Test Drive - L'ORIENT 2.0 makes her debut in New Caledonia
New fierce hard-top and lots new below... We would apologize (again) for not posting monthly, but we've been up to big things. After almost eight months of mostly working on the boat vs. sailing, we've left Australia and are on a four month test drive of our new/old boat. As our devoted readers will recall, we arrived in Bundaberg, Australia at the end of October 2024 a tired crew on a tired boat. Basically, everything on L'ORIENT was 21 years old. Our LCD instruments were difficult to read (and embarrassingly old). It was like having a flip-phone when everyone else has the I-Phone 16. We required a lot of diesel to maintain our lead acid battery power, our solar panels produced anemic energy, etc. We had unreliable refrigeration. And cooking? A hot mess. We had no true oven, just propane burners that burned with a dirty orange flame and left carbon stains on pots and pans. Try doing dishes with Easy-Off as your only effective cleanser. It gets old fast. And the bimini. Ugh...
