Heading For New Zealand

We are on our way to New Zealand. A bit earlier than we thought we would go but everything came together for a departure on Saturday 29 Oct. A sailing friend, John Newton arrived Thursday night from Yeppoon to crew with us. We cleared Customs and Immigration Friday morning with a view of departing early the following week (Customs had extended the number of days you had to leave by due to public holidays Monday & Tuesday) but a weather window looked good for a Saturday departure so we took it.

The earlier than planned departure meant there were some planned things that didn't happen. Ann didn't get a chance to cook some meals for the passage in case conditions made it difficult while underway and we didn't do an update of this blog with spectacular photos of our last few weeks in New Caledonia. The photo update will happen once we establish full internet access in NZ but there is no Plan B for the prepared meals other than cooking underway as needed. Unfortunately conditions were quite lively on Sunday evening but Ann still managed to put together a great hot meal.

Our time in New Caledonia has been brief but very enjoyable. A taster for when we come back next year at the end of the Pacific circuit from New Zealand.

While we have been in Noumea, friends from SA off the yacht Calista, Colin & Cookie, returned to Noumea from Vanuatu. We knew they would be coming but weren't sure if our timelines would overlap. Fortunately it did so we had the opportunity spend time with them over the last 2 weeks and for them to share tales of their Vanuatu adventures with us over meals and many sundowner drinks.

At the same time Neale & Robyn joined us for 10 days. It was great to explore Noumea and the surrounding islets, reef and bays with them. We had mixed weather but that didn't impact on having a great time and presented opportunities for different experiences, having a good supply of French wines helped.

Today we hit the half way point of the trip and were back in Australian waters briefly when we sailed 12Nm to the south of Norfolk Is. It was a treat to see the twin peaks of Norfolk and Phillip Island appear on the horizon this morning. If we had passed them at night it would have been a totally different experience.

Iridium Go, the new satellite communications system we installed just before we left Brisbane, paired with the PredictWind Offshore weather forecasting system has been great. We get updated weather models every 12 hrs so we can continually modify our course on passage to make the best of the developing weather patterns and try and avoid the worst of it. The Iridium Go also gives us phone call capability and email acces, mainly text only due to the limited data download speeds. The satellite download speed is the same speed I had in the 1980's on my dial up modem. At that time I thought it was great being able to log on to the university computer from home to do assessments rather than having to go on campus and queue for a computer terminal. In today's broadband internet world these speeds seem very slow but when you are hundeds of kilometers offshore on a stormy night, getting access to the latest comprehensive weather models is fantastic and being able to email and talk to family and friends from anywhere allows you to stay in touch and for them to be part of your journey. Plus the live tracking map that comes with the package is a great bonus.