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The Hacking Family |
WHAT'S NEW ON THE SITE
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Welcome to the Hacking family website with Sue, Jon, Chris, and Amanda on Ocelot, our 45-foot Wauquiez designed catamaran. We've been on this trip since December, 2001 sailing from the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal and on across the South Pacific. The past year we have been in the Republic of Fiji, where we enjoyed the colorful Indo-Fijian culture and food as well as the easy, laid-back Fijian hospitality. In October 2005 we sailed southwest about 700 miles to the French territory of New Caledonia. After a glorious month inside the reef of New Caledonia we crossed 800 miles of the Coral Sea to Brisbane, Australia, arriving in November, 2005. Sadly, we gave Vanuatu a miss: partly for time and partly due to the malaria issues. Sailing to Australia was our original goal when we left from St. Maarten in 2001. Now that we've arrived -- well, there's so much more world to see! Our current plan is to stay in southern Queensland throughout the cyclone season. Stay tuned for our further adventures. Like most cruisers, our plans are prone to change on short notice! A new look to the photos -
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----- December 2005 ----- Friends have loaned us a mobile phone so we can now be
contacted instantly: +6143 141 8826. We've now started our coverage of
New Caledonia
with illustrated copies of the newsletters we sent on passage and
our first few weeks there. We have now added more pages on the
Flora & Fauna of Tonga & Fiji.
Plus there's a whole new section on
Marine Mammals. ----- August 2005 ----- Jon's published some tricks and traps for
others attempting to put together a website like ours. ----- April 2005 ----- People often ask us about our cruising life,
Ocelot, and the reasons for the decisions we've made. We
now have enough of these questions to publish some of
them (with answers) for other folks to read. Our Ocelot section has been completely redone, with
some info on ocelots, lots of new pictures and Amanda's great new
layout drawing. We've even
added a new modifications
section to show what we've changed in turning an ex-charter boat into a
blue-water cruising home. Arthur, our beloved sailing cat, was going to suffer greatly crossing more oceans and sitting out months of quarantine in Australia. In March we flew him "home" to Northern California to live with Jon's dad where he is now happily climbing trees and warming laps in a non-floating house. |
----- December 2005 ----- Our Fiji coverage now includes new pages on
S Vanua Levu,
E Viti Levu,
Southern Islands,
W Viti Levu, the
Mamanucas & the
Yasawas. Our Fiji Diving
page includes the 4 dives we did in the Mamanucas. We've also
added GPS positions for all of our dives. Sue's Log pages have now been restructured
and reorganized. Her newest log entry talks about relationships on board. ----- August 2005 ----- We've been trying to get Sue's brother's daughter,
Emilia, to visit for several years, and finally got our wish. ----- April 2005 ----- Even without Chris on board, we are still doing
underwater photography, and have used Chris's instruction to help us! Jon's sister's daughter, Rori, brought to Ocelot a
bubbly, vibrant, fun-loving, and slightly cheeky attitude. The bumper sticker
on her car reads "Redheads do what blondes only dream about!" Jon's father last visited when we were
still converting Ocelot from a charter boat to a cruising boat.
This time we got to play with Colin. Christopher has decided that, while cruising on Ocelot was wonderful,
higher education was calling him. He moved back to Washington where he did
very well on his AP exams and then worked for the summer at J-Street, a software
startup company. He started his Computer Science studies at
the University of Washington in September. |
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On The Site:
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Check out our Landfalls pages, divided between the Caribbean and the Pacific, to see where we've been and our impressions of each place. Amanda has done an extraordinary job with the 'hot-spotted' maps throughout the Landfalls section, making the geography much more intuitive. |
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Our Newsletters section contains newly illustrated copies of the email newsletters we send out. These reflect our at-the-moment thoughts and feelings. We've also included valuable cruising information for places like the Galapagos, Marquesas, Tonga, and Fiji. |
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The Flora and Fauna section documents many of the plants and animals we've encountered. There's also a Marine Mammals section. |
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The Underwater pages showcase our underwater photography and scuba diving. |
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On our Ocelot pages you can see pictures of the boat from the deck, cockpit, and inside, her layout, specifications and even some of the modifications we've made to turn her into an ocean cruiser. |
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Jon is an Electrical & Computer Engineer (see his resume) so his pages include his technical slant on some of the boat systems as well as a collection of stories from when we cruised in the 1980s. |
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Sue's pages include the culinary aspects of cruising (provisioning info and recipes) and insights into the cruising life. Sue, aka Sue Muller Hacking, is a writer (see her bio) with several published books and hundreds of articles to her credit. |
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Chris writes about our inland travels, underwater photography, his projects and schooling. |
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Amanda brings lots of pictures, her unique teen perspective, plus school projects. |
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The Boat Guests pages are designed to make everyone jealous of our visitors and want to come down themselves! We've even included a What to Bring page. |
 The Yasawa Islands of western Fiji
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Sailing Stats: In December 2004, after
3 years on board, we compiled the following sailing statistics:
Website Stats: We now have about 425 pages (including 1,500 pictures and maps, and 10,000 hyperlinks) on the site. It takes us 6-8 hours to produce just a single page, so this site represents a lot of work. In April, 2005 the website was getting about 300 unique visitors a day or almost 7,500 per month and in May we were averaging 350 unique visitors a day! While the majority of these come from the USA, we're also getting a surprising number of hits from all over the world! |
 Pristine & deserted beaches in W Fiji |
 Sunset in the Vava'u Group of Tonga |
Archived Homepages:
Jon's Pages:
Top Level: Home | Destinations | Cruising Info | Underwater | Boat Guests | Ocelot | Sue | Jon | Amanda | Chris | Site Map | Make a Comment
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Copyright © 2000‑ Contact: Jon and Sue Hacking -- HackingFamily.com, svOcelot.com. All rights reserved.
