We completed our cruise of Scotland, Ireland, Spain and Portugal in spring/summer 2005 although we never quite made it to Norway as intended. Damage caused by a lobster pot marker is the excuse. Another time maybe.
The Canary and Cape Verde Islands came next in October/November 2005. Having refuelled, restocked and topped up the water, we crossed the Atlantic, arriving in St Lucia in late December. A cruise up and down the Windward and Leeward Islands until June 2006 occupied us until it was time to get south below the hurricane belt.
The 2006 hurricane season was mainly spent in Trinidad, with a side trip to the Orinoco Delta. We finally moved west to Venezuela in the middle of October sailing towards Curacao, where we stocked up for our trip to Cuba in December 06.
Around this time the El Nino event that had been declared, petered out and was cancelled, allowing a considerably more civilized crossing of the Pacific Ocean. So from Cuba, we sailed down to Panama and transited the canal in March 07 en route to Ecuador to prepare for the Pacific crossing.
We hopped across a rainy Pacific thanks to La Nina, via the Galapagos Islands, French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Niue and Tonga. An unpleasant couple of weeks in November 2007 took us down to New Zealand for six months of re-fit and a bit of land travel.
The next stage is up to the tropics to get warm again - a circuit is planned via Tonga, American Samoa, Samoa, Wallis & Futuna and Fiji, returning to New Zealand in November/December 2008.
The return leg is yet to be decided, it will be either via the Red Sea and Suez Canal or via South Africa. Both routes have their advantages and disadvantages.
In the longer term, Angus would like to sail around the Falkland Islands, Ruth would like to sail around the Chilean Fjords and the west coast of Canada. However, it remains to be seen whether we can cope with temperatures below 20 deg C after so long in the Tropics.
There you go, ambitious, but little progress gets made without ambitions.
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