Of course there was the obligatory 2 hour delay after boarding our Qantas flight on the tarmac, but smooth sailing after that.

We arrived in Christchurch a few days early and spent a bit of time in the city. It’s a small city, but has some fantastic areas, in particular the parks and childrens playgrounds, which were apparently built in the aftermath of the huge earthquake in 2011.

From there we travelled up the coast to Picton (which is where the Ferries leave for the North Island). Picton is a gorgeous little town to spend a day or two.

On the day of the exam we took out the vessel we had hired and after quite a long safety briefing we were underway.

We had about 4 hours to kill before the examiner was arriving, so we spent the time practicing MOB (man overboard) routines, and pulling up to mooring buoys. As I was doing the exam I was skippering the vessel and at the helm most of the time. This meant that Nataliya had to do all the hard work. Lots of work with the boat hook to grab pretend people out of the water, and hook up to the buoys. So she worked a lot harder than I did.

We worked out a nice little system for the buoys whereby Nataliya would stand at the bow and point in the direction of the buoy with the boat hook. This enabled me to know if I needed to adjust to port or starboard. We had a few hand gestures, 3m, 2m, 1m and stop. We’re not sure if we’ll have radios or headsets early on in our journey, so being able to effectively communicate to each other when on board (particularly when operating double-handed).

We did take some video, but didn’t realise it was in time-lapse mode. So here is a couple of extremely quick snippets, so proper video will have to wait for another post.

We then headed back to pick up the examiner, and organised to park at the diesel waiting T-head dock. The tide was pushing the boat away from the dock, and I managed to get everything pretty wrong. Firstly, we completely forgot to prepare lines. Our fenders were out on our starboard side, but none on the port side. Our prop walk was towards port, so although I pulled up nicely alongside, any forward power would push us away from the dock. The dock was also very low so you could only access the dock from the very rear of the vessel. Nataliya managed to hook the dock cleat and while she was tying it up, I left the helm and jumped onto the dock to realise the rear of the boat was being pushed away too quickly. I had committed the cardinal sin, leaving the vessel before she was tied up properly. Thankfully Nat had tied on the bow line. She was now on the boat by herself, and couldn’t get to the helm in time to throw it into reverse to swing from the bow line and bring the aft back around to the dock. The boat did however swing all the way around (thankfully there were no other boats on the dock) so her port side was aligned with the dock, and Nat quickly found a spare fender to prevent any damage. When then tied her up and I got a well deserved dressing down.

Nat did wonderfully well in the situation, and the take aways are, prepare before attempting to dock and don’t leave the vessel until it’s secured.

It was then that I looked over to see the examiner giving us a wave. Rather embarrasing start, thankfully that wasn’t part of the exam! Then of course the actual jetty door was locked so I had to move the boat anyway to the fuel dock. Thankfully that went much smoother.

The exam wasn’t too difficult, having recently done all the theory (of which I remembered about 80% with some lights and sounds my achiles heel) it was really just the practical part which I had to nail. Thankfully with the practice we had gotten in earlier, pulling up to a mooring buoy and doing man overboard drills went smoothly.

Being a single engine vessel he also gave me quite a few tips on manouvering it in tight areas which helped. I then had to take her to dock and do a stern-to mooring next to another vessel. This went surprisingly well without incident.

In the end we had a great day, I passed and we had a great trip to NZ (albeit it only 4 days). If anyone is looking to do this practical for an ICC license, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll provide the contact details.

Oh, and I have to call-out the car in front of us as we drove back from Picton to Christchurch that evening. We were following at a safe distance, but he was driving very erratically. It took me a while to figure out what he was doing. Literally every car or truck coming the other way, he would swerve a few metres to the left and brake losing about 15kms each time. Once there were three cars on literally a straight section of road and he went from doing about 80kms to 30kms. We were stuck behind him for about an hour, as most of it was windy roads, but honestly it was some of the worst driving I’ve ever witnessed. Once we begin our journey we’ll be boating and biking so we’re hoping those on the water have a bit more sense!

In Australia, and particularly Victoria you do a Marine license course. It takes about half a day and you don’t even touch a boat. At the end you can drive any power vessel or sailing vessel with very minor limitations such as not commercially or chartering. Which after doing the proper online theory course (see below) feels like quite a dangerous system.

In Europe (and in fact most of the world) the license required is called an ICC (International Certificate of Competence) and there are quite a few different categories. Our vessel falls in the over 10m power boat category (which is for vessels between 10m and 24m I believe). This serves as evidence of competence in foreign countries, and is also required by insurers.

In Australia to get an ICC accreditation you need to do both the theory and practical components at an accredited RYA (Royal Yachting Association) training center. Sounds simple enough, except, there is nowhere in Australia that provides a practical for power boats over 10m. I don’t mean, nowhere close to me, I mean nowhere in the entirety of Australia.

The theory is online, and I worked my way through it with Navathome Australia with success on the Day Skipper course. It is pretty in depth and takes about 40 hours to do it properly. It includes a good understanding of tidal heights, tidal streams and their affect on vessels, safe anchoring, safety, understanding beacons, buoys and lights, navigation with electronics, and navigation via paper charts. Nataliya is working her way through it at the moment (and if I even glance over what she is doing and offer any help I get daggers sent my way…so I shan’t be doing that any longer).

I had to then contact the RYA in the UK (as Australia is still part of the Commonwealth, and we haven’t signed up to the ICC accreditation scheme, the RYA of the UK is the body that overseas any training). After a few days I got a response that I could do a practical test at the Auckland Sailing School. After the initial….they do realise that New Zealand is a completely separate country to Australia and the flight there is about 3.5 hours (the equivalent of flying from London to Athens), I set about contacting Phil from the sailing school.

The next hurdle to overcome was the availability of a vessel. The sailing school didn’t have any power boats over 10m to use, so we had to rent one for a day. Prices in NZ are ridiculous for short term rentals, about 50% more than here in Australia. In the end we paid about $1600AUD ($1120USD) for a single day use of a suitable vessel. Noting that the vessel is pretty old, has a bow thruster but no stern, and is a single inboard engine, 36ft/11m in length. It will just be me (Will) doing the practical license. The aim is for Nataliya to do her practical in the UK in our own vessel at a later date.

With that booked in for the 12th of February, flights booked and Phil booked I just need to ensure that I pass. I did have a smaller power boat for a couple of years about 15 years ago, and have chartered some larger power boats for a few days here and there in the last 3 years, however things such as manouvering into tight berths, anchoring to anchor buoys and MOB (man overboard) scenarios are not something I have done much of!

Back to the petting zoo this week, school holidays ended and we have cut our days down to Friday-Sunday. We have managed to organise caretakers who will work with us through April, and run the zoo while we are on our travels from April 20.

In the mean time there are more certifications required. VHF Radio and CEVNI (European inland canals and waterways) which will need to be completed before we submit the licence application to the RYA UK for ICC - so all the necessary boxes should be checked for us to drive our vessel in Europe and the UK.

Being only February, we still feel we have enough time to iron out any kinks in our plans as they arise. We have our fingers crossed the boat survey comes back without any major issues.

After the disappointment of the Velder 63 we moved on to see what else was out there. Slowly we were upping our price range in our searches, looking for explorer style yachts. What started as “well this is out of our price range but wouldn’t it be cool”, turned into something more tangible.

Meet Sophia

Sophia is a big (19.4m / 63ft) explorer yacht designed by Pieter Beeldsnijder and launched in 1995. Yes, she’s 30 years old. However, she has a 3000nm range, with 6370lt fuel tanks, was fully refitted between 2019 and 2021, this included both interior and electronics. Her hull is aluminium, and she has hydraulic stabilizers and the hullvane system installed.

Hullvane is a Dutch company working on both commercial and recreational vessels with their Hull Vane and Foil Assist systems to greatly improve vessel comfort and fuel economy.

The interior includes the luxury of a modern vessel, big screen TV and plenty of windows providing fantastic light.

The master bedroom even includes a sauna adjacent to the bathroom. Nataliya being of Ukrainian heritage absolutely loves a sauna, and the idea of jumping between the sea and the sauna instantly appealed.

There were a few shortfalls, but nothing we weren’t willing to overcome:

• No tender included

• No solar

• No Starlink

• Very small kitchenette

• Had been for sale for 2 years so perhaps had not been maintained

So, based solely on a short youtube video:

And the information on the Elburg Yachting website, we enquired. Our initial offer (similar to our max bid on the Velder 63 - see our previous post) was turned away, but at least we got a reply.

We loved the boat, and really were stretching things financially, but put a final offer to forward which they took to the owner.

We realised that in most circumstances these boats are the pride and joy of the owner, so instead of trying to talk up the fact it was 30 years old, or that it had been for sale for quite some time, we decided to be completely honest. We loved the boat, we would give it as much love as we could, but we could only afford a certain amount, and we realised that the vessel was worth more than we were offering.

A call from Floris at Elburg let us know that this was actually a possibility. The owner was putting an offer in for a new boat for himself, and if that offer was accepted he would agree to sell to us. This news had us over the moon, but still with the uncertainty that something would go wrong and it wouldn’t happen.

Although we were informed it might take a couple of weeks, it only took a couple of days. The owner had his offer on a new vessel agreed, and true to his word, a contract of sale was on the way to us.

We don’t know if this is the normal way things happen when buying boats, we knew there was a bit of negotiation to be expected, and some leeway in the advertised price, but we found Floris and Thomas at Elburg to be fantastic and easy to work with. There was no attempt at haggling, we explained our situation, and made a genuine offer.

Unlike buying at auction, our contract of sale is subject to a technical survey and sea test. So after contacting a surveyor in the Netherlands we await the results. Floris sent me a photo of the boat quite literally in a car park awaiting the surveyor.

Photos don’t do it justice just how big a boat this actually is. We’re hoping this bit of luxury doesn’t come at the cost of not being able to find marina spaces in the future.

While we await the survey results, there are some other things to take care of, more on that another day!

After convincing Nataliya that having a huge mortgage and a boat is a good idea, I set about finding a vessel that we could sail across the world. This CE A rated boat was up for auction at the De Valk auction website: https://brightauctions.com

With no survey, and only a walk through video posted by Yachtbuoy on youtube as well as the De Valk write up, we had a decision to make. Aluminium hull, a 2500nm range, only 15 years old, modern electronics and a pretty funky tender garage. The boat itself seemed perfect for what we needed, albeit a little bit flawed with very small saloon space. However, with just the two of us, and IF it was a bargain price we decided to go for it.

Being in Australia the auction was at 5am in the morning, so we set our alarms, made a pact not to go above $280,000 EUR (it had been listed for more than twice that). Bidding at auction on something with inherent risks was very nerve wracking. We were excited about the possibilities, but of course without a technical survey and spending that much money (that we had to borrow), it came with real danger of us quite plainly being impulsive and pretty stupid.

Making life changing decisions at 5am in the morning when you’ve been awake for about 10 minutes is not recommended. 17 others bidders came and went, and it came down to us and one other bidder. With just a few minutes before the auction times out after each bid, and our limit exhausted we had decisions to make. Each bid was costing us over $10k Australian.

At one point we were all smiles and high fiving when the other bidder placed their bid with 1 second remaining.

In the end we maxed out at $320,000EUR, the winner taking it home for if you investigate what is available, is a pretty decent bargain providing it is in the condition it appears.

So we’d missed out. We were immediately disappointed. Could we have gone higher? Should we have gone higher? What would the loan repayments look like? What else is out there comparable? Will we ever find something else we like as much as this?

All these questions and our disappointment however cemented the fact that this had gone from, if we manage to pick up a stunning boat at a ridiculously low price lets do this, to we are doing this, lets get all our ducks in a row and figure it out!!

I will say that even though we were the second highest bidder for the vessel we felt little underwhelmed by De Valk. We had sent a couple of emails to them prior asking for basic information and they responded with extremely brief answers. After the auction I sent an email just to say that we were the second highest bidder and if there are any issues with settlement on the vessel let us know. We got a one sentence response that the vessel had been awarded to the highest bidder and buyer had initiated payment. Given we had committed through the auction to spending $320k EUR which we obviously didn’t win, we were exceptionally surprised that nobody reached out to us to discuss other options or vessels available. Given De Valk is probably the leading boat broker in Europe, it was quite surprising. However, this may be more of a cultural thing and normal way of doing business in the Netherlands, which isn’t so bad as it means you aren’t being pressured by sales people.

For now however, we had our sights set firmly on finding another vessel.

Very soon we’ll start posting regular videos. For now, if you’re reading this, sit tight—there’s plenty of informative, fun, and just plain silly content coming your way.

In the meantime, here are a few photos of us from 2017, when we drove our own steampunk-themed rickshaw over 2,500km from Jaisalmer in the north of India to Kerala in the south.

Once COVID hit, we—like everyone else—were predominantly locked down. When that was finally over, the last three years turned into a whirlwind. We sold our comfortable house in the suburbs of Melbourne, bought a hobby farm, quit our white-collar jobs, bought every farm animal possible, built a petting zoo / children’s farm, retired from playing local football, imported an Airstream food van, realised the house on the farm wasn’t worth renovating and demolished it, finally opened the petting zoo in March 2025, lived without indoor plumbing for nearly all of 2025 while building a new house—and somehow emerged with a roof over our heads and an income (albeit about half of what we used to earn).

Then, after a death in the family, we were reminded that life is pretty short… so let’s get back out there and explore.

Our next chapter, however, is a new adventure—one completely foreign to us—and we’re keen to share the trials, tribulations, and elations with anyone who wants to come along for the ride.

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