May 22, 2022
Here are our posts on our PredictWind tracking site during the passage, along with some pictures…
We Survived Another One!
Fri May 20 2022
We’re tied up at our berth in Noumea after a pretty good passage (Cyndi thinks it was great, I didn’t. We’ll split the difference and call it pretty good.)
We got in this morning as the wind and waves were starting to build and if we’d arrived later, it could have been ugly – at least by the whiney-little-girls-on-Legacy standards. We slid through the pass at about 5 AM and were all tied up by 8 (7 AM Noumea time). We’ve already been cleared by biosecurity and our agent (yep, aren’t we la-tee-da?!) is at customs right now finalizing our clearance.
Us? We’re drinking wine. What else would we do to treat land-sickness? We’ll put up a regular blog post with pictures once we get internet access. (Yep, agent is getting us sim cards too.)
Dream Sailing?
Thu May 19 2022
“I’d call this Dream Sailing!” Cyndi just said. I don’t know about that says the guy who had a bout of sea sickness (mild – headache – some nausea) as we spent six hours passing through a line of squalls this morning with winds from every direction. Cyndi was sleeping while that went on. Maybe that’s what she means by “Dream Sailing?” She’s off in dreamland when it’s rough.
It wasn’t very rough though, and the squalls weren’t all that bad. They just meant a lot of sail trimming and course changes, all preformed while sloshing through very bumpy seas.
139 bottles were consumed yesterday with only 101 remaining on the wall. Another 17 bottles will have to be dealt with once we get inside the reef, before reaching Noumea. (The aforementioned is a product of “passage brain!”)
26 03.474s 168 31.882e
Sailing in ? knots of wind
Wed May 18 2022
??? because our anemometer went out. We knew it was iffy but I chose to hope it would keep working and didn’t replace it. Being expensive and failing often, I was hoping I could come up with a better option before giving Simrad another chunk of money.
But never fear, I have a lab grade hand-held anemometer onboard, though we are just as happy to guess at the wind speed and our guess is about 14 knots right now.
We’re sailing along at about a 6 knot average speed on a beam reach. The water is pretty smooth and at this pace, we should be in Noumea Friday morning.
Just 239.4 bottles of beer on the wall!
27 55.981s 169 39.367e
Bumpy, Bumpy, Bumpy
Tue May 17 2022
Our days of gliding across a glassy sea are over. The wind is on the nose and wind waves are starting to build. The wind is still pretty light, but when has anyone known me to miss an opportunity to complain!
Only 367 miles to go!
30 00.875s 170 57.187e
Glassy, Glassy, Glassy
Mon May 16 2022
And needless to say, motoring. The wind is down to less than 2 knots now as we motor through the subtropical ridge. All is well out here. Better than well as we’re settling back into this routine faster than we would have expected after three and a half years with no passages. (We took one cruising season off to stay at an Airbnb in Hawaii and then Covid happened.)
It is great to be out here again! Maybe we’ll even fish this afternoon, though there’s still so much good food in the refrigerator and the clock is ticking on its freshness.
31 54.337s 172 09.301e
Lovely Conditions (for those who don’t mind motoring)
Sun May 15 2022
We’d take this light wind passage with a lot of engine time over a passage with too much wind any time. It’s getting warm and it’s comfortable with pretty flat seas (we rolled more at our mooring in Russell). The only complaint I can think of, if I have to come up with one, is that for the past 24 hours or so, we’ve had a knot of current against us.
33 31.313s 173 12.119e
Off to New Caledonia
Sat May 14 2022
We left yesterday from Opua, bound for New Caledonia. We should make it in about 7 days total, arriving Friday afternoon 20 May. Our first 24 hours have been a little bit uncomfortable with some confused seas, motor sailing in light wind.
Today is much smoother but the wind dropped to 3 knots an hour ago so we’re motoring. We knew we’d have to motor a lot in this light-wind window we
took. We don’t mind.
