My flight out of LAX was very delayed so we ended up taking off at 1am. I had a good nights sleep in business class and 13 hours later we landed in Sydney. I remind myself how much I love my mother! When I am in economy on the way home I will appreciate her even more. With an express card I was through passport control, baggage claim, customs and sitting in my tiny rental car in less than an hour.

I stopped off at Abyss dive shop on my way south to pick up my tanks and weights. I went through the Royal National Park towards Stanwell Park stopping at beautiful looking places. An hour after landing at Sydney I was kayaking up Kangaroo Creek in the bush – modern travel is truly amazing. All sorts of animals were along the river – very noisy and numerous white cockatoos, a turtle sitting on a branch sunning itself, common ducks and many birds that I couldn’t name. I found a mud nest just above the water on an undercut rock face and had a quick face wash in the stream as far as I got up river. The vegetation was thick on all sides with a quite a few eucalyptus trees, lots of different shrubs some with blooms.

After a quick hot chocolate, chips and sausage sandwich for lunch it was off down the road south. I turned off at the Wolla exit and took a walk down to a beautiful lagoon where people were swimming in the warm shallow water. The water was a stunning blue and the beach was beautiful yellow sand a stunning view and nicely sheltered. Back in the car I stopped at Garie beach which was windswept and populated with people learning to surf. The sand was beautifully rippled by the wind and the grass was blowing at an angle – a different beach from a few miles north. There is a view point above the beach looking north and south very similar to the California coastline.

I had by now started to succumb to jetlag and thought it wise to continue onto my bed and breakfast after checking out my dive site for the next day. I stayed at Tudor Lodge a very friendly comfortable black a block back from the beach with a dog which of course I loved. I struggled to stay awake and managed till 7pm before it was bedtime!

So like I mentioned in my Scotland? post the Bay Area is an area of micro climates. Today we went off to the south of france/italy which is 45 minutes from my door north and inland a little – Napa or the wine country. Seeing as I don’t drink you would think it would be a boring trip for me but the scenery is so beautiful and I enjoyed taking the break which is rare for me. While Tom tried the wines Draeger and I hung out in the sun. The leaves are changing color with it being Autumn – I didn’t realise that the vine leaves changed as well – obvious I guess but I hadn’t thought about it. It made the landscape look like a watercolor painting with splashes of red, orange, yellow, green etc. We went to four wineries and had a picnic lunch at one of cheese and bread. We also stopped at a Olive oil company and tasted lots of great oils and vinegars. A very relaxing day all and all 🙂

Leaves above the picnic table

Vines at the Domaine Chandon winery

Andretti Winery

Olive orchard

I didn’t really fly to Scotland but I drove up to Point Reyes with Tom who is visiting from the UK. With the micro climates in the Bay Area one day you could be in the South of France or Italy and then drive 20 miles and be in a landscape reminiscent of Scotland. We went up Highway 1 stopping at Muir Woods, Muir Beach, Stinson Beach, Tomales Bay, Drakes Bay Oyster company where I bought some fresh oysters for my dad and then up to North Beach on the road to the lighthouse. I have never got to the lighthouse alway ending up getting bored of the drive and instead taking a long walk on the beach.

Today there were four other people on the beach they had a fire going and a picnic. Draeger had a great time with her tail wagging running in an out of the surf. The California coast line really is very beautiful it is something we don’t necessarily appreciate.

The overlook at Muir Beach

Pelicans at Bolinas

Surf at North Beach

There was a beautiful low level fog rolling in from the sea

On Friday I did a PADI specialty course on Dry Suit Diving. All the diving I have done up until now has been warm water i.e. Indonesia in a light wet suit. There was no way I was going to take to the cold Pacific water without wearing a dry suit so I needed to learn how to use one. Off I went to Aquarius Dive School in Monterey and after an hour in the swimming pool we rushed over to Point Lobos (only 15 dive teams are allowed per day) in Carmel. It is an amazing dive site you walk in from the boat launched and then swim quite a distance trying to not get tangled in the kelp forest and then drop down to 70 feet. I had a bit of trepidation seeing as I hadn’t dove in 53F water before and hadn’t dove in kelp however, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. In the dry suit I wasn’t cold at all and as long as you dídn’t fight the kelp it was fine. The first descent I got really tangled and told myself to calm down and finally made it underwater. The kelp rises 70 feet from the sea floor but down low it is just like a tree trunk with not too many branches so you can swim through it without a problem. I played is an anemone and also a star fish decided to attach itself to me for a while. I actually decided the kelp was great after it saved me from a feet up ascent. With dry suit diving you pump air into the suit not a BCD so if you get your feet over your shoulder while swimming you end up with lots of air in your legs with no way of venting it and then you lose positive bouyancy and start going to the surface. If you feel it like I did you either kick yourself head up and then vent or you cheat and hold on to the kelp and pull yourself upright and vent the air from your shoulder vent!

After two dives I picked up Myles (my brother) and his girlfriend in Monterey and we headed to Santa Cruz to the boardwalk which much to my amazement was not open on a friday night. We found some miniature golf which had a pirate theme and I got well and truely schooled by both of them in golf. Got home late and straight to bed…

I took my little brother and his girlfriend to Yosemite on wednesday we left early in the morning and got on the hiking trails around midday. Myles showed me how unfit I was and what a difference 9 years makes to your body! We hiked the Mist Trail to Nevada Falls stopping for lunch at Vernal Falls and then took the John Muir Trail back down.

We stayed the night at Upper Pines Camp Grounds after having hor deurves at the beautiful Awanhee and then heating up some spag bol at the camp site finishing off with smore’s on the camp fire and an early to bed. I used my tent that goes on the back of the truck with the very comfortable blow up mattress in the back – Gucci camping!

On Thursday we got up and drove to Monterey it took a while to get out of the valley as they were doing a managed burn of the undergrowth. In Monterey I had to get set up for some diving while Myles and Annabelle walked around Fisherman’s wharf. Then it was off to 17 mile drive to see how the wealthy live and a long drive up to Los Gatos to stay at Mary’s house overlooking Silicon Valley.

This morning we arrived back in the Hamble with the boat. It was an uneventful 17 hour motor back with no wind almost glassy calm the whole way. Very different from last August when I was in the UK for Fastnet.

We spent two very nice days in Cornwall with my mothers cousin. We took his boat out for a sail from Falmouth (a little Westerley which he has set up with lots of gadgets),

had dinner at Port Navas YC which is a small friendly place with four tables over the river (very typical English)

and went to the theater at Minack Theatre which is the UK equivalent of the Marin county Mountain Theatre.

The theatre was cut into the cliff only 2 miles from Lands End by a lady see http://www.minack.com/dayvisitors/history.htm for the story. It was an awesome venue and I survived the chill with lots of blankets and a great picnic dinner including of course cornish pasties and home gorwn tomotoes (which as delicious) thanks to the cousins for providing. In my little brothers words however, I am a philastene as I don’t appreciate Shakespeare – the play was Henry V. I must admit I was more interested in the ships passing by – shakespeare is just really hard work for me.

I was able to visit my good friend Cam Geer and his wife in Chicago as I had to overnight due to not getting on my flight. It was great fun catching up with them.

I had one of those unusual for me ”days off’ at the end of the delivery in Newport. So decided to go and do the Cliff Walk see http://www.cliffwalk.com/ it was a really beautiful sunny day. I walked from Easton Beach to the Chinese Tea House and back to the car at Easton. Past the Breakers, Salve Regina Collage, Rosecliff and the Marble House. Check out some of the houses….

I spent the last five days cruising around the Florida Keys on a Bendy Toy doing my Master of Yachts 200 ton practical course followed by an on the water exam and an oral exam it all went well. The above picture is of Stiltsville which is a village in the Biscayne Channel which is now derelict.

It was fun messing around doing MOB drills, anchoring under sail and lifting anchor under sail etc.

The cake was thoughfully ordered by Steffi – thank goodness I passed! The Gastesi’s put on a great party for me about 30 people turned up from the local sailing community. All good fun.

Update: Just heard from one of the guys I did the theory exams with and looks like out of our class of 10 only 3 people ended up passing after the 17 days of courses and exams. The class I was with for my practical though had a much higher pass rate.

24th March – I pretty much snapped this morning and told Annabelle that we were upgrading from the $1.50/night room on the lake to a new place with air conditioning. I just couldn’t deal with sweating profusely while trying to sleep in a dirty room. So I dragged her to a new place with air conditioning, clean sheets and a TV all for the very expensive $13/night.

After checking into our new place our driver took us to the Genocide Museum S21 it is very horrifying we went from there onto the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek before moving on from there we sat at a table in the shade. The sheer horror of what we had seen made for a very quite day. It is amazing the cruelty that human beings are capable of. I didn’t like how they tried to portray the tragic events as being more horrifying than the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. In my mind both regimes were horrendous and they don’t need to be compared to make them anymore so.

Annabelle and I have been reading a few books by people who survived the Khmer Rouge – Stay Alive My Son is very good. At the moment I am reading The Gate by Francois Bizot one of the only Westerners to survive the Khmer Rouge.

We went back into town for lunch at Friends a resturant run by former street children. The food was delicous it was though western level pricing. Then onto the National Museum which had every type of  carved Budda possible I must admit though that we had pretty much had our fill of temples and statues! Onto the Russian market for the obligatory 3rd world shopping experience – stands full of fake Rolex’s, North Face gear, Polo shirts etc.

We spent the evening in our air conditioned room before heading out to a local restuarant. The menu included roast frog which we didn’t go for instead we had beef volcano which is not as exciting as it sounds. You have a gas camping stove in the middle of the table and a cast iron skillet on it. They give you plates of veg, beef slices with an egg on top, oil, butter and rice and you cook the meal yourself. Our server was a very nice young guy who was trying very hard to explain how to eat our meal in his rudimentary English. I think he was amazed at how tidy we were as we stacked our empty plates at the end of the table unlike the locals around us. We then had the soup which again you cook at the table. The broth comes in an earthenware pan with some suspect looking meat floating in it. We didn’t think it was beef like our server told us. Neither Annabelle nor I were adventurous enough to eat the meat sticking instead to the vegetables and noodles.

Tomorrow we are off to Hong Kong where Annabelle stays for the Hong Kong Sevens. I have the evening there and then back to San Francisco where I have a few clients waiting for some work on their boats. I will be helping out a little on Hugh’s X40 catamaran project which is in the Bay for corporate entertainment.