The Passage: New Zealand to New Caledonia, 2022

May 22, 2022

Here are our posts on our PredictWind tracking site during the passage, along with some pictures…

The passage started out calm. Calm enough to leave a wine glass sitting unattended.

We Survived Another One!

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?

“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

??? 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!

 

We got to see Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn aligned. Well, maybe not all four, and maybe not all that aligned but it was still great.
The lights of Noumea in the early morning hours on approach
27 55.981s 169 39.367e

Bumpy, Bumpy, Bumpy

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!

Notice the foot braced across the cockpit to prevent involuntary cockpit luge.

30 00.875s 170 57.187e

Glassy, Glassy, Glassy

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.

A beautiful sunset with a dangerous twist… a ship ultimately passing about a mile from us. No problem with AIS.
What’s that strange light on the evening horizon? Moonrise!
31 54.337s 172 09.301e

Lovely Conditions (for those who don’t mind motoring)

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.


Squalls out on the ocean. Not bad ones though.
33 31.313s 173 12.119e

Off to New Caledonia

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.

Don’t let the sails fool you. We were still motoring.
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