By: Pete, Roger and Linda

Skipper: Pete

We left Neiafu (Tonga) on the 7th November with an ESE wind force 4 to 5, perfect weather with the sun shining. The first days run of 157 miles. This good weather continued to Minerva Reef where we anchored for one day.  We left Minerva reef on the 11th with a NW force wind which soon backed to the SW and went quite light. The wind continued to back to the SE and by the 14th the wind was back to force 4 and excellent sailing again. 

This continued until the 17th when the SSE wind picked up to force 6 and eventually force 8 with big seas. The Jordan Series drogue was deployed at midnight and we went slowly to the NW – only 40 miles from an anchorage in NZ. The drogue was out for 36 hours. Exceptionally steep seas broke against us from time to time. One big hit broke the starboard shackle on the drogue bridle. The Sea Break was put out to starboard and then it took several hours to set up a jury bridle. Later a big wave completely filled the cockpit with some water getting below. An added complication was that we were in the shipping lane North of NZ. 

On Sunday 19th the drogue was recovered and we beat into a SE5 which slowly decreased and we arrived in Opua late afternoon on Tuesday 21st November 1371 miles and 13 days out from Tonga. 

Crew and Friend: Roger

Friday 17/11/2017, 44 miles NE of Bay of Islands. Set drogue at midnight.

Wednesday 22/11/2017 Arrived at Opua last evening, after a storm that set in on Friday evening, blowing Oryx 72 miles N on the series drogue. The wind gradually increased on the Friday afternoon on Pete’s watch. I woke up to Pete driving Oryx as hard as he could against strong winds and increasing seas. Continued on my afternoon watch from 3.00 until 7.00 on a close reach to make Opua before it got worse. I checked the weather on Garmin Satellite, which predicted 40-50 knot winds with the swell rising to 21 feet on Saturday and Sunday morning. Pete told me to get some rest and he continued to drive Oryx towards the Bay of Islands. After a couple of big waves Pete decided to use the series drogue and ride out the blow. 

This account has been a long time coming but the experience still seems very near. I didn’t write anything, except the above notes, during the storm. It was quite unnerving at times, with waves smashing us from different directions. That stretch of water north of Opua leads to the tip of the North Island where the Tasman and the Pacific meet. A tropical current comes down from the north and wind was against it and possibly the tide, which seemed to make the sea very confused and steep. Added to this was the fact that we were in a shipping lane. 

We had dinner and I went to get some rest before my watch at 3.00 am but woke to a large crash. It was getting too difficult to sail against the growing seas so Pete had turned Oryx downwind before he and Linda deployed the Jordan Series Drogue. Pete made the drogue ready for use before leaving Tonga. The bridles had been shackled to the port and starboard hulls with 1/2 stainless shackles, so it was a matter of carefully feeding out the cones until it was set. We were only 40 miles from Opua. The peak of the storm didn’t hit until about midday on the Saturday and we were drifting at  3 – 3.5 knots towards North Cape. 

Dawn came on Saturday with only a box of cutlery falling out and crashing on the galley floor that night. There was a strange calm and quiet before what sounded like whistling, then one almighty thump on the starboard hull. I was convinced it had stove in the hull. Emerging from the galley area I reported that everything was still sound. Pete seemed quite unconcerned and made me wonder what I was fussing about. The day slowly passed, with the waves becoming more and more majestic. There is a certain beauty that commands admiration. It was a privilege to be in the middle of all that dry, warm and relatively safe.

A ship passed so close we could see the funnels a couple of hundred yards away. Pete radioed what sounded like young Asian officer stating our position and that we are not under command. He replied telling us to keep clear! It was the only time I asked Pete how the boat was built. He explained that it is basically a box with two hulls on either side stuck together with epoxy. I was brimming with confidence after that. 

The day literally rolled on and I got some rest before yet another almighty thump around 2.00 pm. This time it was more concerning. The wave conditions on that occasion were such that the surge pressure was enough to shear a 1/2 inch stainless steel shackle, anchoring the bridle to the starboard hull. So that we were hanging on the port shackle, getting thumped by waves on the port beam. Pete put on his wet weather gear and two harnesses to assess the damage.

During that process, we got thumped by an excessively large wave coming from port, which lifted the hull  (and rudder) into the air, coming back down with the port bridle caught under the port rudder. I have some recollection of him looking somewhat distressed when he turned to say the port bridle is caught under the rudder. Fortunately, an equally large wave followed almost immediately, once again lifting the hull and rudder, but this time freeing the bridle from the rudder. 

So the immediate challenge was to set a sea anchor on the starboard side, try to haul the bridle back and anchor it in position again. Pete fortunately had a sea anchor at hand (basically a large folding bucket on a long rope), which he fixed to the starboard transom, stabilising the boat while he repaired the starboard bridle. Pete undertook this work alone, confining Linda and me to the cabin. He fixed a slip knot on the port bridle and hauled the drogue more amidships each time the waves allowed some slack. It was quite a process with waves breaking over him constantly.

By this stage, Pete would have been better wearing a diver’s suit, mask and snorkel, while Linda and I observed in relative comfort and awe from the cabin. Had the port bridle remained caught under the rudder, it would probably have sheared it clean off, but we had good luck…….

Once completed he came in drenched, with squelching boots but smiling, telling us that the water was warm. He then steeped the porridge oats for breakfast before catching some sleep. The 3.00 to 7.00 am watch involved keeping a check on the AIS for shipping and shining a torch on the slip knot to ensure it did not slip. It was a relatively uneventful night until about 5.00 am when Pete woke and turned on the VHF. The wind was dropping and waves appeared less violent in the dawn light. We were listening to the forecast when a wave broke into the cockpit filling it to deck level. It forced water through the porthole seal, squirting it across the cabin roof and into both hulls; another mess to clean up. It was so powerful that Oryx lurched forward, making the fore-and-aft chart table drawers come half way out. Linda slept through it but Pete was visibly quite surprised. I was facing forward so didn’t see it coming. That was the last violence that Mother Nature threw at us and by 11.00 am the drogue was hauled in. A lone Wandering Albatross skimmed past and our sails were up, while we sailed close hauled into the swell. It was good to be back under command. 

A big thank you to Pete and Linda for inviting me on board Oryx for the Tonga passage. It was a wonderful way to finish off a very eventful 2017. That year little Francis was completed and in December Pete and Linda sailed her from Stillwater to The Bay of Islands on an adventure round Cape Brett. Apparently they had a whale of a time, meeting a pod of them half up the coast! I look forward to hearing about the next voyage wherever it may be.  Go well

Mate: Linda

For days we sailed with favourable wind on flat seas. It was like sitting in a train, the boat only gently moving sideways. I did not know that ocean sailing could be that comfortable – making fast progress on flat seas for days.  

I was outnumbered when Pete and Roger wanted to stop at Minerva Reef, just because it was on our way, while I was keen to carry on, not believing that such good weather would last for the whole of our passage.

As it turns out, the gale that hit us and the subsequent experience was one of the two most enduring fears I experienced at sea (and with Pete). Lying beam to the seas, huge breaking waves towering over us, filling the cockpit, water streaming in, ‘bombarding’ on the hull, drawers popping out, spilling stuff, was extremely shocking. Pete was out there for hours, with colossal effort trying to tie a knot hanging off the stern!  I deleted the picture I took of the wave filling the cockpit, never wishing to see it again. However Roger took one of him hanging off. It brings back terrifying memories. 

On arrival checking Oryx there were 3 places where she was cracked and needed repairs.  We later learnt that in our vicinity there were two other yachts, of which one was abandoned – crew rescued, and other suffered damage. We fared well.


 

In the middle of June we left Whangarei in New Zealand and after clearing out from Marsden Cove, we set sail in a fresh SW F6. Once clear of the channel we bore away past Bream Head for French Polynesia. I say ‘we’ as Linda Crew-Gee, a Croatian Londoner and fellow junk enthusiast, had joined me for the voyage.

The wind continued SW for the next two days, slowly easing to force 5 and giving us splendid runs of 158 and 157 miles, and taking us across the dateline, thus enjoying two Fridays. The SW wind died out and swung round to the ESE F4-5; Oryx was beating to windward into a rough sea. The E wind persisted and a week out, in 31o S we tacked and headed SE with two reefs in each sail. The wind increased in strength over the next three days, by which time it was blowing NE 7 and we were jogging along with four reefs in each sail.

Dawn brought a sharp increase in the wind and with large, breaking seas we ran off downwind under bare poles and set the Jordan series-drogue. We immediately slowed down to under two knots and all was relatively peaceful below. We turned in to catch up on sleep. By the late afternoon the wind and seas had eased and after 20 minutes effort, we retrieved the drogue and got underway again with a gentle NW wind.

The following week we had light S winds with daily runs of about 60 miles, but by the end of that week the wind returned, blowing SW F6-7 and giving us good, if rough, runs. By this time we were well S of Tubuai, in the Austral Islands, and when the E wind returned we were able to lay our course. On 6 July we sailed in through the pass in the reef and anchored off the village of Mataura, on Tubuai. We were glad to be in after 23 days of a rather rough passage of 2,188 miles.

The July fete was about to start, so we had arrived at just the right time. The main attraction was the inter- village competitions for traditional dancing, drumming and singing. This took place in an open-air, sand arena and was all the better for not being a staged, tourist spectacle. The Austral Islands lie 500 miles south of Tahiti and off the main tourist and cruising routes; fewer than a dozen yachts call each year. Perhaps because of this the islanders were very friendly. After a few days some bad weather arrived and made our anchorage untenable, so we moved further from the village to anchor near the commercial wharf and were able to land in the very sheltered small boat harbour. A road runs right around the small island and we went for long walks, and the hitch hiking was easy when we got tired.

After ten days in Tubuai we sailed overnight to the next island south, Raivavae, just over 100 miles away. Our luck held and we had arrived just as their fete started. If anything the costumes were even more elaborate and the amount of effort put in by a large proportion of the small population was impressive. One of the many advantages of having Linda aboard is that she speaks very good French (I am a monoglot), and is very outgoing. We were soon on friendly terms with one of the gendarmes, Thibault and his wife, Cindy. They had only arrived from France a few months before, but gave us much useful information about the island. We borrowed a couple of bicycles from the Gendarmerie and did a tour of the island, which was fun until Linda got knocked over by a large dog jumping out from a garden. No bones were broken, but Linda was shaken up.

At the weekend we took Thibault and Cindy for a sail to the other side of the island and anchored off an idyllic uninhabited island, Motu Pescine. This lies on the edge of the fringing reef and has a large shallow natural ‘swimming pool’ on one side. After a day of swimming, exploring and picnicking, Thibault and Cindy had to paddle their kayaks over to Raivavae and back to work the next day. We stayed anchored off this delightful spot for a further ten days, exploring the nearby motus, sailing in our dinghy Crake and celebrating Linda’s birthday with barely cool champagne. In retrospect it was the highlight of our cruise.

In early August we sailed off towards the Gambier Islands, 700 miles to the east. Apart from one day of light winds and one vicious NE squall lasting a few hours, we had moderate W winds and a pleasant passage. There was one hairy moment on entering through the reefs. There was a buoy ahead in the early morning glare, not shown on the Navionics chart, it looked like a starboard hand buoy at a turn in the channel. As we approached to leave it to starboard, Linda spotted a shallow reef right ahead; the green buoy was in fact red! A swift turn to starboard saved the day. We anchored off the village of Rikitea on Mangareva after six days at sea.

The islanders seemed less friendly than in the Austral Islands, and quite prosperous, with extensive black pearl farming giving much employment. Yachts were no rarity here, with up to 30 anchored at a time early in the season, having arrived from Panama and Chile. It was late in the season now and only four yachts were in the anchorage. We got friendly with a young French couple, Sandrine and Robin on an impressive steel yacht, Brinacier. They hoped to sail down to the Antarctic the following year and the gear seemed massive. On returning on board Linda thought that their boat was like a tank going to war, laughed and said Oryx was nothing but a paper boat. We sailed over with Brinacier to the nearby Aukena Island and met Bernard, who lived on the island with his assorted animals, all fed on coconuts. He had given up a lucrative job of water diviner on Tahiti to lead the simple life on the island where he had grown up.

One day we all went for a sail on Oryx to the tiny Motu Tauna, using Bernard’s local knowledge to pilot us through the reefs. Another day we sailed out to Akamaru Is, Sandrine commenting that in the light winds Brinacier would not have moved at all. Akamaru is a beautiful island where the tiny village is one, big, well-kept garden. That night we went out in Bernard’s boat to watch them dive for crayfish, which we shared on the beach for Sunday lunch. As we ate I commented on the cockerel on Robin’s T-shirt. ‘Yes,’ he proudly said, ‘it is the national animal of France. What is the English animal?’ ‘A lion,’ I replied. ‘Ah, England has a lion and France, . . . a chicken.’ Everyone laughed. And so the days passed.

It was time to move on again, as we had arranged for our friends Rob and Maren to join us in Tahiti, which was 900 miles away. We set off on 28 August with little wind. The rhumb-line to Tahiti passed very close to Mururoa, and it seemed prudent to give the atomic bomb test site a wide berth. Interestingly Bernard had told us that when the first above- ground bomb was tested, the local officials and bigwigs were housed in a reinforced concrete bunker, while the rest of the islanders where put in a wooden shed with a corrugated iron roof, for several days. What should have been a simple detour round the island had us tacking back and forth with a light, variable wind that seemed determined to send us straight to the island. We eventually won, clear and the trade winds returned from the SE. They blew fresh and then even fresher at F6 with frequent stronger squalls and for a while we were running under bare poles. After seven days we were sailing along the NE coast of Tahiti with the wind easing, but just as we were about to round Venus Point into Matavai Bay a blinding rain squall hit us, with visibility of less than 50 metres. The sails were dropped and we lay ahull for half an hour until it passed, and then tacked in to anchor where Captain Cook had lain for the transit of Venus observation.

Matavai Bay has quite some history as, apart from Captain Cook, it is also where the London Missionary Society ship, Duff, first anchored in Polynesia, and the Society Islands are named because of that. It is a beautiful anchorage, yet we were the only yacht there. Ashore were showers and fresh water, 2km down the road were two good supermarkets, Post Office, ATM and a bus into Papeete, 10km away; who could ask for more? It is no longer possible to anchor in Papeete, as all is now an expensive marina. We sailed around to Maeva Beach, near the airport, which is the popular anchorage, to see what we were missing. Extensive moorings and a very crowded, small anchorage area had us quickly returning to Matavai Bay.

Rob and Maren duly arrived from New Zealand and basked in the sunshine after an exceptionally wet and windy winter in New Zealand. They were keen to go sailing and we had an exceptional sail over to Moorea, with perfect trade winds and a fine display put on by the many whales breaching and sounding all around us. We anchored in the spectacular Cook Bay the first night and then round to Robinson Cove the next. Of all the islands we visited, Moorea was the most beautiful. It was then on to Huahine, Tahaa and we ended up in Bora Bora where they left us after a few days. Bora Bora disappointed us: cruise ships, umpteen pearl shops in town and the islanders seemed poor compared to the other islands. The surrounding motus had many expensive, foreign-owned resorts on them with the visitors rarely going to the main island. The islanders seemed to gain little by being a tourist mecca.

Our three-month visa was about to expire, so we were keen to get away, but it blew very hard for days and even in our sheltered anchorage, in Baie de Povai, we sailed around the anchor in the fierce williwaws.

Eventually the wind moderated a little and we left French Polynesia for Tonga, 1,200 miles to the E. We had five days of great runs of over 150 miles and then the wind picked up again to ESE 7 with frequent stronger squalls. With just one panel up on the port sail we went along at about 4kts with surfs up to 10kts when a big wave passed. Linda is no stranger to heavy weather, having doubled the Horn as crew aboard a 20m, gaff ketch, but it is rather different in a 10m ‘paper boat’. One night, a particularly large wave broke under us sending us surfing along at a peak of 17.8kts. The self steering kept us right on course, but it was obviously past time to do something. Conditions were not so severe as to need the Jordan drogue, so we put out the Australian-made Sea Brake astern. This certainly stopped us surfing and we continued on our way at about 3kts, but it was a jerky motion, unlike the Jordan. After a couple of days the wind and seas moderated and it was E 5 again and the runs were back in the 150s.

On the final night of the passage we had to slow down for a daylight entry to Vava’u. At midnight a heavy thunder storm arrived, with squalls and winds from every quarter. By dawn it was blowing SE 7, which gave us a hard beat to enter harbour. Fortunately it eased off by mid-morning, allowing us to tie up at the jetty in Neiafu, after ten days. Unexpectedly we had recrossed the dateline and missed out on a Thursday, to arrive on Friday the 13th.

South Africa, Mauritius, Australia, New Caledonia, New Zealand

I left Durban at the end of July, single-handed again and very much alone. I had rather lost my sense of direction and was not sure where to go. I couldn’t face continuing on to Madagascar and it seemed wrong to retreat back to the Atlantic. In the end I decided to sail further east, towards Australia, but midwinter is not the time to cross the southern Indian Ocean; I would go via Mauritius.

Leaving Durban harbour there was a very light NNE wind which veered and freshened overnight to a F7, giving me an uncomfortable beat with three reefs in each sail. A couple of days later the wind eased and shifted to the S, but a 30 knot squall broke several of the starboard battens before I could reef down. While removing them to be repaired, the port sail gybed, which broke another batten. The wind quickly increased to F8, still from the S and it seemed a good time to deploy the Jordan series drogue. I then retired below to start scarfing and gluing up the battens, one at a time. The ‘fun’, however, was not over for the day as the starboard tiller broke off just before midnight. I had lashed the tillers and foolishly raised the rudder blades, against which a wave had broken. I removed the blade and tied the rudder cassette to a cleat. The drogue was doing its job and down below was relatively comfortable.

The next morning the wind and seas were down and it seemed a shame to let the S wind go to waste. Getting the drogue in single-handed caused some difficulties. In the past it was quite easy with two of us. I would heave in the slack after a wave passed and Carly tailed on the cabin top winch and held on tight when the next wave approached, whilst I held the rope down over the after beam. I took over Carly’s job but with no one holding the rope down it rode up the davit and snapped it off. That was bad enough but unfortunately the dinghy was still in the davits – another bit of my foolishness. I eventually managed to get the dinghy into the cockpit, which rather filled it, and to retrieve the drogue with some difficulty – more things to fix.

We sailed on well reefed, just using the port rudder. When the wind disappeared the next day I was able to repair the starboard tiller. When the wind did fill in it was back to the NE, on the nose. As I repaired the battens (the bridge deck being long enough to glue up the 16 foot battens) I could set more sail, but it was a week before we had full sail again. Except for a couple of days of light south westerly winds the wind remained in the NE, F3-5. Added to this was a 1 knot current against us us; progress was not rapid. 20 days out we tacked off Ile de Reunion in light winds and it took another 3 days to sail the 120 miles to Port Louis, Mauritius.

After clearing in, I sailed up to Grande Baie at the NW corner of the island and spent a pleasant month in this large, well-sheltered bay. Mauritius is very reminiscent of the Caribbean, particularly Trinidad, with its sugar cane fields, large Indian population and the quaint seedy colonial buildings of Port Louis (away from the new tourist waterfront complex). Travelling round the island was easy and cheap on ancient Ashok Leyland buses.

On the 18 September I set off towards Albany, on the S coast of Western Australia. The southern Indian Ocean has a reputation for being rough and it did not disappoint. After a very slow start from the island, the wind settled into the SE F6 which had Oryx bashing into the steep waves. We continued on S to try and find some W winds. In fact I got so far S that I considered calling at Ile Amsterdam, only to discover I had no chart of it, and so abandoned that idea.

One nasty moment was when I dashed out in the night to reef in a fierce squall and heard the cabin door slam shut behind me, with no key. Only after managing to squeeze my hand under the opening saloon window to unfasten it and climbing through did I see the funny side of it. By now the brave W winds had arrived and we made some decent runs but our troubles were not over. Several battens broke which caused tears in the sail and a few days later the port rudder blade broke off at the waterline. In calmer conditions a few days later I was able to extract the top half and bolt it upside down into the rudder cassette, giving half a rudder blade.

As I approached Cape Leeuwin the wind went back into the SE and we had to tack the rest of the way to Albany. We arrived after 41 days at sea and 3,700 miles, with a long list of repairs to do.

The Customs officers were welcoming and friendly and so was the Environment Protection officer, but he confiscated much of my remaining food and charged me £200 to do it. In the late 1980s I lived in Penryn (Cornwall) for a while and there got to know a young Australian couple, Darren and Linda Russell. They lived on a lovely 28 foot, Venus gaff cutter with their baby daughter. I had heard through the cruising grape vine that Darren was now a boat builder in Albany. The Customs Officers knew him well and told me that his boatyard was at nearby Emu Point.

The next day I walked around the coast path to Emu Point, some way out of town, to find Darren. Fortunately Darren remembered me and took me under his wing. He gave Oryx a berth alongside his travel lift dock, use of the workshop and drove me around to buy wood and materials for the repairs. I made two new rudders, new battens and re-cut the sails back to a split junk rig.

My visa for Australia was for three months, multiple entry. I had optimistically booked a flight to New Zealand from Tasmania in early January to renew my visa and go to the junk rig rally in the Bay of Islands. After six weeks the work was finally done and I took Darren and Linda for a trial sail on 17th December. All went well and I set off the next morning for Tasmania.

There was a mixed bag of wind but a few days of fresh south westerly winds made up for some light easterlies. Christmas day had us running with a SW6. The new, larger, fixed rudders worked faultlessly, keeping us steadily on course under self-steering whilst surfing at over 10 knots. The last 100 miles in the Bass Strait were frustratingly slow with light S and E winds. I arrived on 2nd January in the early evening to catch the last of the flood up the Tamar River. My friends Simon and Caroline (China Moon’s new owners) drove down to wave me in from Low Head, at the entrance. I didn’t quite make it up to Devil’s Elbow; darkness, the ebb and a strong head wind forced me to anchor a few miles short. Early the next morning I picked up China Moon’s mooring (she was having a refit ashore) with two days to spare before my flight We had planned to do a cruise in company around Tasmania, but on reflection it seemed more sensible to go together on China Moon. We left in the middle of February and had a month to get around. It was good to be back aboard China Moon again; some changes, two instead of one engine and radar, but then some of the lockers were as I had left them 10 years before. We went clockwise around, calling first at Flinders Island, where we climbed up the 781 metres of Strzelecki peak. Other highlights were surfing over the bar into St. Helens, anchoring off the penal settlement at Port Arthur, driving up Mount Wellington for the panoramic views over Hobart, visiting the MOMA art gallery, and on the west coast cruising and walking in Port Davey. Our final stop was in Macquarie Harbour where we were lucky enough to see a Duck Billed Platypus on a walk outside Strahan and visit the penal settlement on Sarah Island before going some way up the Gordon River. We had been lucky with the weather but had a rough passage N from Macquarie with a near gale from the E. This prevented us calling at King Island, the only disappointment on this very happy cruise.

On returning to the Tamar River, I put Oryx on the beach to antifoul and then set off N towards Sydney, calling at Deal Island in the Bass Straight and then Eden at the SE corner of Australia. I sailed into Sydney Harbour on a fine morning which was a memorable experience, to rival entering Rio or Cape Town. I anchored in Balls Head Bay, past the Opera house and the Harbour Bridge. It was a pleasant, if long walk into the city over the bridge to see the sights.

By now my next three months were almost up. The cheapest flight out of Australia was to Bali (it’s a hard life); so I left Oryx at anchor and flew off for four days. It’s always a relief to come in view of the anchorage to find your boat still there, more so after four days. I could have spent longer in Sydney but a good forecast tempted me on. Sailing N from Sydney is not easy for a single-hander; the East Australian Coast current can run up to 4 knots and can only be avoided by sailing quite close to the coast, so there is no chance of even a catnap. There are few harbours with easy access; most have a bar to cross. It took two days to get to Coffs Harbour and I was very thankful to get the anchor down that night. The bay is very well sheltered, only exposed to the E; on the N side is a substantial, high rock breakwater protecting the marina and fishing boat harbour. Only a few months after my visit a sustained onshore winter storm completely destroyed the marina. I only stayed long enough for a quick look at the small town before continuing, to make use of the moderate SW wind.

Faye, a friend of Carly’s, had invited me to visit her in Lennox Head. Not far south is the Richmond river. The bar has a notorious reputation, but on the day I arrived it was benign and I found a secure anchorage in Mobbs Bay, a small lagoon accessed through a break in the training wall, opposite the town of Ballina. I left Oryx and had a week of luxurious shore life while being shown the beautiful countryside of NE New South Wales.

It was then only a short hop to Queensland’s Gold Coast with its hig-rise apartments and reclaimed, canal-fronted suburbs. N of all this lie 40 miles of natural waterways and islands, protected from the ocean by South and North Stradbroke Islands, a lovely cruising ground. After exploring some of this I entered the Brisbane River and sailed 10 miles up to anchor by the Sydney Street ferry terminus, close to the city centre. Here I spent a couple of weeks before my visa ran out again, but as it was now midwinter, or what passes for winter there, it was time to sail to the tropics.

In the middle of July I cleared out for New Caledonia. It was flat calm in Moreton Bay and I motored for quite a few hours to clear the N end of Moreton Island and reach the open sea. When the wind filled in it was from the N and so I reached off to the E to put myself in a better position for the expected SE trade winds. Which was just as well, as after two days the wind shifted into the ESE and stayed there for the rest of the passage. It took eight days for the 950 mile passage.

I had some work to do that needed internet access and so spent quite a bit of time in and around Noumea, the capital, but cruised up the coast to Baie de Saint Vincent and down to Baie de Prony. For the last three weeks of my stay my friend Marilyn flew in for a holiday. We were fortunate to have fresh north westerly winds and sailed down to the Isle of Pines, covering the 70 miles to Kuto in 10 hours. The island is considered the prime beauty spot in New Caledonia and on our first day ashore we had the place to ourselves, apart from a few other cruising boats. But the next day a large cruise ship arrived and the island was packed with Australian tourists, much to the delight of the local traders. We then cruised slowly back to Noumea with a following SE wind, stopping at many of the bays and islets on the way.

As soon as Marilyn left my 90 day visa expired and I set off for New Zealand. We had E winds for the first three days and were almost becalmed off Norfolk Island for two days before a fresh NNE wind had me speeding along again. A front came through with rain and a wind shift to the W that took me the rest of the way to Opua, in the Bay of Islands: nine days for the 1,063 miles sailed. Opua at 174° E, is almost as far E as you can go.