30th April - at rest in Mourilyan Harbour - Greg near Japan - avoiding cyclones

Tuesday 30^th April

We recently had an email, across the oceans blue, from our lone-sailor Canadian friend, Greg Soraka.  He sails around and around the world, with his dear Chilean tabbycat, Ede, for company.  Every now and then (once every few years…) his wife flies out to meet him, if he’s in a reasonably calm and salubrious place.

I am just passing the latitude of Chichi Jima (just south of Japan)…. I see each day now a few hundred Short Tailed Shearwaters the same ones passing me each day going to exactly where I am going.  They are also coming from exactly where I came from on the south coast of Tasmania, but they do it much quicker.

Cheers

Greg

Alcidae III

27 N & 148 E

We are spending the day in Mourilyan Harbour.  Just to prove that everything we see and experience is NOT extreme prettiness and sunshine…here is a view from 2XS, looking towards the sugar refinery at the head of the harbour.  It is drizzly and cool.  And somewhere out there, outside the harbour, there MIGHT be a cyclone called Zane, wreaking minor havoc.  So we are staying put in our atmospheric little harbor.  This is not a bad thing.  We have food, tea, coffee, gin, books, computers.  And cameras!  Pete has just passed on to me a tricky trick he learned from Rachel and which I can do on my iPhone 5 – a panorama photo!  Here is one, going from one side of the cabin, where there are photos of our families prominently displayed, to the other side, where you will see Pete, beaming radiantly.

When we leave I will take a photo of some of the boats in this remote part of the world.  We haven’t seen rusty little hulks like this anywhere before in Australia.  They look as if they belong in a remote PNG or Solomons island.  We have also been very surprised to see that two of the other boats here - there are only about ten anchored around us – are from Tasmania.  (They are not the rusty ones, I am pleased and proud to report.)