Australia Bound! Wednesday, October 31, 2018
31 October 2018 | Coral Sea, on route to Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia
Helen & Mark
We enjoyed some Noumea Market quiches for dinner. Then we watched the last two episodes of Justified, Season 1. Mark spoke to our England agent, finalizing our boat insurance with high liability. He had to email them our blog address so they could see recent pictures of our boat. I was tired out from our busy day and headed to bed by 10 pm. It was midnight by the time Mark finished and came to bed. Woke up around 5 am and could not fall back asleep. Finally got up by 6 am. Started the inverter and connected our phones to charge. Got breakfast together, letting Mark sleep a bit longer. Then we got in the dinghy with our boat papers and headed to shore. Tied up to the far dock. I took our last small trash bag and deposited it to one of the dumpsters close to the market. Our first stop was Immigration which is located on the second floor of a Medical building. You have to press the buzzer to get in. They informed us that they don't open until 8 am. It was around 7:30 and they are only open until 11:30 am so we expected they would open early, nope. We sat on the curb and waited. Mark called his brother and chatted. I spoke with a French optometrist, who sailed to New Caledonia 12 years ago. He was getting clearance to take his boat to New Zealand for the cyclone season. At 8 am, the door was opened for us. The lady was very friendly. Mark returned the form that they issued when we signed in. We actually spent the whole month of October here. We walked further to Customs. Their office was on the first floor. They had the nicest restroom in all of Noumea. That included a toilet seat, toilet paper, sink with running water, soap and paper towels. We never found that in any restroom in French Polynesia. Then we walked another number of blocks to the Harbour Master. Thankfully, two French speaking boaters told us that it was two flights up. But up meant climbing the stairs to the third floor. I stopped at the second floor as the window had a view of the harbor. Then the top floor had several windows, so I took lots of pictures. All of the stops included some English being spoken which helped a lot. We walked back to the street and as I was taking pictures looking out to the harbor, I saw a bus coming by. Thankfully, it stopped and I was able to catch up since it took some time for Mark to pay for two tickets and then feed them in the automated slot. We stayed on the bus only a short while as we wanted to get some fresh bread at Johnson's grocery store. We had already shopped at the market, so we have plenty of fruits and veggies for our sail to Australia. If we don't eat them, Australia will take them away. We dinghied back to our boat, stopping to say good bye to Rosanna. Helped Mark hoist the dinghy motor, since we figured the seas would be huge. And they are! He hoisted the dinghy into the davits. We hauled anchor and motored to the gas dock. We had to wait for a very large power boat who was filling up with diesel. It was finally our turn when they left. We filled up our tank plus three jerry jugs. We got a reduced price, duty free. You can only get their duty free fuel when you have cleared out. We added two ice cream bars for leaving pleasure. Ate them as we motored out the harbor and got on our rhumb line. There were two sailboats coming into the harbor that we needed to wait on before I steered the boat into the wind for Mark to hoist the main sail. The winds were from east of south, which meant they were on our port beam. Mark set the jib sail and we were flying with 18 knots of wind. Our speeds were over 8 knots as we raced over to the reef entrance. Our course changed slightly, but the waves were sizable. Big waves crashing into the edge of the reef on both sides of the entrance. We are still seeing large waves. At times there are some monstrous swells lifting us up as they rush under our boat. Put together some quick sandwiches on the very fresh loaf of bread. Then once the jerry jugs were secured under our cockpit table, Mark headed for a rest. I know he was tired. He started his nap in the cockpit, but the waves were rocking us too much so he moved onto the salon settee. He slept for over an hour while I kept watch. No one around but a few birds skimming the waters looking for fish. It's such a sight to see them fly so gracefully. The water was a beautiful pale blue color with the sun shining so brightly, again today. We are nearing the sunset time. Hoping for a nice color in the sky. We are far enough away from New Caledonia, that we don't even see the beautiful mountains. We are still seeing less winds and maybe a little less wave height. Winds are 11-13 knots. Our speed is now 5-7 knots. We have 733 nautical miles to go to the turn at the top of Frazier Island, which is part of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. We will have an additional 40-50 miles after that to the Bundaberg marina. We used the rest of our OPT cell coverage to make a few calls underway. By the time we got to the reef, our coverage was gone. Thanks for your emails and messages, today. Our only communication now is thru our Garmin satellite messages. If we get some steady wind we should be in Bundaberg on Tuesday! And yes, I see some beautiful colors up ahead!! Even the clouds have a pink hue this evening! Mark is happy to be back at sea again. Me, I am not sure when I look out to those big waves!