The shimmi crew are taking a breather after the paint job saga, doing beach time and hanging out with friends who have a house on the beach next to the surf camp.
We are thinking of speeding up our South Pacific departure even more, so that we can be in the Marquesas by mid March which is the very earliest which one can arrive in the South Pacific i.t.o. hurricane season. Its going to take some doing for us to get to Indo by December this year...getting from the South Pacific to Bali via Papa New Guinea is further than I thought...Bali is really our only option for flying home (its the only place to fly from and more importantly its the only place where we can cheaply and safely leave Shimmi)...just thinking out loud...Trevor: can you maybe check if you can find any blogs etc of yachts that have sailed to Indo from Fiji - Vanuatu - Solomons - PNG - Bali...this is the route around the 'top' of Papa New Guinea which is on the equator, no hurricane risk but also very little tradewinds to speed up our progress. We can't go via Darwin as there are hurricanes there from December onwards...
The more I plan the details of our passage, the more I realize it will be crazy for us to try and get to Bali by late Dec, pack Shimmi away and fly home during peak season...It is simply not feasible to get across to Pacific and around to Bali by the year's end. We must do the south pacific at the correct and safe pace.
The only 2 other places where we can leave Shimmi and fly home from is Sydney Australia or Auckland New Zealand. All of the other potential places lie inside the hurricane belt (Hurricane season starts again end November). Both of these aforesaid places are way off our route, have VERY expensive marinas (for leaving Shimmi) and will result in 2 long and expensive flights.
