Noumea to NZ

We anchored in a bay in Noumea which rivalled Seaview Marina in Wellington for wind—is that possible? The week we spent there our wind generator and solar panels easily kept up with our power demands.
We enjoyed the town which has museums, shops, patisseries and restaurants. The clothing stores were reminiscent of Bora Bora—memories with Diana!!! I succumbed to temptation by justifying purchases. The clothing I have bought previously in Guadelope and St Barts in the Caribbean and Bora Bora have become some of my favourites and were worth the extra money one pays for French style.
A visit to the patisserie was mind boggling and was justified by the fact that we have eaten more vegetables and less fat in Fiji and Vanuatu than probably in my whole life!!! The cappuccino piled with whipped cream and the ice cream sundae—it was sorbet--also unable to be resisted. The supermarket with pates and cheese---several weeks here all of the weight loss in Vanuatu would be undone to say nothing of the cholesterol levels!!
We reconnected with several boats—many who we have been with are going to Australia—including Cats Paw IV who left Canada with us and of course our dear friends Frank and Barb on Destiny. Doug on Windcastle—Darlene’s suitor---arrived after returning from a failed attempt to sail from Vanuatu to NZ. He is done with sailing and is trying to figure out how and where he can sell his boat. It is a tough life without a partner and a lot of the single handers get tired of the never ending search for good crew and companionship. Stuart on Nomad who has been with us for several years is heading to NZ to sell his boat also.
We managed with the help of Anne of Cats Paw whose telephone French surpasses mine to make arrangements with our friends we had met in the Baie de Prony to be picked up for dinner at their house. This turned out to be fun as Ken was fed Scotch once again and they had invited a journalist friend who spoke English well. Once again, as has been our experience on our travels language is no barrier with good people.
We had been having problems with our dingy engine and Jean Pierre offered to come to the marina the next day and help with it. He subsequently drove across town to bring us new spark plugs. The generosity was heart warming.
There appeared to be an excellent weather window to NZ so we joined the All Points Rally to Opua—boats from Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu and New Caledonia all leave around the same time and once in Opua are welcome guests of the business associations there who put on a week of barbecues and parties.
The first stage was to get as much east as possible to get a better angle to sail against the prevailing east and south easterlies. We set off early to get to Baie de Prony and would then go to Isle de Pins into heavy head winds. We tacked our way in 28 knot winds along with a couple of boats when all of a sudden during a tack we did not release the main sheet quickly enough and the front sail caught up on the spreaders and ripped. We anchored in Baie de Prony and decided we should heed our instincts and return to Noumea and have it repaired professionally. Turning back is always emotionally difficult but we were only 20 miles on our 900 mile trip to Opua and it would irresponsible to try and repair it ourselves and have it fail on our passage when we were still close to a main centre.
We spent the night and the next day in absolute calm conditions—what a difference a day makes in the life of a sailor---motored back to Noumea. The following morning we dropped the sail off to a sailmaker who said he would have it ready in three days---would our weather window still be open?
Our next stop was to visit customs again and cancel our checkout.
We now had time to go to the museum which we had been forced to forgo when we were leaving so soon. It was the culture of the New Caledonian native peoples who appear to have much more Polynesian influence than Melanesian. Mind you in Noumea the faces are very white and the local Kanak people are viewed poorly by the Noumean’s. They apparently have the same problems with alcohol as other displaced aboriginal peoples. The museum was interesting but I was frustrated by the lack of dates on the exhibits so it was difficult to get a feeling for what was theirs and what was introduced as white man arrived.
The other highlight which we had been forced to miss was the aquarium. This proved to be an excellent overview of the fish of the coral reef system. We had seen the majority before but it they had done a marvellous job of the displays and we happily photographed our favourites in controlled conditions. Some of the fish are amazing and we now know what the deadly stone fish looks like and will try and avoid him. The nautilus display was awesome as we have found several shells washed up but they live hundreds of feet under the sea so our snorkelling efforts have come up short.
The sail ready and once again checked out of customs we set off to sail to Opua. We had been in touch with Bob McDavitt who is a weather router from the meteorological service in NZ who said we would have some heavy winds but it would not be too late to leave.
The first two days we had a great passage and were making good easting when the heavy weather hit. This comprised of 30 knot winds gusting to 40 and seas to 5 metres---a lot more than he had forecast for us—should weather forecasters be forced to suffer their predictions and come on a voyage? We always had the possibility of going to Nelson giving a more favourable angle and it quickly became apparent that that was where we needed to go to minimise the crashing and rolling. We are learning that although heavy winds are uncomfortable the damage to the boat is caused when one is sailing against the conditions. We had damage on both our passage to Minerva Reef and Fiji to Vanuatu where the winds were less than we were getting here.
The system was stationary and despite record speeds it took 3 days of battling and tiresome rolling to outrun the heavy weather. We had almost 3 days averaging +200 mile days often averaging over 9.5 knots. Waves crashed over the boat more than ever before and everything was wet—every time one of us would go outside to check on sails they would come in dripping. We were thankful to have our solid catamaran where we were able to do most of our watches from inside the relatively dry boat. Life became one of eating one dish casseroles—thank goodness for the pressure cooker and trying to sleep in tandem.
One funny incident was when I went down to the galley to make tea—where was the tea canister??? There was a small amount of tea on the floor—along with the rice which had spilt the day before and the omelette which had also spilt—but no sign of the tea. I spent several minutes looking all around and then decided to open the garbage which is hinged under the counter top. To my surprise the tea caddy and most of the contents were upside down in the garbage. The caddy had apparently flown up from it’s shelf up by the window at the same time as the boat rolled opening the garbage and landing in it before it closed as the boat rolled the other way!!
With Opua absolutely out of the question we covered the first 900 of the 1200 mile passage in record time. Finally it calmed and we slowly dried everything out, washed the various foodstuffs off the floor and got the boat back into some semblance of order. Ken was able to go up and fix the roller furling which had jammed with the front sail half reefed and retie on the trampolines which even the rope tying them on had been shredded.
We spent as much time doing the last 1/3 of the trip as we had the first 2/3rds. We will arrive in Nelson 7 days after leaving which is pretty impressive.
Ken had the first view of NZ at dawn with a lovely sunrise over Mt Taranaki—land ho!!
We were escorted as we neared the South Island by a pod of whales all around us which was amazing. They blew and broached all around us.
We arrived early in the morning to have the most thorough check with the agriculture inspection we have yet had. The young lady obviously does not have a lot of overseas yacht arrivals and went through every cupboard and spice jar on the boat. We did not have much for her to find and I think by the time she was ¾ done she was getting tired of it. If they took this long in Opua the line up would never get cleared. We do have to have a couple of our carvings fumigated but had expected that and it is worth it not to have insects destroying our other carvings.
We were able to secure a berth in Nelson so look forward to spending a week or so in that lovely city.