Be careful John.
Life is a daring adventure...
or nothing at all.
We have whales in front of us.
What the actual heck.
I'm Kristina and this is John.
Together we just packed up our lives
Kristina Costalos joins me now
Put our careers on hold, to sail around Australia
in our new home Tucana, a 50-foot Jeanneau Sun Odyssey.
She needed some work, but now we're ready
we're going through the heads
for the real adventure to begin.
If you're new here, welcome and thanks for joining our crew
You've joined us at the right time.
After a false start.
A lockdown and $40,000 in upgrades and maintenance
we're sailing Tucana out of Melbourne's Sandringham Yacht Club
without knowing when or if we'll ever be back.
We are away.
What an awesome feeling. We have been waiting for this moment for two and a half months now.
We were farewelled by our friends which was so special
and emotional because we don't have any family here in Melbourne.
So in front of us we're in company with a vessel called Skyfall
and on board is Tracy and BA.
This is obviously our first, our very very first attempt through the heads. Once we're out of Port Phillip Bay it'll be a
two to three day non-stop 260 nautical mile sail to Bermagui.
I've got my boots, I've got my big thick jacket and I've got my thermals
and also a mid layer.
And as i gear up
hair up, no makeup
I say goodbye to my old life and job
The fabulous the gorgeous Cate Cebrano who joins us live right now how lucky are we....
Where are we? On a boat.
I can't believe we're doing this.
Caught up in the moment I was feeling pretty excited until the first of four dramas unfolded.
Be careful John.
The spinnaker halyard got away.
Oh.
Just be careful John, oh that was close.
This is what happened.
and I was like bugger, that, we're probably not going to use the headsail for a while,
I'll go forward and put them back on the lifelines
and just as I got it on the lifeline there was a wave and it slipped out of
my hand and the halyard was like flying around with the metal hook on the end,
like a wrecking ball. Not that we use those anyways, it's the pole topper and the spinnaker halyard
but so worst case scenario if we just pulled them up and it wouldn't be the end of the world but yeah
lesson learnt there. I knew it could be bad but for a second there Kristina and I were like dodging it
and you thought i'd got overboard.
I was like asking Kristina, like let it out a bit to lower it,
and i did
and she did and then I looked back and she wasn't on the in the cockpit
and I'm like yelling out like Kristina, like thinking oh, she's gone downstairs and she didn't hear me
So I started like yelling really loudly and she still didn't come
and I'm like, oh she's gone overboard already for like two miles out of the marina
But she'd just, she'd gone downstairs and didn't tell me so we've learned that lesson too
We've gotta tell each other when you're going down below
anyway.
We're going through the heads. And entering the Bass Strait
notorious for gales and rough seas.
So, we're pushing through two knots of current now. Wow.
That's so crazy. See the water to your left, see it's all weird on top?
Imagine, imagine coming through here the wrong time of day.
Once we were out, it was time for Tucana to spread her sails.
We're sailing. Now we're 8 and a half knots. Really?
So we have turned off the engine and we're just on the jib at the moment
and we are doing about seven knots.
they're motor sailing and
anyway it's good to have the engine off and save a bit of fuel
and yeah autopilot's doing a good job.
Famous last words.
Just trying to get some rest.
It's been a crazy night, poor John was at the helm the entire time.
I can't really see anything and I'm not sure if you're going to be able to hear anything.
We had a few battery issues and so autopilot occasionally would just completely disengage.
You have been sailing all night. Yeh I know.
And poor John has been at the helm for like 18 hours.
So when we turned off the engine uh after an hour of just sailing we'd have some battery
warnings and then all of a sudden the autopilot would just disengage.
It is peach black.
There is no moon.
No stars. It was a bit rainy. There was a big swell.
But the captain and crew need to eat.
First night we are going to be just making a simple soup.
And when I say making I mean heating up.
So, pho.
Chicken corn or like a vegetable.
Did you want minestrone or chicken and corn? Chicken and corn I think.
One thing that's really annoying is John didn't buy two soups of the same flavour he bought one
soup of each flavour. This would have been easy if you put two packets of each flavour so that
we can have dinner together. So it looks like John's gonna have chicken and corn soup tonight
and I'm probably gonna have minestrone.
Who does that?
Kristina. Yeh? You know the nav lights? Yeh, can you flick it over to the other side so the steaming and the nav lights are all on?
Yep. I t will just help BA see us because it will put a light on the sails. Okay.
I had a lot of hardening up to do.
Babe does it matter there's no butter in your bread.
What's that? There's no butter on your bread is that okay?
That's fine.
I tried to get some sleep but I actually got sick.
But I'm feeling a lot better now.
That's until we hit a waypoint and we couldn't furl the head sail away.
The furling line came off the furler.
John's now up the front,
trying to untangle the furling line,
it got stuck under the dinghy.
It had wrapped tightly around the forestay.
For 20 minutes John was at the bow going up and down
trying to unravel it.
Yeah that was that was really gnarly
and John was just bracing himself at the bow
near the bow sprit there near the anchor
just trying to wedge this flathead screwdriver in
anyway I think I'm going to get him to explain it because
he won't explain it well because he'll just be like oh it wasn't that bad but it was
for me it was really hectic and I was back here just
keeping an eye on him just making sure that he was okay
and that he didn't end up in the water or like my worst fear is that his tether
will keep him on board but he'll just pull over the side of the bow and just be dragged in the
water. That's like my worst fear. So I made sure I knew where the knife was. I made sure
I knew what I was going to do if we had the man overboard situation. It was just going over my head
around and around in circles. I just wanted to make sure that I was ready for whatever was going to unfold.
I'm so done.
I don't want to go in there because I feel a bit s*%$^
and out here it's raining and cold.
It's excellent your tea just refills on its own.
How are you feeling? Pretty good. No honestly? Excellent.
Are you looking forward to Bermagui? Yep.
Spirits were a little low but John knows how to boost morale with music.
Wiggle that booty.
But honestly even the seals were happy for us.
Hey BA.
My baby keeping me nice and warm with my hot water bottle.
They're beautiful creatures aren't they?
After 48 hours at sea, we were finally out of the Bass Strait and about to cross the New
South Wales state border.
Counting down to cross it. Very close. In another couple of hours.
Gabo Island is another 20 nm or something.
What's it like out there? It's really nice.
See the New South Wales coast, the sunshine and there's a big light house up ahead.
You should come up and have a look.
Well this is a very random dinner.
We are no longer going to Bermagui.
We are just going to continue
straight forward through to Sydney.
We are a bit sleep-deprived but we're taking advantage of these light winds
and the good weather that we have
to cook a nice meal.
A bit of a random meal though and I'm just making...
All right I'll show you the final product.
Get some sweet potato on there. Corn.
Some greens.
Super random these are Angus Beef grass fed sausages.
Let's see what the captain thinks hey.
I'm filming you filming me. Hi Paul! It's John's Dad on the phone.
Let me take a quick photo.
One two three!
Gosh I can't remember the last time I had sausages.
Well good morning. I thought I would jump on here quickly and give you an update. We were
going to head to Bermagui and then we decided to just keep on going all the way to Sydney we
just thought, why not, we are on a bloody roll.
Well it's kind of what happened um...
John was like, Kristina let's just keep on going to Sydney, the weather's really great
and then BA who's in Skyfall actually texted John at exactly the same time was like, Hey John do
you mind if we just keep on going to Sydney as well and we're like, yeah, cool, amazing.
I wanted to give a massive shout out to John who did the 11:30 p.m through to 5:30 a.m shift this morning and
then he just left the sunrise to me. What a legend. He's starting to feel a little bit run down this
morning, so I'm going to do the 5:30 till midday shift, which isn't that bad really. Just answering a
heap of your questions from Instagram. We did a Q and A on there, so that's passing the time wonderfully.
The first time John and I ever sailed this boat by ourselves together, was when we left Melbourne so
yeah we probably. I don't even know if we should actually tell people that.
Yeah, I don't even think that's going to make this cut.
But we haven't had a choice because we had the Melbourne lockdown,
we weren't able to sail Tucana
and we weren't able to take her out because she had no rigging.
The rigging was getting replaced for like four weeks plus, five weeks
and then she was on a hard stand. We obviously had sailed Tucana with other people before
but I have to mention as well that we had BA in Skyfall just one nautical mile or two nautical miles ahead of us.
If we did not take this weather window Tucana would still be in Melbourne right now
and we wouldn't be able to get her for months on end
so we had to take this opportunity and I'm so glad because it paid off.
Tucana to Skyfall.
And I bet by now you're wondering what the fourth drama was that unfolded?
We have whales, we have whales in front of us.
Sorry I had to wake you but, oh my gosh. Ten, I have, I have, I have, I have.
I just went 10 degrees right. I just went 10 degrees right.
What the actual heck.