It's been ten years since we returned from a year away sailing for other people and decided we wanted to sail the world on our terms.  We arrived back in Oz with scarily few dollars so the first thing was to set up the old company and earn a bit of money.  Eating is good.

Our plan was to try and fund the trip by creating an event that would have a direct benefit for sponsors - after all we're the classic Baby Boomer couple.  And the idea we presented seemed to be well accepted - albeit over 200 proposals zipped around the world - discussions were proceeding well - and then 9/11 happened.  Well, that put the kybosh on that idea.

Undaunted, we decided to buy the best yacht we could afford and to work her up.  We must have looked at over 50 boats before we found "Hinewai" - our big, lovely, slow, 25 year old Roberts Mauritius Ketch.

We knew we'd have to do a bit of work to get her to how we wanted things to be - and soon found we had no idea what was actually needed.

But we also needed a target date to leave.  Every four years, there's a grand race from here in Melbourne, Australia to Osaka in Japan.  We decided to aim for the 2007 race - which started on March 25th, and then head on to North America.

It's been five years of working every moment we can to raise the money, gutting the house back to bare frames and renovating and, of course, getting the big girl ready.  In January, we closed the company down to concentrate on getting all those last things done.

It was going to be tight, but we might have made it.  Then Jean's mum became ill over in Perth.

That was the end of the Osaka race for us, although I'm not sure if I'd have been happy for us to go anyway.  Although we've spend heaps of time on Hinewai, we've done very little sailing over the last couple of years and it was a big ask to sail 5,500 nm two handed.

So we returned to Plan A - to head north and turn left.  It all became a bit of a rush but finally we headed off on 28th May 2007.

And got as far as Darwin where we are now sitting out the Build-up and the Wet until next year.  The Log (based simply on the emails sent to our friends, which, dear reader, we are proud to include you as well) explains how we ended up here.  Be warned, those of a nervous disposition, it does include broken ribs.

Happy reading.

Peter & Jean