Noumea, New Caledonia

Bonjour

We arrived at the entrance to Havannah Passage, New Caledonia at first light on Sunday morning having had to motor since 2.30am to make the flood tide in the pass, as the wind had died out. We began the next 40 nautical miles of navigation through reef and island passages, arriving in Port Moselle to anchor at 14:40.

Since last Tuesday's post we sailed in beautiful sunny conditions with just our genoa set in the 20 plus knot winds through to Thursday morning when the winds began to moderate to around 15kn. We then set a double reefed main through to Friday midnight shaking out the reefs as the wind moderated further. We enjoyed watching the full moon rise and set each night. At first light on Saturday we exchanged the genoa for our 0.5oz code zero sail. The breeze continued to fade throughout Saturday and disappeared on Sunday at 02:30. At this point we started the engine and passed an outbound cargo ship heading to Vanuatu. We were able to shut down the engine at 09:00 Sunday in favour of the code zero and full main again. The sailing was enjoyable as we cruised past many anchorages and bays we hope to explore later. The lush tropical bush gave way to eroded multi coloured rock and soil hills and gullies, perhaps mined in the past for the rich deposits of nickel.

As we neared Noumea there were hundreds of sailing vessels out enjoying the good trade winds. They ranged from wind surfers through to super yachts. It was a great sight with sails billowing on the iridescent blue waters.

Today we went into town and visited the Immigration, Customs and Quarantine Offices to clear in. It was a nice, easy, welcoming and free procedure, so refreshing. After that we practiced our basic school grade French on the shopkeepers. We're glad most of them speak English!

We covered 678nm in 5 days and 8 hours on the passage from Fiji.
All is bien on board.
Kathy and Wayne

email is via our slow and limited* HF radio email system. * Limited by the atmospheric conditions and propagation of the ionosphere.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com