Adagio’s 2016 Holiday Letter

Click the thumbnail for the 2016 newsletter gallery

We wish you a Very Happy Holidays and an Excellent 2017!

Our 2016 was filled with wonderful friends and lots of Adagio guests. Many of our cruising friends, old and new, kept us company throughout the year. And we especially enjoyed long visits with our old friends who make their home at Isle of Pines.

2016 started in New Zealand, with our time occupied by yacht maintenance in Whangarei – punctuated by some excellent Bay of Islands cruising. Six weeks in a Whangarei boatyard was not on our 2016 plan, but two sequential years of bad antifoul workmanship forced us into completely stripping all of our antifouling layers back to the original 2000 epoxy primers. Followed by expensive reapplication of all the antifouling we had just scraped off. Bummers, but this time done properly and properly documented by Port Whangarei. Take note all ye yachtsmen.

Come June we were just tickled to have our friends Vanessa and Wayne join us for the New Zealand to New Caledonia passage. Besides having super-sailors aboard, we comprised a team of four photographers so we captured some splendid images, including Albatross, Green sea turtles, full moons, rainbows, crystal clear waters, sunrises, sunsets, traditional outrigger canoes, coral reefs, tropical fish, racing sailboats and more.

Our next guest treat was our London friend Susie — who dedicated three weeks of her sabbatical to fly half-way around the world from London to spend July in the South Pacific. This was Susie’s second long visit aboard – and what fun we had! With Susie aboard we circumnavigated the Isle of Pines from Kuto to Oro to Gadji. After resupply we enjoyed explorations of several special Southern Lagoon reefs. Susie gave us the motivation to get out there when the weather conditions allowed anchoring where there was zero protection from strong winds or seas. Just splendid!

Come September, our daughter Kim managed to find ten days in her intense calendar to fly from San Francisco to the South Pacific. Prior to her arrival we had pre-positioned Adagio at Ile des Pins to ensure Kim had the best possible New Caledonia adventure. Once Kim was aboard we introduced her to some of our favorite people plus heaps of tramping around, traditional pirogue sailing, and of course snorkeling. It was way too short, but Kim did get a wee peek at what her adventuring parents are up to. Every day we extracted as much fun as we could think up. It was beyond intense!

Our Hobart yachtswoman friend Dianne, joined us for some very-well-deserved R&R in New Caledonia. We started in Noumea, sailing to Ile des Pins on our way to Australia. After a day of bashing into head seas we decided we could take a pause for really “splendid” passage weather. We had to do a check-back-in to Noumea. Then a week later we did checkout from Noumea, so we could we enjoy a very pleasant and reasonably quick six-day passage to Newcastle. Dianne scored her first experience of catamaran passaging “Yes, let’s do this again!”

It’s now been four years since we left Australia in 2012 so we have heaps of Aussie friends to catch up with. To start with we are making new friends on our first visit to Newcastle just 70nm north of Sydney (we didn’t know!). Later this week we are seeing potentially pleasant weather for a two-day sail down to Eden to prepare for our sixth crossing of Bass Strait. The very best thing we know to do in the southern summer is the Hobart Summer Festival and the AWBF (Australian Wooden Boat Festival). This year is even more special as two of our South Pacific cruising buddy boats have also arrived in Australia, and are also planning the Hobart Summer Festival and AWBF (French Canadian and French New Caledonian). Our next dispatch will be from our berth at the RYCT Royal Yacht Club Tasmania – sometime in January 2017.

Love and Hugs to You All,
Dorothy and Steve