Bound for Australia
| Vessel Name: | Sirius |
30 November 2013
The Last Leg to Bundabah
Anchored off our land in Bundabah November 21 - to be concluded
30 November 2013 | Coffs Harbour
Arrived Australia Sunday 10th November 2013
It's good to be home at last
30 November 2013 | On route New Cal to Oz
The Last Passage
With winds coming from the south southeast it made heading south quite difficult and not particularly pleasant but we continued staying as close to our desired course as possible. Once again it took a couple of days for most of us to find our sea legs, though Andrew never seems to loose his. Having Scott [...]
30 November 2013 | Noumea
New Caledonia
After spending the Friday night at anchor in the main Noumea bay we were lucky enough to secure a pontoon in the marina and were nicely tied up just in time for Scott, Mark and Jayden's arrival. Scott is my brother, Jayden is his son and Mark is my sister Patricia's youngest son. They joined us to do [...]
23 November 2013
On the way to New Caledonia
On to New Caledonia – the last stop before Australian waters: We waited about 5 days for a weather opportunity to move on to New Caledonia, along with a dozen or so boats heading South, almost all to New Zealand, but a few going our way. By late November, the Summer cyclone/typhoon season comes to the tropics including Vanuatu and New Caledonia, so by late October, all the cruising boats get ready to move on, most South to New Zealand, or some Australia, but a few also head North back across the Equator to Indonesia or the Philippines. We left on Tuesday 22nd October, which would get us into Noumea, Capital of New Caledonia, and the only port of entry by Friday with any luck, in time to meet 3 more family guests there on Saturday 26th. We had been more or less heading West since Panama with the prevailing winds, but now had to make 340 miles to the South West. For a while it looked like we would not be able to sail this way at all, and would have to make the long journey around the top of New Caledonia adding 200 miles to the trip and lots of motoring, but finally the wind had just enough East in it to let us sail to Noumea direct, although this was our first passage sailing into the wind since Belize back in March. We made good enough time to come through the outer islands of New Caledonia on Friday morning and get into Noumea Harbour by sunset. The Harbour was to our surprise packed with hundreds of sailing boats, most at anchor as the two small marinas were overflowing. Who they all were and where they were all going we never really found out. We worried that arriving after hours on a Friday would cause all the usual problems with officials, but not here – this is part of France and the EU, so everything is helpful, easy going and free. The photo is our Halloween party onboard - explanation in the next blog from Noumea.
19 November 2013 | Vanuatu
Port Vila
Just 20 minutes out of Port Vila we had drawn a complete blank on the fishing. This was a big disappointment to Margaret, who was very keen to catch just something ahead of brother Mark and uncle Scott coming onboard in Noumea. Then fish on and the reel buzzed. Margaret hauled it in, Warren gaffed [...]
Suwarrow take 2
Sugar row was just what I had expected a deserted island to be, if anyone remembers the show Gilligans Island that's it. It was beautiful, mostly covered in coconut trees along with other tropical palms, lots of white sand and surrounded by coral reefs. The lagoon is about 10 miles across and there are a number of islands and reefs around the outside forming the lagoon. It is a national park belonging to the Cook Islands. Two park rangers (Harry and Charlie) live there for eight months of the year, they are dropped off in April and collected in October. The only visitors are yachts, so they appreciate donations of petrol for their generator and dingy and food items such as sugar and yeast which they make coconut wine from, very tastey.
Harry does all the official business of the immigration/customs checkin etc and Charlie looks after the islands and visitors. He took us on a wonderful tour across the bay to bird island where we saw thousands of birds mostly terns, some frigates and a few Boobies, one of the Boobies was sitting on two eggs. There were many eggs just laying on the sand and the parent birds would sit on them. We then went to seven islands and saw the monster coconut crabs which live under ground and as we saw are capable of climbing trees very quickly. We then did a spectacular snorkel in very clear water and saw lots of corals and fish and one turtle.
As we were setting our anchor we had about 6 reef sharks circling the boat looking quite ominous and didn't think swimming would be a great idea, but we later found out that these black tipped reef sharks are quite timid and as soon as you get in the water they disappear which was what happened, but we were also warned to be careful of the more aggressive grey sharks on the outside of the lagoon, we did see these ones on the other side of the island and quickly got out of the water.
We had some more encounters with beautiful manta rays, there are two buoys on a reef about half a mile from the anchorage and the manta's come and swim around the ropes, we would float around on top of the water and watch them for ages sometimes diving down and coming within inches of them, amazing creatures.
There were around ten boats there and we made some lovely new friends Sue and John from Wizzard and Dianna, Bruce and Peter from Margarita very kindly gave us a go on their paddle boards, Sophia and Cameron were paddling around the bay in a flash. Think they may be going on the Christmas wish list. We had some very nice pot luck BBQ dinners and drinks onshore and Harry and Charlie did a wonderful song, with Harrry on the guitar and Charlie doing a local dance. We were extremely pleased we visited Suwarrow and had a wonderful experience there.
We left after 5 days and sailed a long with Amara for about 3 days to Nuie.
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