GHOST

So after a fantastic night of food, drinks, cards and lots of laughs with Ross and Jo off Sojourn we said our final farewells and awoke at 5am with slightly sore heads to make a 40 mile passage down to the Ilse de Pines. The wind picked up at 530 in the anchorage but before long it was obvious that it had blowing all night outside our protected spot at the head of Baie de Prony, so after two hours of motoring straight into a decent wind induced swell we thought better of exiting the bay to bash into it for the next 8 hours, and instead tucked back into another protected anchorage...discretion is always the better part of valour.

All things happen for a reason though and while Ilse de Pine is meant to be beautiful and was to be our departure point from Noumea in a few days time, it'll have to wait till next time for we have decided that the weather is right, the window has opened and tomorrow morning (Monday) we make for Coffs Harbour, Australia...the end of the voyage is near.

With luck it'll be an uneventful final passage. The wind is forecast to be fairly strong, 20-30 knots from the ESE, for the first few days but we'll be running with it on a board reach heading predominantly west. Then beyond 157E we hope it'll back a little (change anti-clockwise) and start coming a little more from the NE quadrant. We can then head more SW and try and find the east Australian current which with wind from the N-NE should see us hammering down the eastern seaboard to Coffs, hopefully by some time on Saturday.

Can't believe it's nearly over....