Welcome to the website of Crimson Tide
Crimson Tide is our floating home, a 11m sailing yacht designed by well known Dutch designer ‘van de Stadt’ and built in New Zealand by Peter and Linda Wallis in Whakapirau on the Kaipara Harbour on Northland’s west coast. She was launched in 1989. The Wallises lived on Crimson Tide in Whangarei’s Town Basin and sailed on her to the Polynesian islands in 1994. We bought the boat off them in December 1995.
In September ’97 we took up permanent residence on board (yes, 8.5 years ago!)
The ‘97/’98 summer was used for a shake-down cruise circumnavigating the North Island of New Zealand. We set off on our first blue water passage to Tonga in May1998. Via Fiji, Vanuatu and New Caledonia we ended up in Brisbane-Australia 6 months later.
During October 1999 we sailed back across the Tasman Sea directly to Whangarei. We celebrated the Millennium change in New Zealand and enjoyed the action around the America’s Cup Challenge on the Hauraki Gulf from the deck of Crimson Tide. May 2000 saw us heading for Polynesia again, this time to New Caledonia, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and back to Whangarei.
After an extensive re-fit where Crimson Tide was converted from a ketch to a sloop and some other changes including a new engine. We left New Zealand again in 2002, this time to head further a-field; destination SE Asia. After some time in Vanuatu and New Caledonia we passed the cyclone season in Australia and in May 2003 set off from Brisbane to Darwin. In August we cleared out of Australia and for 2 months we traveled through Indonesian waters in company with another boat via a route less traveled by yachts. We didn’t see another yacht for 6 weeks until we arrived in Singapore. 2004 and 2005 were spent exploring Malaysia and Thailand, on and off the water. We survived the tsunami unscathed in Phuket!
After 8.5 years and having clocked 25000 miles on Crimson Tide we have still not been around the world and may never do so. We have not even covered a quarter of the circle. But looking back we feel our best times by far were at those places where we lingered and got to know the locals personally. We like to think of ourselves as travelers, with at odd times being ‘just tourists’. We go slowly which gives us the advantage.
We try to maintain Crimson Tide in top condition which is an eternal process. We do some local cruising and find the areas around Langkawi and further north, into Thailand, very interesting and we intend to spend a lot of time there in the right season. There are plenty of possibilities in this part of the world for more challenging journeys though.
Our plan for 2006 was to do a circuit of the Indian Ocean visiting Andaman Islands, Cochin on mainland India, down the Maldives’ chain of islands and on to the Chagos archipelago and return to Malaysia in July/August. This has been postponed due to family circumstances and an exciting job offer from Shell for Jacob, starting in June in Kuala Lumpur. We did visit the Indian Andaman Islands in February/March. We returned to Malaysia on 15/3. Until the wet season starts in June we will be cruising in Thai waters showing its secret coves to Deena’s sister Annemarie and husband Robert and later to our son Arend and his fiancé Laura.
We intend to keep a record of our travels, photos and occasionally ‘interesting’ stuff. Crimson Tide’s position is regularly (almost daily) updated and can be viewed as well. Zoom in, it’s fun!