May 27, 2015
They said it couldn’t be done, but they were wrong. We took route 311 from Gadji to Kuto today and lived to tell about it.
If you don’t know about the Rocket Guide, you should, especially if you plan to sail the New Caledonia waters. (Here’s a link to http://www.rocket-guides.com/new-caledonia-cruising-guide.html)
The Rocket Guide is an interactive, Flash, cruising guide to New Caledonia, complete with hundreds of routes and waypoints. We chose #311 today because the trades were blowing hard and going out and around the reefs would have meant hours of slogging into the wind and swell. The downside was that 311 is shallow and has a lot of jogs around bombies. But it was flawless. I used the autopilot in all but a short stretch where I lost my nerve. It turns out, it would have worked fine.
Today, the shallow parts weren’t even the problem. The problem was rounding Ile Moro into 9 foot swells and 20 knot gusts. Yuk!
Oh well, like childbirth, all is forgotten now that we’re anchored, in Kuto with a long-period, gentle rolling swell. Here’s a Google map of our Ile des Pins journey so far.
