Tag: adventure

  • Day 1: New Cal to New Zealand

    At 8:25am, we left our mooring ball at Ilot Amendee, next stop Opua, New Zealand (with a possible stop at Norfolk Island along the way). Trying some different seasickness meds for Cora, as the scopolamine patch itself doesn’t make her feel well. While passage planning and looking at all the different variables in this crossing,…

  • New Caledonia: Ilot Exploration

    Hadn’t expected much for wind, but ended up having a truly “dreamy sail” from Ile des Pins to Ilot Ua, steady light winds with minimal seas and clear skies. We had planned on doing lots of wing-foiling in New Caledonia, but instead have been given flat calm seas, lagoons of pure calm turquoise waters, wonderful…

  • New Caledonia: Ile Casey & Ile des Pins

    Out of the capital city of Noumea, motored in zero wind to Ile Casy, an uninhabited nature reserve, immediately greeted by bird song and the visually stunning mix of palm and tall pine trees. These endemic columnar pines stand like beacons, survivors of Triassic vegetation from some 230 million years ago, at the time when…

  • Noumea, New Caledonia: Where Cultures Converge

    New Caledonia is a place of mind-bending contrasts — somehow both French and Oceanian, European and Melanesian. Floating in the middle of the Coral Sea, it’s a French overseas territory whose main island, Grande Terre, stretches 400 kilometers in length, a rugged spine of mountains running like a backbone through the center. Along its edges…

  • Day 3: Passage from Fiji to New Cal

    Continued rain squalls on and off this morning. Winds have decreased to 17-23 and we’re cruising along at 7-8 knots. We have to maintain an average of 6.7 knots to get to Havannah Channel at slack tide, a narrow coral-strewn channel that can have standing waves and fast currents if timed incorrectly. Seas currently down…

  • Day 1: Passage Fiji to New Caledonia

    Coordinating a check-out over the holiday weekend (Fiji Day!) took a bit of extra coordination. Chris and Calder into the water to scrub the bottom for a faster passage, as we need to get into New Caledonia before a system comes in. The forecast looks a bit “sporty” (code in cruising for bigger winds and…

  • Yasawa Islands: Our 2 year Cruise-a-versary!

    Still sailing through the Yasawa Islands, we headed for the Blue Lagoon (Nanuya Island)—part shelter from the rising winds, part playground. Calder was in his element, wingfoiling with friends. When we arrived, George, the caretaker of a stretch of beach used by Blue Lagoon cruises, stopped by and kindly let us know that we’d need…

  • Savusavu to the Yasawas

    Back to the town of Savusavu, where we dock at the lovely Nawi Marina and wait for the tradewinds to chill a bit (below 20 would be nice!) so we can continue on to western Fiji. We need to go through Nasonisoni Pass and the waves stack up around it if the Trades are greater…

  • Back to Paradise: Taveuni Underwater Magic

    Almost not allowed out of the USA, as (in an amateur move) I didn’t procure a letter from Immigration stating we had a “one-way ticket” to Fiji back to our boat. I had notified Fiji Immigration of our travel and we had purchased a two-way ticket but, as it had originated from Fiji, it was…

  • Heading North

    It was time to head back toward Savusavu, where we would be catching our flight for a visit home to Petersburg, Alaska. Calder and I had gone forward to change from our Code Zero to our asymmetrical spinnaker when he saw a screw rolling around in the middle of our bowsprit. He reached forward to…