I stopped this timeline to write about then-current things: our Big Trip, our move to the Bay of Islands, and our passage to New Caledonia.
A beautiful scene for our final meal in Russell. Soon after that, we moved to the Bay of Islands Marina to start preparing to leave New Zealand.After arriving in New Caledonia, we enjoyed revisiting favorite spots around the city of Noumea. This included lots of walking, lots of eating, and more wine than we care to admit to.
Now that we’ve gotten through our “first-30-minutes-at-Disneyland” excitement and slowed down our pace, we’re both going back to computer projects. Rich has started a series on weather planning, while I’m going to go back to 2014 and pick up where I left off in the Coromandel: headed to a beautiful place called Cathedral Cove.
Cathedral Cove, one of New Zealand’s spectacular sights.
I’m also planning to make improvements to the Fiji information pages, adding in more anchorages while finishing up the “segments under construction.” Hopefully this might be of help to some cruisers this season.
Naigani Island, soon to be added to the Fiji Information pages.
Meanwhile, Rich will be tricking in posts about our current lives in New Caledonia and his weather routing process as we wait for a suitable window to head to Australia.
As I write this, we’re anchored out at a reef anchorage, surrounded by clear blue water, enjoying the late-afternoon breeze as it wafts through our boat and the sound of water trickling by. Two or three days of nice weather have lured us out to the lagoon to visit some new places; drone photos will soon follow. (Actually Rich just posted some here.) I have to say it’s been some years since we’ve been at an anchorage like this, and it sure feels great to be back.
Now, I’m finishing this post back in the city of Noumea, waiting out a week or so of rainy weather. I’m looking forward to getting back to work on blog projects. –Cyndi
With no weather window in sight to head to Australia, we made the best of our time here with a quick trip out to some reefs and islands near Noumea that we hadn’t visited before. Wow, it was a great few days!
First stop, Recifs Snark. There’s nothing above the water here other than a couple of small rocks and a small sand hump, but it still provides nice protection from swells. It felt like being anchored at Minerva Reef again.
Legacy all alone at anchor at Recifs Snark near Noumea.
Next up, Recifs Quatre Bancs de l’Ouest. Again with nothing really above the water, it still made for a nice flat anchorage with the reef stopping any swell.
After two nights at reefs, it was time for an island: Ilot Amadee. No, this isn’t the the summer resort town where Jaws took place. That was Amity. Though this island is rumored to have a resident territorial tiger shark, making swimming a little more exhilarating for us.
Despite the shark risk, we did get in for a brief swim and bottom inspection and it was WONDERFUL! The water was 80F (27C) and was just cool enough to be refreshing on the hot day.
And now back towards Noumea to a place that’s been on Cyndi’s to-do list for a long time: Ilot Maitre. The island has a resort hotel on it that is said to welcome boaters. We found that yes, they do welcome us, as long as we tie our dinghy up to a buoy offshore and swim to the beach or pier. Beaching your dinghy is not allowed, nor is tying it up to the pier. That made our decision – lunch on Legacy it would be.
Speaking of lunch, we provided some for the critters under our boat. First, it was just two hungry remoras. Then bigger critters started to show up. Oh, and a lazy seagull who was tired of flying. We told him not to make a mess and he listened. –Rich
Note from Cyndi: This turned out to be a wonderful little trip that made us, after 2 years of mostly land-life in New Zealand, feel like cruisers again! Yes, we did some cruising in NZ during Covid-time, but there’s nothing quite like the feeling of being in the tropics. I will mention the two reef anchorages are, surprisingly, not in our Rocket Guide but instead were recommended to us by our neighbors. The other places, Ilot Amadee and Ilot Maitre, are both popular with tourists, but we’ve never felt any urgency to visit either one. We weren’t all that impressed with Maitre but were surprised at how special Amadee was with its clear blue water and so many fish! It has become one of our favorite anchorages in New Caledonia.
So far we’ve posted Rich’s notes from our Predict Wind tracking page (along with a few of his favorite photos), our passage video, and now I’d like to add a few of my favorite photos form the passage, summed up in the gallery below, and some comments. (Click on any photo to enlarge.)
The gallery starts a view of Opua as we waived good-bye to New Zealand. Because we’d been so rushed and tired, followed by a less-than-friendly checkout (from the same official we had trouble with checking in near the end of 2018), we felt numb and relieved to finally be heading out instead of the expected tears on my part. We love New Zealand, through, and will always be incredibly grateful to have ended up here during the pandemic. We were very slow to take down our New Zealand flag, leaving it up for most of our passage.
The next shot is of Rich adding fuel to our tanks, the cost of choosing a passage with light winds. Then some of my favorite moments: motoring on a sea that looked like liquid glass, bright nights under a full moon with a few stars peeking out, and some lovely sunsets.
Our final night, after the moon set and it was very dark, we saw the amazing sight of three brightly-lit celestial bodies vertically aligned (I believe they were Venus, Mars, and Jupiter). They seemed to mark our way in through the pass into New Caledonia’s lagoon, especially when they lined up with a lead light on the south end of the reef pass. They were so bright, and a completely unusual sight–we’ve never seen anything like this.
Once through the pass, we were both up during the pre-dawn hours as we motored 3 hours across the lagoon to Noumea. First we had distant city lights, then the eerie gray of a cloudy dawn as we neared Noumea. Finally there’s a photo of a Noumea apartment building, lit by the rising sun, behind one of the private marinas. Noumea apartment buildings have a distinct style, often with pointed roofs and awning-covered balconies, that we find distinct and charming.
After some confusion and tying up at the wrong slip in the Port du Sud Marina, we finally got tied up in the correct slip, which would be our home for the next 10 days. Whew, another passage behind us! –Cyndi
Next up, a post within a post:
The Fricking Apple Juice
A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place. This is a wonderful thing to aspire to, not only in everyday life but for boat life in particular.
The challenge here, though, is that the hours before a cruise tend to be frantic as last minute things need to be fixed (there’s always something), linens and clothing need to be laundered and put away, fuel needs to be procured, lots of food provisioning needs to take place (with perhaps some pre-cooking involved), good-byes need to be made, plus many other niggling things too numerous to mention.
The best time to do most chores is in the weeks before a passage, but often they often get put off, then are rather overwhelming when the green light finally gets lit. Below, an example from our passage: The fricking apple juice.
I’ll start by saying that I don’t even like apple juice (and Rich isn’t a big fan, either). The reason I had it onboard was as an ingredient for a dessert recipe that I never got around to making before we left Auckland. Yet it was a full container of juice so I could never bring myself to toss it. I figured maybe I could give it away. I should have done this in Auckland but didn’t get around to it.
After we headed north, I never came across a giveaways pile in Russell or Opua. Still, I hoped to find a home for it (or maybe buy the ingredients to make that dessert although the main ingredient was pretty much out of season). Eventually I just learned not to “see” it anymore.
We did give away a couple of items just before we left, a slow cooker and a lovely lemongrass plant, but I forgot about the apple juice. So there it was as we headed to New Caledonia, on top of the counter next to an oven mitt that’s too big for the former mitt’s spot so also doesn’t have a place. I was too tired deal with the juice the first day, during which it fell over in the swells. But it seemed to happily settle where it was so I figured I’d leave it for the Apple Juice Fairy to hopefully magically relieve me of it.
Sometime during the passage, Rich needed to get to the cabinet behind the juice and moved it to a new place, where again it happily settled for the remainder of the cruise. Note that in the middle photo are other things (marked with blue arrows) that didn’t get stashed. On the left is a baggie of Kosher salt that didn’t fit into my jar but since it’s so rare in these parts, I wanted to save it. Then there are the cleaning wipes in the middle, but that actually wasn’t a bad spot for them to stay for the journey. On the right is a box of dukkha, a gift from a friend, but I hadn’t found a place for it yet and since it wasn’t all that in the way, I let it stay where it was.
It was on our arrival day that the apple juice suddenly appealed to Rich, who drank it all. So now on our counter sat the empty container until I could find out if our marina offered recycling. What a relief when I finally get rid of it.
Maybe now I’ll take a moment to find a place for that extra salt and find a space among the spices inside a cabinet for the dukkha. Sadly, I think I need to replace that lovely oven mitt as it’s too big for my hand and the old storage space where the dear-departed one lived. For the time being, I’ve learned not to “see” it so it might be there for awhile. –Cyndi
For quite some time, I’ve wanted to create a series of videos that details the methods we use to pick weather for passages. It’s not that I claim to be an expert, it’s just that after doing this for a lot of years now, I feel like I’m getting pretty good.
As is typical for cruisers, our conversations with others almost always turn to weather and I’m often shocked at the important factors many people ignore. This latest round of boats leaving NZ in absolutely terrible weather windows is a perfect example of that.
Here’s video number one. I’ll do a new one each day until we find a weather window to get from Noumea, New Caledonia to Gladstone, Australia. We’ll follow it up with a video showing how our window selection actually worked out.
Without further adiue…
Episode 1
Here’s a little table of contents so you can jump to any subject that interests you. If you view these videos on YouTube, you can use the links in the description to jump directly to the sections that interest you.
0:00 Intro to the Series
0:34 Our Goal for this Passage
1:02 PredictWind Tool
1:22 Using the Isobar Map
2:43 Different Models and the Validation Tool
4:52 Sea State
5:48 Weather Routing on PredictWind
7:24 Viewing Data in Table View
9:39 Wave Direction Visually on the Map
10:44 Wind Speed and Angles on the Routing Data
12:04 Routing Boat Settings (Polars)
13:35 Routing Summary Page
15:46 Departure Planning Tool
17:53 Routing and Planning Model Selection
Episode 2
Here’s our second day of looking for a weather window from New Cal to Oz. Hint: No good window in sight.
Here’s a table of contents so you can jump to any subject that interests you. If you view these videos on YouTube, you can use the links in the description to jump directly to the sections that interest you.
0:00 Introduction to Episode 2
0:23 More on the Validation Tool
1:10 First Step: Isobar Map
3:03 More Data on ECMWF
3:40 Seas for Possible Window
4:14 Another Weather Routing
7:33 New Data on Summary Page our Routing
7:59 Subtle Front Shown on Wind Page
9:04 Another Window?
Episode 3
With no real passage window on the horizon, what shall we do? Here’s a quick look at a possible window and some local weather planning for a few days out in New Caledonia’s lagoon.
Here’s a table of contents so you can jump to any subject that interests you. If you view these videos on YouTube, you can use the links in the description to jump directly to the sections that interest you.
0:00 Intro
0:07 Isobar Map Looking for Window
0:43 Wave Map – Big Waves?
1:20 How Many Days of Data for Each Model?
1:51 ECMWF vs. GFS
2:34 Plan B? Local Weather Forecast
3:11 Cloud Map
3:23 Rain Map and Front
3:34 Forecast Tables
4:25 Wind to Get Back
Episode 4
Table of Contents:
0:00 Intro
0:08 Short Cruise While We Wait
0:14 Fastest Time vs. Comfort
2:07 Steepness Factor, Wave Height, and Period
In this episode (episode 5) I talk about the amazing new wave data on PredictWind.
Table of Contents:
0:00 Introduction
0:06 Isobar Map Overview of Passage
1:35 Routing
2:24 Table View
3:27 New Wave Data from PredictWind
5:19 Wave Polar Help Article and Definitions
6:13 Looking Closely at Wave Numbers
7:44 Passage Summary Data
9:55 Another Look at the Map
10:52 How to Set Up Wave Polars
11:47 A Plea to Get a Pro Subscription
12:41 Summary (kind of)
Still no weather we like to get from Noumea, New Caledonia to Gladstone, Australia. Here we look at waves and resist the temptation to take a window that would definitely be unpleasant. Table of Contents:
0:00 Intro
0:09 No Weather Window in Sight
0:30 Resisting Temptation (to take a bad window)
0:54 Steep Seas are the Issue
1:25 Steepness Factor (revisited)
2:30 Happily Waiting for Better Weather
We’re still looking for a weather window to sail from New Caledonia to Australia. There still isn’t a great one in sight but we investigate a possible window using the PredictWind Offshore App.
Table of Contents:
0:00 Intro
0:14 Dangerous Words!
0:30 Isobar Map
0:52 First Window Possibility
1:37 Using the PredictWind Offshore App
4:06 Evaluating the Data
Episode 8
After more than six weeks of looking, maybe there’s a suitable weather window on the horizon?
It’s finally here: a weather window that we can accept. Here’s what’s going on including the compromises we’re willing to make after two and a half months of looking and waiting.
Contents:
0:00 Intro
0:20 Help from a Pro
0:55 PredictWind Route
1:28 Table View
2:38 Spreadsheet View of Waves
3:11 Sold: We’ll Take It. (For better or worse)
Episode 10 – the Final Episode and Post-Mortem
This is the final episode in this series and is a post-mortem of the passage: what we did right, what we didn’t, and the lessons we learned.
Table of contents:
0:00 Intro
0:33 Departure Forecast
1:16 Day 1
1:37 Day 2
2:35 Day 3
3:20 Day 4
3:48 Day 5
4:08 Day 6
4:55 Final Day
5:15 Forecast Comparisons
7:16 Lessons Learned
Bonus Episode – Historical Weather Tools
Our friend is planning to sail from NZ to Oz in November and we were talking about tools to view historical weather data. Here’s my two cents worth in this video.
I threw the ‘zone of misery” in as a bonus.
I’m sorry about the audio quality on this video. I have a failing mic and promise to replace it soon.
Table of contents
0:00 Intro
0:20 Pilot Charts
1:04 PredictWind Historical Weather
1:51 earth.nulschool.net Historical Weather
4:45 Zone of Misery or Misery Index (MI)
Just give up! Those tasteless yellow-wrapped white sticks you sell are not bananas. These are bananas. Yes, they are supposed to have some taste. They are supposed to taste good!
And another thing, bigger is not better (or so Cyndi says).
Now that we’re back in the tropics, I remembered that I love bananas. We’ve also had amazing papaya and fresh fish, and…
