89. The Long Way Home

I’m back in Whangarei after a month long visit to Sweden. It’s been almost two years since the last time and it felt well overdue to meet up with friends and family. Particularly when I got to see my oldest son Morgan that I hadn’t seen since the last time. Now a young adult with a brand new masters degree in geopolitics and living together with a not so new girlfriend that I had never met before. I guess it reminded me of that my adventure comes with sacrifice and requires a great degree of determination and a pinch of selfishness. And that I need to make greater efforts to meet people that I care about. Something that will get easier as I gradually will be getting closer to where I started. Easier for me to go back or for them to come to me.

The two most common questions that I got from people I met in Sweden were ‘which is the best place that you’ve sailed to’ and ‘which route will you take home?’ I could give a reasonably straight answer to the first question – I’ve loved every place but if I’d have to pick one it would be French Polynesia. And if I’d have to be more specific I’d probably say the Tahaa/Raiatea atoll in the Society Islands. It had perfect anchorages protected by reefs, sharks, manta rays, vanilla plantations, pearl farms and a wealth of Polynesian history. Tuamotous and Tonga would come in as close seconds. The second question is a little harder to answer. And it’s probably a question that I don’t want to have a firm answer to. It kind of feels a little less of an adventure if you know where you’re going. Like most of my fellow cruisers I’d like to say something like ‘I make my plans as I go, based on weather conditions and where people that I hang with want to go’. Or ‘I sail towards places, not necessarily to them’. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have a general plan. A plan that I will try to share with you here.

Going forward I have one major choice to make. Just like I had a few years ago. Do I go the long way around or do I take the canal? Back then it was a choice between the Panama Canal and Cape Horn, this time it’s between the Suez Canal and Cape of Good Hope. Last time I took the short cut, this time I plan to take the long way around Africa. Primarily as I’m not all that keen on sailing into a political melting pot in the Middle East but also because there are a lot of places that I want to see along the longer route. Given that choice I see three major waypoints. Singapore/Malaysia/Thailand, Cape Town and Grenada where I’ll complete my circumnavigation. While these locations are quite clear to me, the routes between them are not.

My immediate plan is to leave New Zealand in a couple of weeks and head back to the tropics. To Fiji, hopefully via Minerva Reef. I’m at least a month behind most of my cruising buddies that are already there and if half of what they’re telling me about Fiji is true I’m sure I’ll want to stay there for a few months before I continue west towards Vanuatu. An independent island nation that boasts two claims to fame. The birth of the bungy jump and the world’s most active volcano. In my mind the risk/reward ratio favours the volcano and I understand that you can hike all the way up to the edge of the crater and look down at the boiling magma. Something that I promised myself that I’ll do when bad weather robbed me of this experience at Stromboli in Italy.

Then I’ll have to decide if I want to go north of Papua New Guinea (PNG) or south? The northern route will take me via the Solomon Islands with all its remains from WWII (and where JFK was shipwrecked), some very remote PNG islands and one of the world’s premier dive spots at Raja Ampat. Areas that I would love to visit but also a route that presents a number of challenges. Namely very light winds, large floating tree trunks from local rivers and, most importantly, piracy. There have been several recently reported incidents north of PNG, one that apparently resulted in fatalities. The general advice seems to be don’t sail on your own and stay far away from the mainland coast. I will only take this route if accompanied by other cruising boats. The other alternative would be to go through the Torres Strait between PNG and Australia towards Bali. Possibly via East Timor and certainly via Komodo with its famous dragons. A 2,500 Nm leg that is less adventurous but offers better winds and safer conditions in return.

My overall strategy behind this circumnavigation is to stay in the tropics as much as possible (I’m from Sweden and I’ve spent too much of my life in the cold), sail west and stay on the side of the equator that has winter at the time that you are there. Summer in the tropical areas that I’ve sailed in brings hurricanes or cyclones, Indonesia tends to get a wet season. Come spring it will get hot and humid with torrential downpours and very little wind. Better than getting caught in a cyclone but far from ideal sailing conditions, particularly if the rain is accompanied by lightning. I plan to avoid this by crossing the equator and sail north towards Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

There are then two routes to Cape Town. Either via Sri Lanka, Maldives and Madagascar or back down to Bali before going west to Cocos Keeling, Mauritius and Reunion. The first route means departing Southeast Asia a little earlier and the second option means more of Indonesia. At this point in time I have no idea which one I’ll go for. I don’t have to make this decision yet but at that time I guess it will depend on how much time I’ll have to explore Indonesia this year, now that I’m a little late leaving New Zealand. That said, I’d hate to give Sri Lanka a miss.

The route between South Africa and the Caribbean is pretty clear. Namibia, Saint Helena, Brasil, Suriname/French Guayana and Grenada. Places not to miss on this route include the skeleton coast and the old diamond mining areas in Namibia, Longbow House on Saint Helena (where Napoleon ended his days), the national park on Fernando de Noronha and the old prison colony in French Guayana (known to anyone that’s read the book or seen the film Papillon).

There you have it. The long way home. In this case, home is Grenada where I plan to cross my own track. Not where I started this journey. Where I go from Grenada though is a part of a different adventure. One that I have no intention of planning at this stage.