Australia Here We Come!
03 October 2014 | Mid Ocean
Heather
We are on passage to Australia now, left New Cal yesterday morning in a glassy calm lagoon that looked the clearest it had the whole time we'd been there. The night before, we'd headed out to Ilot Maitre, a park island right near the pass for an easy exit the following morning and it was such a pretty spot. I took one last quick swim to say goodbye to the fish and see how many were hanging out under our boat- a lot! We'll miss snorkeling & diving for a bit but I know there's some in Australia so shouldn't be too long. We've had light conditions and plenty of sun so have been doing some pleasant sailing along with some spurts of motorsailing to keep our speed up. As I write this just past sunset, the wind has filled in and we're blasting along on smooth seas, the western sky where we're pointing toward still glows orange and the moon is directly overhead. I'll have it for my whole 6 hour watch. Its 795 miles on a rhumbline which is what we like to do! If all goes well, we should be in Bundaburg by Monday evening and have permission from customs to anchor in front of the marina for the night before checking in which sounds a lot better than heaving to for another night at sea! The rumor among cruisers is that Australia is really strict at check-in with a serious inspection of foodstuff, conservative bottle limits on alcohol (which eliminates the possibility of a selection) and a timber inspection that can even involve a dog to assess for boring insects/termites. I like to think I keep a pretty neat ship but it is still intimidating to have someone inspecting your things and the consequences of any issues can be expensive. I hope to be able to report that it was no worse than getting in to NZ, which was very reasonable. Bundaburg is known for Bundaburg Rum and lots of sugar cane (so I guess we can replenish our stores) and supposedly the entrace is lit up like a runway because of shipping so we don't have to think too hard to get in which is good. We're looking forward to pulling into a marina for a few days to get the boat spruced up & move around. It'll be great to meet up with Jan & Rich on Slip Away who are enroute from Vanuatu, to celebrate Jon's belated birthday (which is Friday, while we're on passage) and to get ourselves rested up and ready to start exploring. Maybe a trip to the rum distillery is in order.
We'll have the better part of 2 months now to make our way to Sydney and there seems to be plenty of things to see along the way and hopefully a good spot or two to pause and do a few maintencne projects. We don't have anything huge (yet) to replace or repair from this short season but there are some things that need some TLC like the outboard, some canvas work, replacement of the lifelines, some running rigging sheets and of course there's always the dreaded varnish. It's like a deja vu where at this same time last year I noticed it self destructing by the day and now again this year. There seems to be some critical point where it just explodes into fragments. Lots of work, outside in the sun which is great since we'll be in Australia, the land of skin cancer!
The last bit of time we spent in New Cal was pretty good. We met up with friends on Gypsea Heart in an anchorage in the southern lagoon called Five Islands which was just beautiful. It had really healthy, full coral for great snorkeling & white beaches- that full S Pacific island feel. Then we moved to Bay de Prony- a large bay with many protected pockets & mountain views. The shoreline is ALIVE with birds and they sing into the night. Jon & I have been burning to do some of New Cal's GR1 hiking trail and it was easily accessed from the head of the bay so we did a long day hike on a sunny day to see a really nice part of New Cal. It was definitely one of the highlights of our time here and Jon especially was really impressed. We saw wild parrots, hot springs & pretty streams that ran along a nicely formed trail that was orginally made for the mining industry- there was an old chromium mine on the part we walked on. You could see the old railroad ties from what must have been a small gauge railway that carried the ore down to the shore. After a day of hiking, we came back to the boat to scrub our shoes, socks, feet, dinghy- anything that got that red dirt on it since it stains like rust. Brother! I really enjoyed the nights we spent anchored up there in the bay though and found it humorous to see all the cruising boats darting around from one anchorage to the next. We're meeting more & more Australian boats (this is like our Caribbean for them).
After Prony Bay, we headed out into the lagoon again to visit Amedee Island which has a beautiful French lighthouse. It is an elegant design and stands as the tallest lighthouse in New Cal if not further. The cruising guide mentioned being able to climb it, great snorkeling around the island and easy access to the pass for a shark dive so Mark & Anne & us thought this could be a good place to wrap up our 2 season cruising stint. But... the lighthouse was cerrado, the snorking was very ho-hum and after getting all geared up for a scuba dive, we couldn't find anything we wanted to dive on near the pass or anywhere for that matter. We ended up putting our scuba stuff on for a 12 foot descent in the anchorage just to do something with all the gear. We saw some nice big fish who were tame but other than that, it wasn't exactly what we'd had in mind.
The next morning we pulled into the marina in Noumea to start getting ready for the passage as well as the goodbyes since this marks the end of cruising with Blue Rodeo & Gypsea Heart. They and Mark & Anne are heading back to New Zealand and we along with Gerrit & Anne-Mieke on Fruit de Mer are going to Australia. We tried to convine them otherwise, but couldn't. Bummer! We had some final pow-wows and even got in one last lovely walk with Mark & Anne through incredibly ugly city scenery to get our excercise and we lamented how we'll never find anyone willing to endure these walks from this point on. Then Mark & Anne gave us one last shove off the dock after a painful goodbye that hasn't even sunk in all the way yet.
This is THE hardest part of cruising. You meet tons of people from all over the world, all the time and a few you connect with tightly. You travel so closely together and share so many experiences over so many days that it is more intense than any other friendship I've known. And then you ultimately go your separate ways hoping to meet up again somewhere. Sad! It's happened before and it'll hopefully happen again, this cycle of hello's, intense goodbyes and reunions. Cruising wouldn't be the same for us unless it did.