Blogs

What a beautiful day we had here, blue sky, sunshine, gentle breeze. Snorkel with turtles, walk along the white sandy beach, and around the point to the other side of the bay. Clear water lapping over coral reefs, great swimming in waters of 24.3 degrees. Why are we leaving???? Well it does sound crazy to be leaving here, but we have decided the time has come and we set sail tomorrow.
The bottom of the boat has been scrubbed, again. The dinghy has been deflated and stowed for passage, again. We spent our last few francs at the local shop buying fresh baguettes and ready made toast. The gin has run out and the LPG is almost gone, so it is time to go! Don't be alarmed if we seem to be heading for Australia in the first couple of days, we plan to get a bit further west at the start of the journey to give us a better sailing angle to come back to NZ when we pick up southerly winds in a few days time. So our track will look like a bit of a zig zag, but we should still get to Opua in 7 and a half days.
From now on it will be short updates only while we are at sea. We look forward to arriving in Opua and spending the NZ summer in some of our favourite spots - we have a beautiful playground in NZ!

We have been putting these extra days in paradise to good use. Ilot Brosse for a few days was great, so many nice reefs to snorkel and we went for a dive with Christian from Donella who showed us where the lobsters live! Although we saw several lobsters, they all scuttled away into deep holes before we could catch them, so they avoided our pot. Probably just as well, we need to conserve our LPG. We caught up with Suzie and Steve from Hireath last night. Good to catch up with them again, we had spent some time together in Oyster Island, Vanuatu, earlier in the season and they are also waiting for passage to NZ.
This morning was a very early start, the NZ vs South Africa rugby game was on at 2am local time. So we were up, well, we had the computer in bed, watching the match. Much more of a tense game than the France/NZ game last week. So close all the way that we didn't even feel sleepy - glad to see our team make it through to the finals. It was difficult getting back to sleep at 4am, but we did manage to get some sleep before the alarm went off again at 6am so we could listen to the latest weather update from Patricia and David. This sleep pattern is worse than our 4 hour watches when we are at sea! Karl stayed in bed and Heather went back to bed after talking to Gulf Harbour radio, so we caught up on a bit more sleep before we started out day.
Today, like the past few days, was very calm, with hardly any wind. We walked around to the next bay, Kanumera Bay, and snorkeled right around Kanumera Island. A sea snake slithered around in the coral underneath us, saw us, swam up to the surface right next to us and popped his head out to have a look. Then he headed towards us for a bit, looked at us a while longer and swam back down to his coral patch again. Quite a curious creature! About half way around the little island is a cave, inside the cave we were surprised to find a huge cluster of fan corals. Soft lacy fans swaying in the currents, some coloured cream, some orange and some a vibrant deep red. Absolutely beautiful. These large specimens of soft lacy coral are just like we have seen in photographs from great dives around the world, we did not expect to see such a spectacular display sitting so close to shore in shallow water. Further around the coral garden was teaming with fish. Brightly coloured tropical fish thronged around us, happy to swim close while we snorkeled amongst them. The fish we saw diving on the reef yesterday had a very different behaviour. Used to being hunted the fish on the outer reef darted away fast as we came near. But here, in the protected sanctuary of the bay, the fish were very happy to be friendly. After our walk and snorkel we treated ourselves to lunch at the resort on the beach - well, we do need to conserve our on board LPG, so that was a good excuse! This afternoon Kevin and Kathy from Astral Express popped by to have a chat, they are also looking for the right passage window to get back to NZ. There are several others too that we know of, ready to depart as soon as the weather is favourable. So the big question is - When? Maybe Tuesday, maybe Wednesday. Watch this space.

Yesterday we decided for a change of scenery and motored around the corner to Ilot Brosse. A long white sandy beach with snow white sand, clear water and reefs in all directions. We navigated our way in between reefs to a large sandy patch and dropped anchor in 5m of water. Soon after, we were joined by Christian and Hanalore on Donella. We had been in Kuto together with Donella and Christian had kindly given us the rundown on places to stop at Norfolk Island, should our passage to NZ require us to wait there. As Donella rounded the corner to Ilot Brosse they reeled in a Spanish Mackerel! So it was fresh fish for dinner all round last night. Absolutely superb! Tonight we are joining them on the beach to smoke some more of the fish and have a picnic together for dinner. We are very lucky.
It is great that we are having smoked fish tonight, as we are getting low on LPG. We filled both our tanks before leaving Vanuatu, knowing that we cannot get our cylinders filled in New Caledonia. Usually each tank lasts about 6 weeks. The first one only lasted 4 weeks and we checked the second one this morning, after only 3 weeks of usage it is almost empty! Bugger. The people in Vanuatu must not have filled them up properly. We still have a little gas left in the small BBQ tank but to conserve LPG we are now doing everything we can in the microwave. Hopefully our wait for a passage to NZ will not be too long. We are lucky to have the microwave on board and with so many passage meals already cooked up, we just need to reheat them to serve. Fingers crossed for a good weather window to NZ very soon.

We have really enjoyed our week here in Kuto. A great anchroage, very pretty, protected and good holding even in the strong winds we had the other day. A popular place too! There were 13 yachts anchored here during the week, some have departed now leaving only 7 in the bay today. This is also a popular cruise ship destination. We have seen 4 different cruise ships come in over the past week and it seems like 4 per week is quite normal here. The ones we have seen include Holland America line, Carnival, P&O and Princess line. We have enjoyed the company of fellow yachties, especially Dennis and Pamela from sv Pamela, having sundowners on each others boats and listening to Dennis play the guitar.
A resident turtle hangs around the boat, quite a large one, popping his head up a few times to gulp some air and take a look at us before ducking down again. We have collected a group of Ramora's under the boat, about 8 of them now. They dart out to have a look at anything we throw over the side to see if it is good to eat. They love paw paw skins and meat scraps.
It has been really nice just to sit here for a week and enjoy our surroundings. Good preparation for our upcoming voyage.
Today we will stuff cushions and towels into cupboards to stop things clunking around while at sea and then tonight we will enjoy our last good nights sleep in a real bed before we set sail in the morning. All going well it will take just 7 days to reach Opua. The winds are forecast to be light, so we should have calm seas and will probably need to motor quite a bit through some very light winds on the way. So it looks like a peaceful passage at this stage.