouring all of it.

Antigua

 I've alluded to the fact I have kind of a cool job. Aside from living on and cruising our boat, I also work as a freelance writer. While this occasionally puts me in really sucky situations (which is where the freelancer mantra 'bad for me, good for the story' comes from), much of the time my life is just a little bit charmed.

Antigua Sailing Week should have been one of the charmed experiences. But, well, 'bad for me, good for the story' sometimes turns into, 'this sucks but I  need to get the freaking story anyway.'

One of my only tourist shots is of a sail loft, yup, I'm a geek.

Which is why I don't have many pictures of Antigua. Actually, I never planned to take more than a few personal snapshots. My magazine sent me with the most amazing photographer, Paul Wyeth (Look for me in the back row-and check his link below and see me sailing on Brian Thompson's boat) but because, well, most of the trip really, really sucked (except for the rockstar sailing and meeting the awesome editor from Sail, David Schmidt) my pictures are more limited than planned.

Somewhere, over there, is our boat. The problem is it was faster than us. We were low on gas. And the boat didn't know it was being chased...

Paul is at the mast, taking pictures of Brian Thompson, who is on helm. For my story. I'm, umm, in a chase boat. Chasing my story.

In fact, my photos are limited to the day when David and I needed to finangle ourselves a chase boat, so we could chase down our race boat before the race started, because it left without us. The story about why we weren't on it when it left is one of those journalistic tales best left untold (but it did include a stoner journalist, a defective alarm clock and a PR team that should be doing something very, very different their lives...). It's better if you all have an unsullied view of what it is writers do, just enjoy the pretty pictures and wait for the magazine to come out.
We really don't sell our souls to get the story--unless we have to.

Paul Wyeth : Marine Photography
(I'm in the middle)

Posted using ShareThis

Far From Home

I'm not on the boat. I'm at work. At work in Antigua, racing in Sailing Week--for money. I'm not actually racing for money, I'm being paid to race a hot boat (Farr 65) with an amazing skipper (Brian Thompson!!) and write about racing in Antigua. I'm also being paid to stay in nice places and eat great food and stay up way too late at awesome parties drinking rum punch.
I really love my job...

But while I'm off filling the cruising kitty, it'll be up to Evan and Maia to write about life aboard. I think they're doing boat projects, which is only fair really. If I have to work so should they...

Getting Gone

I’ve had a few people send notes asking us to detail the exact steps we’re taking and list the stuff we’re buying while we prepare to leave San Diego. The thing is everyone has different things on their list at this stage. Ours included getting our Pactor modem running (which it now is – so this means I’ll be able to send and receive work emails over single sideband radio networks), getting our water maker running (check), setting up a downwind reaching pole, sorting out our weather forecasting systems (we’ll be listening to Don from Summer Passage) as well as downloading weather faxes, organizing our paper work (still need to order boat cards… sigh) and stocking up on things that we found were either hard to get or too expensive to buy in Mexico:

favourite crackers and cookies, maple syrup, hard sausages and hard cheeses, batteries and software, favourite treats from Trader Joes, movies and school books, jams and chocolate, wheat free flour and pasta, vitamins and guide books, favourite herbs and spices, dry bunk material, boat parts and fishing gear… 

Personally, I also needed to clear my schedule of deadlines for a few weeks--so I was filing stories and sorting pictures.

The thing is the final to-do list can be a never ending trap--and for lots of people it is. I’m always reluctant to tell people what it is that we are trying to get done because when I do it usually elicits one of three responses: they either think we aren’t doing enough (aka less than what they would do), doing too much (aka more than what they would do) or it sends them into a panic as they realize they totally missed a step that may or may not be important.

Last time we headed south, we spent over a month in San Diego working from dawn to dusk trying to plan for every eventuality and making sure we didn’t forget a single item that we might someday possibly need (I even pre-bought birthday and Christmas gifts). We got caught in the trap of second guessing our list and checking with every cruiser and every book for tips on what we may have forgotten (thank goodness we didn’t have blogs to read to increase our anxiety…)

What we discovered is Mexico (and beyond) had people living there, that we didn’t need to carry enough food to make it for months. There were mechanics and hardware stores so we didn’t need to stock every spare part, or to imagine and prepare for every eventuality. All we really needed to do was know our boat and prepare to be self-sufficient for a few weeks – but not for months or years.

I think cruising is foreign enough that we feel safer and more prepared if we can just make enough lists and buy enough stuff. Because it’s all pretty hard to imagine what it’s really like to untie and let go, we grab on tighter, trying to manage an unknowable future.

But it is unknowable, in a good way. So, I’m sorry to the people who wrote and asked for my list—I don’t really have one that’s universal enough to share. There are books and articles filled with suggestions and ideas, but I think my main message is simply to decide what you need to be comfortable and safe, then pare down the list to the things that are unique to you, your boat and your lifestyle. Then randomly cross off half the things on your list with your eyes closed—you’ll never miss the stuff.

But do make sure you stash away a few treats so that at one of those cruiser potlucks, the ones that happen way far from specialty stores, you can be the boat that brings out the cool appetizer…

WHY?

We get asked a lot of questions; Where next? For how long? How do you afford it? But we’re rarely asked, Why?

But when I was recently asked Why sail? – I fumbled the answer.
“Because it’s something I’ve dreamed of, ever since I was six, and saw a black sailboat with Hawaii as a hailing port,” really doesn’t answer the why for me anymore. Even the why of twenty years ago, when Evan and I were planning our first trip (a search for adventure), or the why of ten years ago, when we decided to switch to a catamaran for (more speed, more space, more comfort) don’t quite fit.

I guess because I’ve held this dream for so long I don’t really think about the why of it. But it seems that journeys need a reason. Especially when the journey makes you uproot your family, walk away from a life you love and pack all your hopes and dreams into a two-hulled fibreglass tub, which tends to leak.

The thing is, for the past while, I think I’ve been avoiding the why. We’ve had such a long series of stuff go wrong (including a starting motor that failed to start the other morning) that I think if I asked myself why I wouldn’t come up with much of an answer…

Journeys need a reason.
I recently read that Morro Bay rock is the one of the Nine Sisters – a chain of extinct volcanoes that lead inland to San Luis Obispo. And I decided it would be nice to see all nine volcanoes. So we hopped on a bus and traveled the half hour, past old ranches, prisons and schools into SLO. Along the way I tried to count the rocky volcanoes – obvious by their steep shapes that give way to granite peaks above the grass lands. On the way there I got to seven, and on the way back I got to 12 (which evens out at something close to nine, so I was happy.)

While I counted I thought about how my quest to see the volcanoes made the journey to another town make sense. We had no need to go to SLO – Morro Bay has everything we need in easy walking distance of the water (I even got a decent haircut…). And we’re definitely not bored with MB – in fact we’ll leave in a few days wishing we had spent more time looking for sea otters in the estuary, climbing the sand dunes and exploring the little town.

But when I set a goal to collect experiences (I’ve set off to ride wooden roller coasters, pose with giant fibreglass vegetables and visit every province and state) it makes something that’s sort of frivolous seem more meaningful. I realized at the eleventh volcano this was what made the current question, why sail? so hard. This trip isn’t a quest, or a search for deeper meaning to life, it’s just the follow through of a whole lot of years of hard work.

Somewhere along the way I lost track of why I was doing this crazy thing and just did it. But the thing is you can’t sustain the energy for difficult, eccentric stuff for long without knowing why. I’m discovering this – the hard way.

But this morning, as I watched the sun rise over a calm sea, and hundreds of dolphins helped me greet the day, I felt a glimmer of something bigger, which reminded me why I’m here. Why the breakdowns and storms are worth it. Why it’s ok to be afraid and angry sometimes. Why we’ve set sail

I want to experience all that is silly and lush about life. I want to go places where I can count extinct volcanoes on a bus ride and see the ocean from as many different angles as possible. I want to test myself and push myself and then I want to spend lazy days recounting the stories.

I want to see dolphins leaping in the sunrise.