Author: Gavin

This author has written 53 articles

Ready, steady, go…almost, wait, oops, yes… we’re leaving!

What a week or is two weeks since I last wrote… The crew have arrived safe and sound and have gotten straight into living life aboard Squander. It’s been one of those weeks where a lot of big jobs got done quickly and many quick jobs took a looooong time! The trusty Jeep has clocked up some miles running around town getting everything from new kiteboarding equipment for Dmitrij to essentials like rum and beer for all of us! Vacuum sealing the sirloin steaks. Squander looks tiny…

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I can have toast again!

After a great Easter weekend, the week has kicked off with a longer then expected list of things to fix – I guess this is probably the beginning of a long chapter called “The things they don’t tell you about sailing” – it’s definitely the standout bit of feedback from cruisers (people who live aboard their yacht for extended periods of time cruising from place to place) – you do a lot more maintenance and fixing then you ever imagined! Back to the fun stuff – the…

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Who broke my vegemite!?

Ten days ago I flew out of Sydney - destination "dream realisation!" I've had this idea to sail around the world for a while now, in fact I tried to work out when and how I first got this idea and haven't been able to crack it - the earliest confirmed mention of this was when I was 19... but I'm guessing it would have been born much earlier than that. Either way, it feels quite incredible to be on the eve of beginning to fulfill a…

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Hitch hiking across the Atlantic

Despite the best laid plans, research and determination to make this a smooth trip, it didn’t quite work out according to plan and all I can say is… thank god for that!! The trip across the Atlantic ended up including 5 countries, two yachts, 2 quick plane trips and a multitude of great people that I wouldn’t have met had it all gone according to the original plans. The research commenced back in March 2009, when I joined Crewseekers and findacrew in order to find yachts that…

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Ramadan in Istanbul

The start to Istanbul was always going to be interesting. We got up at 2:00 am in Gocek in order to make our 4:00 am flight to Istanbul. Mixing the effects of 10 days of bliss on the Mediterranean & little sleep, made for a great challenge, especially when trying to negotiate taxi fares and hotel directions in Turkish. Fighting through the maelstrom of chaos, speaking to a taxi driver who could barely understand Turkish, let alone English, pointing at iPhones and maps in our lonely planet…

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Where’s our boat?

Having survived our budget flights and arrived in one piece in Southern Turkey, we soon settled into the relaxed pace of Gocek. We met up with Agatha & Julien in the afternoon & night one had us chowing down on local specialties under a balmy starry night at the seaside “Kebab Hospital”. Washing down the tasty fresh food with cold Efes (the local beer) and Raki. The girls took a few notes off the menu and it was decided that we would stock the boat with Turkish…

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8 days, 5 flights and the tour is well underway!

It so surreal to be sitting in an Istanbul airport writing this, having been in London for the past 2 days, Sydney, 4 days ago, New Zealand 8 days ago and sailing around Vanuatu for the month prior to that – but we wouldn’t have it any other way! Our goodbye party at the Opera bar couldn’t have been better. Winter disappeared for a day as Sydney put on a show with 29 degrees and sunny blue skies all around. Thanks to all of our friends (and…

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Tapping into Vanuatu

It was fun coming back to Port Vila again and showing Luciana around. Interesting when you come back to a foreign place for a second time, it’s happened to me quite a few times over the years, I instantly feel like a local??! This was particularly so this time around as the Nivan people are very friendly and welcoming. They come to life when they see a familiar face and go out of their way to welcome you back. I introduced Luciana to Willie the security guard…

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Setting up a travel computer – Free apps most of the way

I recently took an old 12 inch laptop and re-built it as a travel computer.  It was a fairly easy thing to do and after looking around online, I managed to get lots of very useful software for Free. I’m sure there are other software applications that I missed so feel free to recommend some if you know of any via the comments field. On a side note I’m still considering buying one of the new 10” Acer Netbooks for Luciana. GIMP Basically a FREE photoshop –…

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2008 Toyota Prado – what a “Little Monster”

Luciana affectionately named the Prado “Little Monster”. During our 7000 Km trip around South Easter Australia, The Prado was our bedroom, kitchen, storage, workshop, power station, water supply and ultimately our best friend. out of the 7000 Kms covered, approx 2500 kms was off-road, ranging from hard packed, grated roads through to driving on soft sand dunes, with tires down to 16 PSI and praying that we won’t get stuck. Our Little Monster Toyota Prado was up to everything we asked of it and we could not…

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