Our Final Passage

 Day 48-52 - Wednesday - Sunday, October 11-15

Xavier was first in line at the customs office on Wednesday morning, October 11th to secure our papers to exit Fiji. We did a few final preparations and were on our way by 9:30am. We headed to the island of Mana where it’s well protected by reefs and Xavier could get under the boat by snorkel and clean the areas that were covered by the large straps when they lifted the boat out of the water for it’s cleaning at Vuna marina.

Mana Bay is encased in many shallow reefs with channel markers identifying the safe way to the bay. (Note: not only do they drive on the left on most of the islands we visited, the channel markers are opposite, too. When entering the channel, green markers are on the right and red on the left, opposite from North America). We made it through the maze of markers, anchored and Xavier got to work cleaning the boat as Mickey worked on lunch. 

New Caledonia is next….after a 5-6 day crossing of about 700 nautical miles.

There are not a whole lot of stories to tell during the passage. One day begins to blend with another as all we see is blue ocean north, south, east and west. Thank goodness for GPS so we know where we are! As always, there are some beautiful sunrises and sunsets to document our journey.

We encountered a few other vessels via radar on the crossing, but none of them were close enough to see, except for a few small fishing boats as we left Fiji. There is a radar system called AIS that most boats engage. This alerts other nearby vessels of your location, speed and heading. So we can all make sure we don’t accidentally run into another boat. However, there are some boats who might not have their AIS turned on (i.e. small fishing boats, or others who are fishing illegally). In addition to watching the radar for other boats, you also have to scan the ocean and horizon to manually look for other vessels. This is how we saw the 3 small fishing boats and were able to avoid them. Generally, this happens nearer to islands and not when we are at sea. But we always stay vigilant, especially at night.

The winds were favorable and we made really good time on Saturday, October 14th. We were about 50 nautical miles ahead of schedule. 

As we finished our last night watches for the entire cruise (Carol’s smile is quite big), we welcomed Sunday morning (October 15) with blue skies, light winds and another time change.  While we won’t get to Noumea Harbor Marina until tomorrow, we have anchored  this afternoon at nearby Pointe Mere about 3-4 hours away from Noumea.

A very different scenario occurred last evening, we were too far ahead of schedule and actually needed to slow down.  The reason was that the vast New Caledonia Bank is covered with reefs making it very difficult to navigate in the dark, and we were at pace to arrive around 4am.  

We did our part and reduced sail.  Then Mother Nature did hers and also reduced wind speed causing us to slow down too much, making it later before we reached the Bank. As we entered the New Caledonia Bank, the seas grew quite aggressive as the ocean floor lifted up towards the island, the tide and currents fought against each other and the reefs added an entire other dimension to the scenario. We were tossed around but made it through without incident. And we enjoyed watching a dolphin greet us as we entered.