Uploading from IPad Email

For this voyage aboard Quantum Leap I will be using an IPad to make my posts....I hope. We believe that we will be able to purchase a cellular hotspot in Indonesi that all computer users aboard the boat will share. If not, I will be back to hunting up wifi or using the boats Sailmail address to make posts. Whatever works! This is a test to see if emailing into the Blog works. If you see this, it did!

Gwen Hamlin
Cafe Getaway
Sent from my iPad

Indonesia Ho! The Two Captains Head Back to Sea

After two years ashore (unless you count our two weeks bareboating in British Columbia last September), The Two Captains are going back to sea...temporarily.

We owe it all to our friends Tom & Bette Lee of sv Quantum Leap, who called us on a chilly winter's day and asked if we would like to crew with them aboard their 52' catamaran for any part of the 2011 Sail Indonesia Rally?

In a heartbeat, we said yes. Well, actually, in a heartbeat I said yes , then thought I'd better ask Don. After staying in Florida last summer, we were already agreed on a plan to be OUT of Florida this summer. However, the agreed-upon plan on the books was an RV trip with the Harley in tow, the very plan that was in Don's dreams when in 2009 after ten years of cruising, we sold our own boat Tackless II in Australia. (See www.thetwocaptains.com for our ten years of voyaging.)

What made Tom and Bette Lee's offer so appealing was that we like them, they have a beautiful catamaran on which we've spent lots of time (under sail during the Musket Cove Regatta and overnight the following summer for Fourth of July shenanigans, also at Musket Cove), plus the Indonesian Rally would have been our own next leg had we continued on. On top of all that, we'll be sailing in the company of other boats we know -- the catamarans Wind Pony and Endangered Species -- to areas reputed to have fine scuba diving.

To my suprise, Don hardly hesitated, so I immediately ordered Lonely Planet Guidebooks! And our enthusiasm really began to kick in when Dick and Lynn of Wind Pony happened to spend a month in our hometown in Florida. Some very fine group dinners ensued, and it ended by their offering us the chance to continue on the second leg of the rally with them. Wow! A double-header opportunity not likely to come again.


Back in January and February, July seemed way off in the future. But here it is just a few weeks away! We have been ticking off all the items on our our own packing list (gotta get the scuba gear serviced!) as well as the ever growing list of requested parts and spares for us to bring for Quantum Leap in our luggage.

Our trip will start with the flight to Brisbane July 6th and a week in the Mooloolaba area visiting all our friends there. Then it will be back in the air for the flight to Darwin to rendezvous with the Quantum Leap.

As I write this QL and friends are approaching Cape York, that huge jagged projection thrusting northward at the very tip top of the Great Barrier Reef. Ahead of them is the passage through the Torres Straits and a thousand mile run across the Gulf of Carpinteria to Darwin.