After nearly 5 years, here is the short version of a long story.

In March 2015, Mark took a job as Corporate Treasurer at Broadcom and moved back to Silicon Valley.   May 2016 we moved Gray Matter with professional crew to New Zealand.

Having a moveable vacation home in New Zealand is definitely one of life’s great luxuries, and we explored from Bay of Islands to Auckland, including some of the offshore islands (Hen and the Chicken Islands, and Poor Knights).   We tested our coldwater scuba gear, realized we are warm water divers.  And like Australia we now leave New Zealand with a list of places we feel we missed and can’t wait to return to:  Great Barrier Island, Marlborough Sound, and Milford Sound).

Gray Matter continues her upgrade journey, and several major projects accomplished while in New Zealand.   Ten plus years of bottom paint were soda blasted to bare fiberglass, epoxy coated and new antifouling paint applied.   In addition, Gray Matter has overhauled stabilizers with new bearings, seals and hydraulics lines, and a freshly serviced Caterpilar, with value adjustment, new injectors, and all new filters.   After 7 faithful years, the house and start battery bank needed replaced, and we continue to appreciate how power efficient Gray Matter is with solar, and low draw refrigeration.  Polished fuel tanks polished and fuel, before taking on 1200 gallons of duty free fuel on departure; Gray Matter is ready for more adventure.

We are now 150 nautical miles north of the North Island, skirting a bit of weather in the Tasman to the north, we plan to run 50 miles southwest of Norfolk Island before turning west for Brisbane arriving sometime March 23 – 24  (2018!).

Christine continues to hold her academic position in Brisbane, and Mark is now working as a CFO at a start-up in Napa.    Returning to Australia provides an opportunity to use the boat more as we hope to see more of the Great Barrier Reef and make a trip to the Kimberleys before venturing either north to Asia, or back east for a loop through New Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga before heading north.

We’ll add pictures when we have more bandwidth.

We arrived at the Customs and Quarantine dock at 11:30am local time. The first 7 days of our passage were smooth and easy – watching movies, reading books. The Pacific Ocean decided to give us one last reminder of “who’s boss” – and the last 24 hours were some of the most challenging we have seen in the entire voyage. We saw it coming. The grib file we got in Fiji before we left forecast a system developed from South AUS and would bring 20 kt wind along AUS east cost. We knew it would be bad, but thought we can deal with it. Well, it was ROUGH. For 15-20 hr, wind blew out of N NW, with confused sea up to 3 m, short interval. We changed heading a couple times to avoid aggressive rolls. But still, we had 30 degree roll every 20 min, and a couple times 40-45 deg. And once 50 deg! Guess it is good to know the boat can take it, and no damage to the boat or the crew,

After a LONG day and night, it finally calmed down … We arrive Mereton bay in beautiful sunset and cruised in Brisbane river before noon. We are here resting up at Rivergate marine, and it is a beautiful evening on the Brisbane River.

We’ll post a bit later on the perspectives from spending 9 months exploring the Pacific, no question arriving in Brisbane is bittersweet: we accomplished our goal, but sad to make a temporary end to our great adventure.

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The weather forecast looks favorable so Gray Matter eased out of the berth at Port Denerau at 10am local, we expect just over 7 days for the 1400 mile passage to Brisbane Australia.

We posted earlier about how much we are enjoying Fiji. The perfect combination of isolated islands, great diving, and yachting infrastructure. We have now spent a total of 10 days at Port Denerau marina – more days in the marina than anywhere else on the trip. While Gray Matter is a superyacht to us – it is a bit humbling to be med-moored amongst the giants – 100ft+ on all sides.

Port Denarau

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