From the outset, 2020 was looking to be a busy year. It looked like this: Complete an extended stay with family in Perth, return to the boat in Queensland and give Zofia a major service in preparation for another off-shore trip to New Caledonia in May (which we’d already twice deferred). Return to Australia in August so we could fly to Oxford for a God-daughter’s wedding in September. Then sail again to Tasmania for another summer. Almost a bucket list of journeys.
By April it was evident that off-shore sailing to New Caledonia was off the cards, indeed going anywhere beyond a 50km radius was initially prohibited. We settled therefore on sailing as far as Great Keppel Island via the Bunker Group in the Southern Barrier Reef. Going further north would make sailing south to Tasmania a longish trip.
Subsequently, it’s turned out that Tasmania has closed it’s borders to the rest of Australia due to COVID19. Even the 2021 Tasmanian Wooden Boat Festival has been cancelled. Even the Sydney to Hobart yacht race is unlikely to happen this year, although not yet officially called off. It looks therefore that this year’s cruising will be confined to Queensland waters. Our cruising list is no longer a Bucket List of events but a list in a bucket.
It would be churlish to complain. We are captive in paradise in warm weather and in the company of some of our favourite cruising companions. We’ve changed our plans so many times this year we can barely see beyond a fortnight or month. We revert to the cruisers classic - ‘our plans are written in the sand at low tide’!
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