Australia Bound Day 1

We left New Caledonia early Monday morning and are steaming toward Bundaberg Australia.   Our first day has been great with relatively mild seas and winds on the beam.   Seas are forecasted to get a bit lumpy by Wednesday, but so far so good.

 

E

New Caledonia

It is October 30 and a month in New Caledonia has blown by.   The highlight of our time here was having Elizabeth and Brian with us for nearly 3 weeks as we explored some of the outer islands and anchorages.

 

We are now anchored at the far SW end of New Caledonia with David and Jacqui on Jackster and Glen and Cindy on Mystery Ship.    We have spent much of the last couple months with Jackster and we are having our last hurrahs with them before they head to NZ and we cross to Bundaberg, Australia.    It will be nice to have Mystery Ship (our identical sister ship) with us for the 800 nm / 4 day passage to OZ. 

 

We will be heading out early tomorrow (Monday) morning and the forecast is for reasonable conditions with 2 – 2.5 meter seas from the E – SE.   Following seas and light to moderate winds should give us a good ride.

 

Eric

Plastic Jellyfish??

 

Walking along a pristine white sand beach in New Caledonia, we came across this gorgeous green turtle washed up on shore – unfortunately dead. The locals speculated that the turtle mistook a plastic bag floating in the water as its favorite food – a jellyfish – ate it and died as a result. This is a common occurrence among turtles. Here in New Caledonia where there are plenty of both turtles and plastic garbage in the water, this tragedy occurs. This is a sad reminder for awareness of plastic in the world and where we put our trash.

 

As Tim Minchin says, "Take your canvas bags to the supermarket.....!"

Dugong Encounter

(Stock photo from the internet)

New Caledonia is known for its population of dugongs – which is a walrus-like animal that looks like the manatees of Florida. Since arriving a month ago, we’ve kept our eyes pealed for the elusive animal. Finally we spotted one yesterday in the distance as it flipped its tail up to dive under. That was quite exciting. Then this morning while I was kayaking, I saw a large brown lump in the water. I peddled over and quietly came upon the spot and there it was – a five foot long, brown dugong with a girth of a dolphin floating about a foot below the surface. He came alongside my kayak within two arm lengths of me and we eyed up each other. The water was crystal clear and, being down so low  in the kayak, I had a very good view of him. He spanned more than half the length of my ten foot kayak and there were two remorays (fish that suck onto larger fish) swimming around and clinging to him. Once he came up and took a breath, glanced my way and sleepily sank back down. The sound of his snort startled me at first but it was such a gentle movement that it put me at ease. He seemed quite unbothered by our encounter and we stayed side by side for a couple minutes. If only I had had my camera!

New Caledonia

We arrived in Noumea, New Caledonia at 10 am on Saturday after a wonderful smooth 59 hr. passage from Luganville, Vanuatu.   Even Ann thought it was smooth!

Noumea calls itself the "Paris of the Pacific" and it certainly is VERY French.    Due to our being "language challenged" we used the services of a yacht agent to handle the paperwork and arrangements.   Our clearance was the easiest ever.   Our agent, Chloe, instructed us to proceed directly to our slip in the marina where she met us and took care of all the formalities.   She even filled out the individual visa forms.   The quarantine (agriculture) officer spent 5 minutes looking through our freezer, immigration didn't even board the boat and stamped our passports on the dock, and Chloe took our forms to customs.   Voila', we are in New Caledonia.

 

E