Noumea to Australia

Our clearance into New Cal was uneventful—we were at anchor which meant we could go ashore and walk to customs. As it was lunchtime—12-1 30pm we went to the ATM and had lunch first—French customs tend to be very chilled out and no one asks why it took all day to get to them.
After having finished with customs and immigration we went to the quarantine lady. She asked if we had any fresh fruit and vegs and when we insisted we did not—I had cooked up a big stew with the leftovers being aware of entry requirements by this stage in our sailing lives. She asked where we were anchored which would involve a 20 minute walk and a 15 minute dingy ride each way. When she realised she probably would not reap anything she decided it was too much trouble so had us sign a form stating we had nothing to declare. We felt fortunate as she has a reputation for taking things and stocking up her larder—a Canadian boat which came in the next day even had a cooked chicken taken. Actually they were fortunate as they had arrived with a lot of fruit and vegs from Vanuatu, they had heard they were expensive in New Cal. We looked after them while they went into the marina to check in where they always comes on your boat. They took a large bag of NZ apples from another boat and the same apples are for sale at an inflated price in the supermarket!!
It seemed as though we had just left—we had in November—and we quickly got into the routine of the market, coffee shop with the internet and the patisserie. It is expensive with all fruit appearing to be $4 a kilo and the quality is mediocre. The prize items at the market are the monster prawns and “ton rouge” –yellow fin tuna which makes an awesome sashimi.
We intended staying for a week to rest up and wait for a window to Cairns and went to the city museum and cultural centre, neither of which we had managed to fit in last time. We went for many long walks to get some exercise in before the 2 week passage to Australia.
The climate is idyllic as it is just south of the ‘Tropic of Capricorn” and daytime temperatures in the low 20’s. It appears the dry season has not totally arrived so was overcast most of the time.
Yet again we had to motor past a newly shipwrecked yacht to get to the dingy dock—every year when we get to the islands there are several boats which for whatever reason did not survive the local cyclone season---one reason we have made the trip to NZ each year.
We were anxious to start moving after a week and we cleared out making our way north inside the lagoon on the west of the island. It looked lovely with white sandy beaches but the showery weather helped us from wishing we could stay and explore more. We hopped up the coast for three days and then set off west to the Chesterfield Islands which are 450 miles on the way to Cairns.
We quickly adapted to the “watch schedule” and lack of winds meant we had to motor sail to keep our speed up—it is a long passage to Cairns—1200 miles and we did not want to be still sailing after our forecasted period and be stuck at sea in bad weather.
One of the amazing things about the area is the underwater sea mounts and islands in the middle of the ocean---we were sailing at 6000 feet of water and 5 miles away there was a mount of 22 feet!!—would be really freaky if you did not know and all of a sudden could see the bottom!! We kept away as we were unsure whether currents or eddies may occur in these regions.
We did not see any other vessels and other than a whale spouting some distance away and a pair of sea birds who decided to sleep on our spreader we were quite alone. As we are out of the main route at this time of year we were also sailing alone—quite unusual as we always have other boats to check in with each day. We did have John from Mr John as our weather guru; update us regularly with weather predictions. On his advice we will stay at Chesterfield Island for one day before heading on. Being there in this tenuous anchorage when the winds come up is not a good idea—the place is apparently littered with shipwrecks so we do not want to add to the number!!
Kristen has been researching it for us and it appears that it is a major fishing spot---those who are very rich come out from New Cal and fish for the aggressive GT’s—fish language for giant terakahi—around 80kg as are the dogtooth tuna which are at the bottom on the ancient sea mounts!!!---hmm will be interesting—Ken of course badly wants to catch something huge and I hope it does not take him as well as his rod and reel!! I would like to snorkel but hope I can find a place near shore away from these monsters. Apparently there are huge lobsters also---everything sounds huge and tough, hopefully we can get something smaller which is tasty.
So far we have only caught a bird on the fishing line—he was very upset and had wound the leader around his wing. Ken managed to cut him free even though he was not appreciative at all and gashed Ken a couple of times.
Oh, a new update on this blog—John has just emailed us to say we need to keep moving at a decent speed to get to Cairns by Friday—Thursday preferably as a huge low is forming in the North Coral Sea—where we are now and will be until our arrival.
Bummer!!
We were only 13 miles from Chesterfield when we got the email and so had to just go right through the islands without stopping. They are the ultimate desert island and perhaps they shoot “Survivor” there. We have been to many of the areas they have shot the series and they are very close to civilisation!!
It would have been great to snorkel around the anchorage and we could see the reef where Ken was sure the monster lobsters lived. He did catch several fish but nothing like a GT or dogfish tuna. So we travel on, dependant on weather but glad we have the communications to find this out before ending up as one of the many shipwrecks littering these islands. It definitely did not offer any shelter.
We are now headed for Cairns but if it is doubtful that we can get there on Friday we will divert to Townsville which is closer or even Mackay which is closer still.
Several boats which left Noumea after us heading to Bundaberg are now on a radio sched with us—it is always comforting to talk to someone else out there and share the joys and frustrations of the long passages. This year just to get to Darwin—arriving in July—from Wellington—left in March—we will have done 3600 miles!!! That is just to get to where we will start our season to get to Indonesia!!! I think the only long passage then will be the first one to Timor which is 420 miles—nothing to us seasoned sailors!!
We made the decision to head for Mackay which is 200 miles closer—it is strange—it is so hard to change your plans from a planned route and you will go to great lengths to make it work but once you have finally accepted that it will not work it is a relief to now have a workable route and the stress level goes down considerably.
Human nature seems to want to stay with planned patterns in life even if they are not the most beneficial.
We spent most of the next few days motoring and motor sailing when the winds allowed and it was a long easy trip—reminiscent of our crossing to the Marqueses.
We arrived at the outer barrier reef just after the tide changed in our favour and it was daylight. Several tankers were entering and exiting but they all had pilots aboard who arrived by helicopter to take them to the mainland in this sensitive area. The pilots were very friendly and gave us the easiest route for us which cut off time from the commercial shipping lane. It was awesome to sail through the first pass and see the sand cays and reefs of Great Barrier Reef. It would have been fun to explore more.
Now we have one more night and will arrive in the morning to Mackay.
What a difference a few hours makes!! As we travelled through the passage in the Great Barrier Reef the wind and swell started to pick up and by the time we were through we had winds up to 30 knot and swells that threw us from one side to the other as well as backwards and forwards. Although the seas were short they were so nasty that our back bunk, usually really calm and quiet in the wildest seas, was too uncomfortable to sleep.
All of this combined with the reefs scattered everywhere made for a stressful night. We were trying to slow down to 5 knots so we would not arrive before dawn and needed to reduce and reduce and reduce sail as with the current and wind the boat wanted to go at 8-9 knots—why we couldn’t have had that a few days ago.
We did manage to succeed and were happy to finally arrive up just after dawn. Atlantia, a Scottish boat we had last seen in New Caledonia last year was in Mackay and it was nice to see a friendly face waiting to help us tie up.
Customs were fine but the quarantine procedure in Australia is quite punitive. It costs $330 an hour and $25 every extra15 minutes. If it is a weekend they will charge overtime which is double!!! The young man we had was very nice but spent a lot of time photographing the wood on our boat. These he will send to an entomologist and if he deems it necessary will now charge you to fly a beagle dog from Sydney who will sniff your boat and decide if there are bugs in the wood. We heard a horror story about a brand new boat which had been built in China being delayed in Brisbane for 2 weeks. He had to wait for an appointment and pay the cost of flying the dog and his handler only to find there was nothing wrong with his new wood. He had incurred the cost of the marina in Brisbane for the two weeks while he waited.
The next couple of days were spent getting a phone and an internet stick. After waiting for 1 hour at the Telstra store to get served---the line went out into the mall!!!—I was most unhappy as there was only one bus in and one bus back to the marina and we only had 3 hours to get groceries, wine and other incidentals to continue on our way.
The grocery store was huge and prices were the same as in NZ except the dollar is worth 30% more so means everything is 30% more expensive. Everything was available and the find of the day was huge fresh prawns for $15 a kilo. On the other hand bananas are $12 95 a kilo as most were lost in Cyclone Yasi earlier this year.
As we had made landfall 280 miles south of Cairns, where we had intended, we need to move on quickly. We have 1 month to reach Darwin and hope we can spend a little time swimming and hiking some of the anchorages on the way---especially the ones south of where the crocodiles are!!!
Right now because of the strange low pressure system we were experiencing the temperatures were down as low at 13C which is record lows for these parts and thoughts of snorkelling are not in our heads!!!