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 [...]
The Last Passage
The boys continued to fish and caught about 5 good sized tuna keeping 2 and releasing the rest, so fish was on the menu again.
The main highlight of the fishing though was when Scott had a big marlin on, I saw it come out of the water about 6 times and almost skip across the water, unfortunately the excitement was short lived as it snapped the line after a few minutes.
Jayden also has a story about the one that got away, upon hearing his rod whizz out, Scott made sure he was strapped to the boat and Jayden starting reeling the fish in, we could see it was a big Mahi Mahi when it was about 10 metres from the boat it did a huge twist and broke the line. Jayden was a little upset to say the least, maybe that would have been the biggest yet.
We kept a close eye on the weather forecasts, by Wednesday we had decided to skip Lord Howe and go directly to Sydney because the weather at Lord Howe looked a bit dodgy and we didn't want to get caught there waiting for another weather window.
As family members were expecting to hear from us upon arrival in Lord Howe we sent them an email of our changed plans. We then got news that my sister Patricia whom had been battling cancer for sometime, was seriously ill in hospital, so we headed for Coffs Harbour as it was the fastest way we could get to see her. Very sadly we received news that she died that evening. We were lucky enough to have been able to talk to her via the satellite phone, which is something I am very grateful of.
We continued for Coffs Harbour, having one becalmed day where the sea was glassy smooth, we stopped the engine and had a swim in the ocean which was 4000 metres deep. That was the calm before the storm.
We then had the worst 24 hours of the entire journey, with washing machine waves around 3 to 4 metres and winds up to 40kts, it was quite scary at times. We arrived in Coffs very early Sunday 10th.
Customs were very good and the checkin was faster then expected.
