Ten years around the world

Cathy and Eric Gray on board Erica at Tauranga Bridge Marina.

In Cuba the going rate for a bucket full of crayfish tails, 30-40 tails, is one litre of engine oil. Tauranga sailors Eric and Cathy Gray tried to talk them up and got the rate to a can of beer for a crayfish body.

Eric and Cathy Gray returned to Tauranga on board their yacht Erica this week, after a 10 year round the world cruise.

They sailed out of Tauranga in 2006, before the Rena struck the Astrolabe Reef, and when there was only one harbour bridge.

They returned to Tauranga this week having achieved what they set out to do, in the same boat which they intend to keep as their home, and loads of stories.

'We don't want to live in a house,” says Cathy.

Erica, is the 12m cutter Eric designed and they built together. There were a few plan changes along the way.

They headed for Tonga and turned left, spending four years along the Australian Coast with side trips to the Louisiade Archipelago, before journeying through Indonesia to Thailand and back and heading out across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar.

The original plan was to enter the Mediterranean via the Red Sea, and then go up through Europe via the river systems and canals.

Erica was built shoal draft, drawing 1.3m with the centreboard up and a low mast so they could sail under bridges. But reports of Somalian pirates off the Red Sea, put them off and they never sailed the Mediterranean.

Instead they crossed the Indian Ocean, calling at Madagascar, South Africa and Namibia before crossing the Atlantic and exploring the Bahamas.

Erica's canal boat design meant they had no trouble with the Intracoastal waterway, 3000km of coastal canal from the Gulf of Mexico continuing up the eastern seaboard of the USA.

They also crossed Florida using the Okeechobee waterway to get from St Lucie to the Gulf of Mexico.

'The Americans are so hospitable,” says Eric.

It wasn't always just the two of them, family and friends accompanied them on the major crossings and Cathy returned to Australia for work whenever they needed more money while Eric maintained the boat.

They originally thought it would be the other way round that Eric the boat builder would be getting the work.

'Most cruisers do their own maintenance or cheque book it,” says Eric.

And the cheque book cruisers prefer to work through boat yards.

Over the 10 years there have been few changes to Erica. There's a new console, and a down-wind sail.

'When we left New Zealand all our sailing was to windward,” says Eric.

'If you go for a weekend sail to the Mayor of the Barrier it's against the wind.”

But in the tropics they cruise with the trade winds, which are coming from behind, so they added another sail which they can goose-wing for downwind sailing.

Erica's new sail wardrobe was prompted by a collision with three whales off the African coast, says Cathy.

Eric says they struck one whale and slid off the backs of two others. The mainsail split on the collision and the genoa split on the forced gybe.

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