Au revior Australie   8^th – 15^th May

On Tuesday ‘MetBob’, our weather Guru from New Zealand, gave us the go ahead for our sail to New Caledonia. One small comment in his forecast did not necessarily impress itself upon us as it should have, due to our desire to get underway – ‘it’s not going to be entirely comfortable but this seems to be the best for this week.’ The email was long and the description of weather systems detailed so this statement was glossed over somewhat. He gave us way points to sail to and this involved doing a loop to the south to pick up favourable winds. We ended up covering 920nm in 6 days 23 hours and 20 minutes. MetBob gave us a time of 7 days and 59 minutes. Hey! Not bad! We were impressed with MetBobs forecast and our own sailing ability.

We spent two nights in the marina at Southport gearing up for departure and Border Force arrived at 9am Wednesday to clear us out. This was a relatively simple procedure that took less than an hour and then we were on our way. The day was magnificent and we sailed in a gentle northerly all day, Australia gradually disappearing behind. Day 2 continued fine and mild until the late afternoon when the wind turned East and began to push us off course – not so comfortable sailing close to the wind.

On day 2 we reached our first way point near the Brisbane Sea Mounts and we turned E/SE towards way point 2 just north of Middleton Reef. On Friday the frontal system caught up with us and grey overcast skies and stronger winds meant we were experiencing a boisterous sail. No hot drinks, too dangerous. I was feeling queasy as the wind turned even harder on the nose from the SE. Saturday followed a lumpy, windy, squally night where dinner was 3 minute noodles.

By Saturday the wind had swung to the south and the swells had picked up to 3.5m and swamped the cockpit in spray and occasionally dumped a big greenie in as well. Audrie seemed to catch the brunt of that! Unfortunately the rest of the trip followed this pattern. Strong, gusty winds, bigger swells than I liked to see, squally, grey skies with a patch of sun here or there and generally thoroughly uncomfortable.

Audrey and I compared bruises. We both looked like we had been dropped in the cement mixer. It felt like that too, actually. At one stage Peter took a full on dive over the table and landed head first in the bookshelf. That alarmed us and reinforced the adage, ‘one hand for the boat and one for self.’  Audrie and I decided that toast and vegemite was all we could contemplate cooking one morning, but it took two of us to manage it. The toaster required someone to hold it on the burner and even then the toast resembled something that a seagull had shat on rather than evenly spread vegemite and butter. Way point 3 had us turning further north and this alleviated the discomfort a little as we sailed just off the wind.

One interesting thing that happened out there in the middle of nowhere, was that we saw a ship turn up on the chart plotter. On examining the AIS info we discovered it was a tanker bound for NZ. It was not on a collision course, but quite close so we kept a good eye on it and eventually saw it passing in the distance. Then suddenly it turned at right angles and headed straight for us again. This was concerning. A ship in the middle of nowhere altering course towards us makes one feel very vulnerable. We kept our eyes on the chart plotter for several minutes and were very relieved when it again turned on its original course away from us.

Considering the conditions we had only two minor breakages. One was the top batten broke free from the batten car on the mainsail and then so very close to our destination one side of the lazy jacks broke free making it more of a challenge to drop the mainsail. The only other problem was when Aud discovered a leak through the deck had saturated one side of her bed forcing her to relocate to the main cabin.

Wednesday: 6 days, 23 hours and 20 minutes saw us entering the Boulari Passage into the lagoon and on our final approaches to Noumea. This was definitely not a comfortable passage, but not overly concerning given the prevailing wind conditions. The boat handled it well and we all have full confidence in Olivia’s seaworthiness.