We were always running late. We delayed leaving Fiji because we didn’t want to leave our friends. We delayed leaving New Caledonia because the weather wasn’t great and a few of us were not particularity well suffering from colds and the dreaded Hand Foot and Mouth disease. What? Isn’t that’s for cows? I certainly thought so but no this is a real thing but apparently only for young kids. Well one thing for certain is medical science certainly knows their categories because i am after all a young kid. More on this later.

So when we finally did get going it was with some relief. Everyone seemed on the mend and we felt happy to be able to make the 800nm journey (4-5 days) to Australia without drama. Haha. What a hope and a prayer. Because as you can expect drama unfolded on the open sea with my ear going into full eruption mode. It all started on day 3 when i told Delphine my ear felt itchy. I said i was a little concerned but needless to say never expected the next 24 hours. A few hours later itchy became sore and then crazy painful and then suicidal pain. I started trying to hurt myself in other places to displace the pain in my ear. I was in full shutdown mode and no longer the captain onboard my ship. I was sinking fast and in my cabin with my darling wife trying to sooth me. Thank god from Arabella and Liam handling the voyage because we were now very short handed with Delphine helping me. It all lasted about 6-12 hours when finally the eruption occurred. My eardrum gave way to the building pressure within my ear. With my Eustachian tubes blocked the infection within my ear had nowhere to drain and with great relief my eardrum gave way to an enormous amount of blood and puss which came pouring out my ear. It all sounds terrible but this was quite possible the best orgasm of my life. With a massive noise in my ear during this eruption all pain disappeared. I was in ecstasy. Well sort of.

Anyway, lots of water has run under this bridge. I didn’t die. We made it to Australia and I received so many loving messages from friends concerned for me. I will say however that no matter how first world Australia is, it is impossible to see an ENT on short notice. But we will leave this for a different post.

So what else was interesting about this passage. Word on the street was that these are some of the best fishing waters in the world and we (Liam and I) were soooooo excited about fishing. I especially because i decided to really splash our with Liam on a bunch of new lures, lines and even a new rod and real in Fiji and New Cal for this passage especially. We dreamt of insane fishing where everyone onboard would get board of catching fish and we would need to start releasing than back to sea because we didn’t have enough freezer space. What a lovely thought? Anyway, as i am sure you guessed. All the gear and no idea. We cause nothing, zilch, nada. We got one bite which was big in fairness because broke the line but this was more human error. The truth is my good mate Liam had come onboard our boat for this lovely passage and brought nothing but bad luck. Sorry Liam it is true. We had never been this low before. :-)

The other very important issue we were dealing with was Ants. At some point over the last couple of month we had started noticing these small black Ants on our boat. Now to the normal person this doesn’t sound weird. But Ants (or any pest) on your little Island (your boat) are a major reason to be concern. But when you are entering the Great Nanny State of Australia you should be even more worried. So project Ant extermination began. We had bought some borax at the local chemist and were now making a variety of combos to attract the Ants. I am not sure why we were so worried because this Ants came running for anything we put out for them and soon we saw dead Ants everywhere. Our main concern was that the health and safety inspector saw an Ant and quarantined our boat. We had heard some terrifying horror stories. But thank goodness when the moment arrived the Ants were nowhere to be seen.

Talking about customs… Our experience was quite interesting. We arrived on our yacht and directed into South Port Marina. It is a crazy and memorable place. Dinghy sailing boats, jet skis, motorboats, crazy weird boats, tour boats and just about everything you can imagine that floats is in the water. It’s absolute chaos. And not only on the water. In the air are planes and helicopters and people doing parasailing behind big engine boats. It is like nothing Ive seen before. But its nice. Its energetic. You must stay vigilant because clearly many folks probably consider the rules of the sea as just guidelines.

I was not in anyway recovered from the ear issues when i needed to come up from the safety of my cabin to help helm the boat into the marina. We were given a tricky little berth but after a few tries we managed to get our fat boat into its space and wait for the authorities to arrive. We were a little nervous to be honest. We were well informed about the strictness of the Aussie officials but lucky for us we were pleasantly surprised. Only 2 officials arrived and they seemed to have little interest in our boat. Only keen to just get it done and move on. All our flattery and hospitality were clearly lost when the officials just rushed through the procedure. Clearly we were not on much concern to the officials. Because the next boat in, no mention of their name, but they were invaded by at least 10 officials and a sniffer dog. All hatches searched and quite a radically different experience to ours. They were alongside us and i guess we were pretty thankful we didn’t get this experience.

Lastly i was to write about this beautiful human being who had joined us for the last month. Liam had had some difficulties on a previous vessel and asked to get a ride to Australia. I wasn’t that keen on bringing anyone onboard but what a lovely experience we got in inviting this young man to our boat. I grew up in a strict environment which defined us as kids. Manners were not something you did occasionally. They were demanded and I know what good manners are even if I am not always that well mannered these days. But Liam reminded me of these values. We really enjoyed having him onboard even if he brought terrible fishing juju to our boat and didn’t catch a thing from New Caledonia to Australia. Thank you Liam for joining us and behaving so impeccably.