S/V L'ORIENT

As happy as two people standing a foot away from a 1,000 foot drop into a live volcano can be! As loyal readers remember, L'ORIENT pulled into Scarborough, Australia for a what was to be a five month refit in November. After a ton of work and kilo-dollars of expense we left "Oz" about two months late in the season for our four month "test drive" of the new L'ORIENT. Destination: New Caledonia. Mariners going back hundreds of years have carefully recorded the routes and best times to come and go across the oceans. As we were forced to ignore this because of vendor delays, we've paid for it with rough passages. Generally speaking, 30 knot winds and 10-12 foot seas has been the rule vs. the exception. Not being fond of huge conditions, we've gritted our teeth and trekked on. After our time in Ile des Pins (isle of Pines, for you French-challenged folks), the Loyalty Islands beckoned. Lifou and Ouvea. The problem with the Loyalty Islands is that during t...

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...