The Easterlies that were forecast came in more or less as advertised - a half day late and a little variable at first, but within 8 hours they were consistent and accompanied by only 1.5 metres of swell. The end result was a nice beam reach to Havannah Canal. We wanted to arrive about 06:30 to catch the ingoing tide - this was important as the outgoing flow there can be very strong, and against the Easterly air flow would be pretty uncomfortable as well. And so it eventuated - by reefing the main and partly furling the genoa we slowed "Destiny" down a touch and so we arrived just on slack low tide and rode the incoming flow right through to Canal Woodin and into the North-West lagoon.
We were shadowed in by a small French warship that kept exactly one nautical mile astern of us, as measured on the radar, all the way in through the Canal - we wondered if they were going to hail and stop us, as they then came closer and closer once we were through. There have been some civil disturbances in Noumea lately and we knew that army, navy and police reinforcements from mainland France have been called in and thought they might have wanted to identify us. We waited for radio contact but they just pulled out, as if into the passing lane on a freeway and glided past us before opening up their throttle, pulling away at rapidly rising speed, and leaving us in their wake. Turns out they just didn't want to startle or disturb us by speeding past! The crew were all on deck and waved, yelled and took photos of us as they passed.
Coming through Canal Woodin we were treated to a display of breaching, flipping and spinning by a large whale who just seemed to be enjoying the eary morning sun and having a bit of a stretch - they come in to Baie du Prony to calve at this time of the year.
The breeze had dropped off during the early morning so we motor-sailed into Noumea Harbour, tying up at Port Moselle about 14:00. Quarantine and Immigration formalities completed, we set about catching up with Migaloo, Saw Lee Ah, Sassoon and other friends whom we had not seen in a while.