s/v INFIDIEN

February 3, 2007 update

In April of 2001, Rick, Patti & Jessie Miller acquired Southern Terrier, a South African custom built aluminium cutter lying in Simpson Bay Lagoon, St. Maarten.  She was renamed "Infidien" in honor of one of five-year-old Jessica's artful misquotations; the tender is "Beyond".

During the remainder of 2001 we prepared the boat in Trinidad and cruised Tobago, Venezuela, the ABC's, Columbia and eastern Panama.

After a 6 week layover in early 2002 at the Pedro Miguel Yacht Club we set off across the Pacific in March to the Galapagos, then Nuku Hiva and Oua Poa in the Marquesas Islands and  Fakarava in the Tuamotos.  In the Society Islands, we visited Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea, Taha'a and Bora Bora with Jessie's cousin Megan from Oregon.  A month on each Aitutaki and Suwarrow in the Cook Islands were followed by stops in American Samoa and (Western) Samoa.  By early November we had cruised the Vava'u and Ha'apai Island groups of the Kingdom of Tonga and were preparing for the passage to New Zealand.  While stopped at the mid-ocean Minerva Reefs we assisted in the rescue and salvage of the yacht Pneuma, which had run aground on South Minerva Reef. 

After a rough passage to New Zealand, we made landfall at Opua where we spent a few weeks repairing Infidien and outfitting a Nissan van for our New Zealand road trip.  We spent 5 weeks touring both New Zealand islands, focusing on the rock climbing venues.   In March, we moved Infidien to Tauranga for more refitting and surfing before our return to the tropics.

Arriving in Fiji in June of 2003, we spent 4 months cruising and kite boarding before heading north for Tuvalu, Kiribati and finally the Marshall Islands.  The outer atolls of the Marshalls were a paradise of diving, crafts, WWII relics and kite boarding, enough to entice a few boats to stay a year, but we moved on:  Micronesia and a wonderful stay in Kapingamaringi, short stops in the Solomon Islands and Papau New Guinea, and on to Darwin, Australia.  In Darwin we joined 39 other boats for a rally to West Timor and meandered our way through the southern Indonesian islands to Bali.  Then to Borneo for a fascinating visit to an Orangutan Rehabilitation Center up the Kumai River and on to Singapore.   Patti and Jessie flew home for a visit in November while Rick single-handed up the Malacca Straits to Langkawi, Malaysia.  

A season on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula featured a typhoon, a tsunami, rock climbing and lots of great cruising.  In March we set off across the Bay of Bengal to the Maldives, followed by 6 weeks in Chagos and a month in Seychelles.  After a quick stop in Mayotte we spent two very pleasant months in northwestern Madagascar, crossed the channel to Ilha Mocambique and continued south along the coast to South Africa.

We spent 2 months at the Zululand Yacht Club in Richards Baai and 2 months at the False Bay Yacht Club in Simon's Town, where we refitted Infidien for our passage to the Caribbean.  Fortunately, we were able to find spare time for rock climbing, hiking and sight seeing before departing Cape Town on March 8 for Tobago via St. Helena; Fortaleza, Brazil and Cayenne, French Guyana.  On April 29 at 2100, Infidien crossed her outbound track in Man of War Bay, Tobago, thus completing her 4 1/2 year circumnavigation.

Infidien has been sold, thanks to the tireless efforts of our intrepid broker Tony Brewer at The Little Ship Company, and we are back in Golden, Colorado, living out the American Dream... until the next adventure.

This page is an cost cutting abbreviation of the original version which contained hundreds of photos and narratives of the 37 countries and places in between that we visited along the way.  For additional information, please contact me at rick@infidien.com.

SimpleViewer requires Macromedia Flash. Get Macromedia Flash. If you have Flash installed, click to view gallery

 

"That's what a ship is, you know, it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.  But what a ship is,... really is, is freedom.

 

                                                                 -Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow

                                                                 Pirates of the Caribbean, The Black Pearl

 

"She was just a ship"

 

 

                                                                 -Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow

                                                                 Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dead Man's Chest