December 3, 2014
This morning, I wrote to our friends on Bright Angel to give them and update on our situation. To post another update here seemed redundant, so here’s the letter…
Hi Bob and Linda,
It’s us – twoatthedock! and loving it already!!! We spent our first New Caledonia night in Prony bay (which is about seven miles in from the pass (Havannah Pass)) (are nested parentheses permitted?), with our Q flag flying. Yesterday, we made the 30 mile trip to Noumea. It was a long ride but at least it was down wind – it was blowing 20 knots all day. We hovered outside the marina in the bay for about 45 minutes while the marina (Port Moselle) found us a berth.
Everyone has been so nice to us. The French would never earn a bad reputation from New Caledonia. They’re as nice as Fijians. The marina is a class act. The town is beautiful – what little we’ve seen of it and already, and we had a world class dinner. It took less than an hour here before Cyndi and I were both saying “I wonder what it would take to immigrate to New Cal?”
Space is tight in the marina and our marina future is uncertain. We have a berth until Sunday when they’ll try to find us another one. We’re not really sure how long we want to stay. When I went up to the marina office to check in, Carol said, “Oh my, what are you doing here so late? Cyclone season started yesterday!” Her shock caused me concern. I guess we’ll take the next weather window out of Dodge, but we’re kind of hoping it takes a while to open (window… open… get it?). We’d really like to spend a couple of weeks here. We’ll just see how the weather and our nerves hold up.
And then… Yes… Australia! That’s right. Are our plans are cast in vapor, or what? Right now, we’re thinking we’ll go to Bundaberg, Australia. It’s 790 miles away and not very far south of where we are now. It should be an easy run (wow, have I just jinxed that passage!?)
Australia, then what?” you ask. Maybe we’ll spend a year there and then go from Aus back to New Zealand. Maybe we’ll spend six months there and then go back up to the tropics. With plans set firmly in vapor as ours seem to be, why bother to plan ahead?
In the mean time, stay tuned for updates (and probably lots of food porn pictures!).
Love,
Rich (and sleeping Cyndi)
P.S. Why wait? Let the food porn begin. these are pictures of last night’s dinner…
