December 9, 2014
I love something Leo Decaprio says in Titanic, “I love waking up in the morning not knowing what’s gonna happen, or who I’m gonna meet, or where I’m gonna wind up. Just the other night I was sleeping under a bridge, and now here I am on the grandest ship in the world having champagne with you fine people.”
That’s a bit how we feel right now: one minute we’re sitting in Suva waiting for our weather window to New Zealand; then we’re in New Caledonia mangling the French language and eating croissants while waiting for a weather window to Australia.
How did we go from planning to spend a season in the south island of New Zealand to going to Australia? It started with the lack of a decent weather window to get south to New Zealand. It wasn’t that the weather would be dangerous; it’s that it would be really uncomfortable.
So we continued to wait in Suva. We really like it there, but we’d been there a long time and were ready for something else. Unfortunately it was just too windy to do any cruising in the area; so we continued to sit and wait. And wait. And every day was another day into cyclone season.
It looked like we had a window coming, but yet again it would have been uncomfortable southeasterly winds and pretty big swells. Not a great window for New Zealand, but it would be a good window for New Caledonia.
We’d originally planned to go to New Cal but dropped that plan when time got short. Now, we decided to put it back on the agenda. We’d still be in the cyclone belt, but we’d be quite a bit further south, making for a shorter passage to New Zealand and less chance of experiencing a cyclone. Somewhere along the line we got the idea that if the weather didn’t become better for a trip to New Zealand, we could head for Australia. We even downloaded charts and a guidebook just in case.
By the time we got to New Caledonia, we’d grown used to the idea of going to Australia, even attached to it. The winds still weren’t looking right for New Zealand, and when we heard an El Nino condition would be making its south island colder, wetter, and windier this season, that clinched it.
And so now we’re waiting for a weather window for Australia. We’re here with two other cruising boats, and we’re all headed for Bundaberg, Australia, hoping very much to get there before Christmas. We love it here and are eating very well, but it’s cyclone season and time to get moving. Plus it’s getting pretty hot. Now, it’s time to get back to doing more Fiji posts. –Cyndi
