Well, I finally managed to import our old e-mail address book into the boat's laptop and so here is a brief update of our progress to date.

What I can say is it is that it's a good thing that presently we are made fast to a mooring in a safe anchorage because it's consistently gusting to over 50kts right now.  We're in South Australia at American River on the NE side of Kangaroo Island.  It's a great place for fishing, but not in weather like this.  There's oysters, squid, whiting etc.

As one would expext, we've had a mixed bag of sailing conditions between Fremantle and here.  The lowlight (good practice though...ha!) was getting belted by a powerful front between Albany and Esperance... 18hrs of 35 - 50 kts  Pampero handles big following seas very well but requires hand steering when it is really big and on an aft quarter.  Surfing down waves is a turn-on because the rudder lightens up and steering control is great... and all eyes then turn to the speed log.  We arrived at Esperance earlier than expected but very tired.  As it happens, it's not all like that and the bloody south easterlies on
the nose for half of The Bight crossing was a real pain.  It took us 6 days from Esperance including one sleep at Middle Island in the Recherche Group. We stayed a night at Memory Cove, just around the corner from the end of the Eyre Peninsula and then into Port Lincoln Marina for three days of R&R and a bit of a look around.  The local area and Islands are great and worthy of a much closer look at some future time.

Next stop is Port Fairy in western Vic, prior to King Island.

Best regards from Gus, Gabby and crew.