Jumped Ship

 
In reality more like a triple jump; one from the yacht Barfly, two from my Marketing career and three from my world over land & sea circumnavigation.

 

Yacht Barfly

I boarded her at Cuba in January and until Fiji in October she was my floating home, I didn't sleep another night anywhere in all that time. 

Nine months in the bow

Initially the plan had been to sail with Barfly all the way to New Zealand, however upon a bit of rough calculation I realised that this would add another 3000 miles to my over land and sea route. It was this fact amongst others that led me to jump ship at the furthest west longitude that I could. Fiji; which happened to be the last stop before Barfly went south to New Zealand.

No Pictures

An additional influence was the captain's lady friend arriving for a three week sail around Fiji. Her arrival gifts included what could only be described as an ornamental version of the rampant rabbit, which was subsequently hung up in the saloon. Say no more - it sure set the tone for primary activity of the forthcoming weeks. 

Finally and true to my financially motivated form, Fiji presented the first option since Panama for a cheap (£4/night) dorm in a hostel (ain't no backpackers east of Fiji). The ability to hole up somewhere acceptably priced was the final card in my decision to go 'all in' on the bet that I'd be able to find another boat out of Fiji. Ideally headed to somewhere in easy reach of SE Asian landmass. That had been the plan....

Barfly - Pacific Crossing 2012 - Epic

 

Marketing Career

 

It's been two and a half years since I've opened Microsoft Outlook and with plans as they were upon arriving in Fiji, I'd have been home by late summer of 2013.

With a pretty cool tale to tell, a more confident smile and a return to London my bets were that I could have secured a start tomorrow type Marketing contract, all be it further down the ladder than when I'd left. With that entry back into my career, I could have worked on a route back up north of the border. However, after meeting a continual stream of cashed up Auzi 'dudes' I started to consider jumping the 'marketing ship'. 

Auzi 'dude' Index

The money appeared to be on a fly in fly out type career in one of Australia's natural resource industries. The plan being to identify a way in and then hit it as hard as possible for the next 5-10 years and establish some sort of equity.

The question was by which route to make my way in? The well known saying, 'it's not what you know, it's who you know' had never ever been true for me; until now.

An immaculately paved, chauffeur driven road has been presented to me by the Rt. Hon Bruce McKenzie, aka Madog. All stand to applaud. My first destination being Ultrasonic testing of weld and plate integrity, in the parts of an offshore platform that require access via rope. Off to Australia mid January to start my training.

Will be all in a days work

Global over land & sea mission

This was never really a serious mission, I just felt that the standard 'buy flights and hop around the world', gap year type thing just wasn't challenging enough. I've taken a few flights (short and back the way), but have actually achieved the overland or sea crossing of every degrees of longitude between La Rochelle and Brisbane*. That's 205 of the world's 360 degree and in reality with the crossing of the Atlantic and the Pacific under my belt, the hardest degrees are done.

What remains for a 360

From Fiji the plan had been to sail with some Spanish lads to Thailand, make my way overland to SE Turkey and then try and cycle back to Glasgow from there. However, the afore mentioned offer of assistance from The Rt Hon Mr. McKenzie feels to me to be a 'strike while the iron is hot' opportunity. Therefor time to jump ship on the circumnavigation. 
The remaining 155 degrees of the the world's longitude remain and I'll do that at some point in the future. Most probably, after over-landing Australia at some point I'll then make the final part of the Meander from Bali to Glasgow.

In the mean time I decided to finish this part of the world tour in style by flying back to Fiji and blowing my remaining budget on staying at a 'backpackers resort', which ironically was once the location for 'Celebrity Love Island'.

Mission Impossible: The Tropical Barrel**  

* Long Story; Jumped Ship from Barfly, shelved plans to continue world trip due to opportunity on the rigs, but still wanted to cover the longitude between Fiji and Australia over sea. Therefore when the opportunity to sail to Australia arose, I took it and then flew back to Fiji to stay until the training starts for the rigs late January. The training and my base will be Perth Australia. The South Pacific Islands are like the planet's jewelery and I just couldn't think of a place I rather see out the final months of this part of the Meander. Will keep writing the Blog though...

** It appears that even after all the surfing on the meander I am still shit at it. Here; the wave I've located myself at in Fiji is the first right hander of the trip and it shows. For those not in the know - this is the full Barrel pose - except I'm about 6ft in-front of it. Ha, and what's that hand doing?