Month: July 2024

Sea Bella is Sold and sleeping in a pit in Fiji. Bittersweet for sure.

by Scott and Kathy Erwin, Sail the World, posted in Uncategorized

Cha cha cha changes…. 🎶🎶🎶
Wow-o-wow! We are spending the last night on our beautiful Sea Bella tonight! She is tucked away in a pit in Vuda Marina, Fiji. Her new owners await the end cyclone season and one more year of elementary school for their two boys. Krister and Amanda Bowman are from Alaska and will will keep her name Sea Bella. Such a warming thought for us! They will attempt to finish their circumnavigation, since they already have sailed from the US to FP to Fiji 9 yers ago.


It is with a little sadness and great love that we say goodbye to a special home and piece of equipment that has kept us safe for thousands of miles and adventures. We have quickly identified this as completion of “Chapter 1” of our cruising adventures and we are already looking forward to Chaper 2. Sea Bella sold very quickly to a young family of 4 in Alaska that will start cruising her next May. Nice that they have chosen to keep her name. Over the last few days Kathy and I have been carefully decommissioning Sea Bella for a 9 month sleep.


So, what’s next? We have been graciously offered a boat to hang out and baby sit for the next six weeks from our good friends on Nirvana (50’ Voyage cat). We have been cruising with them off and on since Mexico and they are going home to see their daughter get married. So, a bit more time in Fiji for us to decompress and see some of these beautiful islands. Nirvana is for sale here in Fiji so if you have any questions about this beautiful cat reach out.

Another option is buying Nirvana, it’s actually for sale!

Then, Chapter 2 awaits us. We consciously decided not to buy a new boat before we sold the last, so now begins our process of finding our next home/boat. We will be couch surfing for a few months seeing family (California and Texas) and will be traveling to see potential boats.

As much as we would love to have a boat be right here, we are very picky in choosing our next chariot. We will go anywhere in the world to find the “right” boat and already have considered boats in Virginia, Turkey and Australia.

Catamarans are very roomy!p
Just one option

Stay tuned…..our adventures are gunna get faster with more space for toys and guests. We absolutely love our family and friends and we look forward to seeing you all sometime in the near future. This diagram explains our research process these next two months. These are all boat types, varying in Performance, speed and comfort.

Tonga for six weeks! Lovely small Island vibe!

by Scott and Kathy Erwin, Sail the World, posted in Travel

Exploring Vava’u, Tonga by sailboat offers an exhilarating blend of busy adventure and relaxation. 🌴 We alternated between relaxing in anchorages and lively town experiences, seizing opportunities to sell our unneeded items, like our spare outboard, spare compressor and even our extra pork (just ask in the comments). Photographing our sweet Sea Bella for sale (now sold to a family from Alaska!) and marveling at the majestic flying foxes, we found joy in every moment. The busy Saturday market added a touch of color and warmth to our journey, with new hats, shells and a trivet. Our biggest and last task was clearing out of the country and fueling up. This was a 4 hour job, since the fuel arrives on a truck from afar and needs to be called in a day ahead. Cruisers either pull up to a gas dock (sometimes a sketchy dock like this one) or vote for hauling it in Jerry cans. We typically try to sail to anchorages, but here in Tonga, we found a maze of little islands to go around, as you see in our tracks. We would sail a bit then turn, finding the wind at our nose (for the non sailor friends, one cannot sail into the wind).

Our town experiences were quite opposite to French Polynesia, as we ate out many days since the food and prices were great. Yoga continues to be a hit, on a dock, barge or under a giant Banyan tree. Overall, Tonga enchanted us, and we eagerly anticipate our next visit on a catamaran!

Howdy from Fiji! We are in the lower Island Vet Letu is massive!

We are in Fiji in a marina now and life is pretty busy! We have many plates being juggled at the moment. But, the short of it is, yes we are under contract to sell Sea Bella. Bittersweet for sure but definitely the right move, timing, location…The new owners are a young family from Alaska who want to continue our path and head west! They are keeping her name!! Strange though, they won’t be coming down till next May. We need to strip the boat and store everything below for cyclone season. 

If all goes well, we move off Sea Bella about July 20, with suitcases in hand and move on to babysit a 54 foot catamaran for 8 weeks-Nirvana. We can cruise around Fiji, and Derek visits us then too! Living on a cat will be a change, fun and very weird as we will feel homeless. A good trial run for us as well. 

We then will fly to Ca, mid September, readjust, breathe and continue the process of selling a house in Atascadero (listed yesterday) and searching for a catamaran in Virginia (if all goes well). A real 3 ring circus! 

If we find the perfect boat, hahaha, then we will cruise the Caribbean , San Blas, then through the Panama Canal, head through some new places in southern French Polynesian and back to where we left off, just a year or 2 later. Haha! Is that a lap and a half around the globe? 🌎 

The Flying Fox, Kingdom of Tonga

by Scott and Kathy Erwin, Sail the World, posted in Uncategorized
Huge tree above, filled with bats the size of cats!

Reflecting back, we really enjoyed watching the huge Tongan Flying Fox, a giant bat that often flies in the day time. We would hear them chattering and crying like little puppies.

Like most species of bat, this flying fox roosts in colonies high up, but this one in the jungle canopy. Our drone video shows a large group right near our boat, in the Neiafu anchorage, keeping us all well entertained. These bats favor lowland forests, cliffs, islets, and swampy areas. Tongan Flying foxes eat fruit, pollen and nectar. I have seen them flying around the mango and orange trees in late afternoons all around the bays of Vava’u.

#Tonga #islandlife #animallover #sailinglife #circumnavigation #sailorlife #boatlife #happy #bats