In January 2017 my husband Eric Sponberg and I departed St. Augustine, FL, on our 35-foot sailboat Corroboree with the goal of sailing around the world. I have no idea whether we will make it. As with any journey, the path is never as straight as you optimistically plan. But you go anyway, in hopes of a great adventure and because you can’t ignore the tug in your heart that beckons you on.
This blog will be the story of our voyage…and much more.
Until now, and despite the many croc warning signs we’ve seen on our Australian travels, Eric and I had never glimpsed a crocodile in the wild. That changed during our 4-day visit to Kakadu National Park at the end of September. Located east of Darwin, this enormous and rugged World Heritage site encompasses almost 20,000 […]
When Eric and I sailed across the Arafura Sea in August, we passed from the state of Queensland into the Northern Territory (NT), and though it isn’t as drastic as being swept up by a tornado and crash landing in a fantasy world of Munchkins, witches and a fake wizard, we are learning there’s more […]
Sometimes, you want to bang your head against a bulkhead. Sometimes, you want to murder the other person on board. And sometimes, you just have to laugh at yourself, your expectations, and the realities of trying to sail around the world. In our 3-week, 1,150-mile voyage from Cooktown to Darwin, we did all of that. […]
In June 1770, after striking the Great Barrier Reef, Capt. James Cook and his crew beached their damaged ship Endeavour on the riverbank of what was to become Cooktown and spent seven weeks making repairs. In June 2021, after striking the Great Barrier Reef, Eric and I hauled out our damaged boat Corroboree at the […]
Anything can go wrong at any time, I wrote in my last blog post. On 1 June at Lizard Island, things went horribly wrong for us and Corroboree. The short story is that we bumped the reef coming into Lizard Island and broke our rudder. The longer version begins the previous night when we anchored […]
When Eric and I sailed from England to California on Duprass in 1977-78, we met an outgoing English couple whose sailing motto was “So Far, So Good.” They employed this phrase, they explained, so as not to become overconfident and assume that just because any particular leg of a voyage was going smoothly that it […]
When Corroboree sailed north from Bundaberg in late April 2020, there was still some hope that the recently declared Covid-19 pandemic would be brought quickly under control and we could proceed to Indonesia as planned. By the time we reached Townsville at the end of June, it was clear we weren’t going anywhere. And as […]
In December 1871, three prospectors—Hugh Mosman, George Clark, John Fraser—and their horse boy, a young Aboriginal named Jupiter, were searching for gold when their horses got spooked in a thunderstorm and bolted. Jupiter, so named for his luminous eyes, was sent to retrieve them, and when he found the horses beside a stream, his eyes […]
The first thing you learn when you’re diagnosed with a melanoma in Australia is that virtually every Aussie has either had one themselves or can claim a friend or family member who has. That’s not surprising in a country that is: 1) populated largely by people of white-skinned European descent, and 2) exposed to intense […]
What a difference a year makes! In January 2020, bushfires were ravaging Australia, and my blog post was titled “Australia is Burning.” In January 2021, rain is the order of the day. Not to mention two cyclones within two weeks. On 3 January, Cyclone Imogen struck the York Peninsula, the pointy tip of northeast Australia, […]