{"id":3713,"date":"2018-06-17T11:36:28","date_gmt":"2018-06-17T11:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/svslowflight.com\/?p=3713"},"modified":"2019-06-10T07:37:30","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T07:37:30","slug":"passage-from-new-caledonia-to-the-land-of-oz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svslowflight.com\/index.php\/2018\/06\/17\/passage-from-new-caledonia-to-the-land-of-oz\/","title":{"rendered":"Passage from New Caledonia to the land of OZ…."},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, smart or stupid, we decided to take off anyways despite not knowing exactly how<\/strong> we fixed the engine overheating.\u00a0 \u00a0We had done every test, replaced filters and fluids, inspected and tested parts and we consulted 2 different mechanics, and decided to run the engine without a thermostat…that seemed to do the trick.\u00a0 \u00a0As I understand it, the thermostat lifts and opens to allow the cooling fluids to circulate and keep the engine cool.\u00a0 Without it, the cooling fluids run freely.\u00a0 We tested and replaced the thermostat and they seemed to be working properly (opening at the right temperature) so there could be an issue with our temperature sensor\/gauge which tells our temperature gauge what the actual temperature of our engine is.\u00a0 Still a mystery but it as time to go!<\/p>\n

Our last night in Noumea, New Caledonia was a highlight of friends and luxury!<\/span><\/p>\n

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The port captain’s office. We had to clear out of Immigration then clear out of customs… then to the port captain all before 11 am as immigration and the port captain close after that.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trevor and I treated ourselves to a nice happy hour gathering on SV Henrietta and a dinner of French cuisine and wine….<\/p>\n

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A nice meet and greet for the boats on the dock at Port Du Sud aboard SV Henrietta. Left to right: Michael (SV Henrietta), David (The local OCC yacht club port officer), Trevor hiding behind the beams, and Guru (from Denmark originally but lives in Australia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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We went to the restaurant at the Marina, Le Bintz, where we could barely order in English. It took us some time to “google translate” the entire menu but we got it done and pleasantly surprised….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Ahhhh…..a real treat for us…we tried a new “to us” French region: Pessac-L\u00e9ognan, France which produces Bordeaux style wines.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Kimi’s dinner….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Trevor’s dinner….though the server presented his dish to me assuming a “lady” would prefer this dish over the red meat…they were wrong\u00a0 \u00a0: )<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Early Saturday morning, we enlisted the help of Guru and Michael to help out off the pier.\u00a0 The wind was blowing hard and pushing us against the dock.\u00a0 We had Guru’s vessel behind us and a catamaran in front of us and was pretty sure we would not clear it’s wide berth in front of us.\u00a0 Mind you we all were squeezed on to this pier and only had about 5-7 feet in between each vessel. Trevor did an amazing<\/strong> job getting us out.\u00a0 \u00a0Our wheel was hard to port\u00a0 and in forward so the water would push off the rudder as Michael held a fender at our bow between us and the dock as we swung our backend off the dock enough to clear Guru’s boat and then we could maneuver safely out…. I would of never thought to do this! (Sorry no photo…we were to busy with the boat).<\/p>\n

We motored to the fuel dock back at Port Moselle where we could obtain duty free fuel…. a must here as duty free fuel in Australia requires you to file with the government and you have to have an Australian bank account.\u00a0 Then we were off!<\/p>\n

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Leaving the fuel dock and heading out to the pass these guys were following us for a while for an early morning practice paddle!\u00a0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The lagoon, which is the area between Noumea and the pass, is known for it’s winds blowing down the hill side and we are glad we doubled reefed on our way out of the pass.\u00a0 We hit the tide and current perfectly and soon we were out into the big blue once again….<\/span><\/p>\n

As it goes… either you have too little wind or too much wind as you would like…this passage was no different!\u00a0 The weather was predicted to be light winds for about 3 days…this means about 10 knots sometimes down to 5 knots but gusts up to 15 knots.\u00a0 We expected to motor through these days of light winds and thus that is what we did….. we also added our spinnaker to get an extra lift.\u00a0 We celebrated our 14th Anniversary on Monday June 11th underway…Trevor treated me and made homemade pizza…my favorite food group…<\/p>\n

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Sunset with spinnaker flying. The stars were out these nights and we were close to a new moon so the night was pitch black.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Well..the weather seems to NEVER cooperate!\u00a0 As we continued to check weather each day, we realized the wind was not picking up to the original 15-20 knots of wind that we would of liked. Additionally, the wind shifted to dead behind us.\u00a0 This point of sail for Slow Flight is not really favorable and it makes our boat rock from side to side rather than a nice lean to one side on a broad or beam reach.\u00a0 Trevor ingeniously rigged our spinnaker to adjust for the wind shift.<\/p>\n

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Can you see our pole sticking out from the mast pointing down? Well we “poled” our spinnaker out so it could catch the wind coming from directly behind us. Our spinnaker is generally flown to one side but we couldn’t keep it full so we had to modify how we rigged it. It worked perfectly!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By day 5 we had been motoring almost the entire way with the exception of the engine being off for a few hours here and there when the wind would kick up for about an hour or so, then die back off…. we hold about 265 gallons of fuel on board but running the engine for this long just doesn’t feel right…plus, we had just “fixed” the engine but of course it always is in the back of your mind…”will the engine fail us?”…..but Polly the Perkins engine ran flawlessly and her temperature stayed even and never overheated (touch wood three times).\u00a0 We finally experienced about 15 knots of wind on our 7-8 day and put the spinnaker away.<\/p>\n

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Flying wing on wing…finally!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The weather now predicted that in a few days the wind would pick up to 25 knots with gusts up to 30….we decided to keep running it hard to try to get into Australia before all this and we kept the engine going while under sail.\u00a0 We were moving at 8 knots regularly and at times I saw 12 knots at one point!\u00a0 Pretty much smoothe MOTOR sailing…..<\/p>\n

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Trevor filling our tanks with our reserve jugs of diesel just in case. One of our tanks seemed to have a vacuum lock which means the fuel tank doesn’t receive air to replace the space where the fuel was when it gets pulled out by the fuel pump. In turn, the engine could be starved of fuel (and then dies) or could cause the fuel tank to collapse. So without access to that tank (of course it is full as we refueled), we needed to fill the other tanks to make sure we could make port.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

UNTIL…we got about 35 miles from Cairns, Australia!\u00a0 We were entering the Grafton Pass, the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef, and we had to change course and head SW which meant the wind, now blowing 20-25 knots with gusts up to 30 knots, was now almost right in front of us.\u00a0 The swell was on our beam….This means our boat would slam down on a wave and the wave would crash up over our dodger and right into the cockpit…. it was a wet 35 miles to say the least!<\/p>\n

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Finally under the relief of land\u00a0 as we got closer to Cairns and the channel, the swell and wind abated and we came in to Cairns on Sunday June 17th.<\/p>\n

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Looking back at the channel….we were told there was an Australian “haze” and we now see what they were talking about.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Looking forward towards the city of Cairns…Marlin Marina just a few minutes away.\u00a0 <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We finally cleared into the country on Monday as Bio-Security forgot about us (they totally admitted it to us..it was funny).\u00a0 But the silver lining was that Bio-security charges a fee (hourly) to clear you in and charges additional fees to clear you in on a weekend so we didn’t have to pay overtime fees.\u00a0 Additionally, one of the Bio-security guys (Cameron) plays in a local band (The Code) and over Facebook he told us of a good places to go and good bands to check out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over all, we were tired…exhausted from the tight schedule we have had to keep which in turn makes us sail in conditions that are less desirable.\u00a0 \u00a0Additionally, we have been at sea for 21 days and have traveled over 2,300 miles since we left Opua New Zealand on May 3rd, 2018…that is almost as long as the crossing of the Pacific from Mexico to French Polynesia.\u00a0 It’s just time to have a little fun!<\/p>\n

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Trevor doesn’t read much so it was exciting to see that he enjoyed this book I borrowed from my step-uncle, Bob Gaw, who lent this book to me back in December 2016. Thanks Bob….we really loved his style of writing and glad we read it now versus earlier as most of what he mentioned made sense to us : ) We are still learning out here….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next up…. Our time in OZ….<\/p>\n

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Well, smart or stupid, we decided to take off anyways despite not knowing exactly how we fixed the engine overheating.\u00a0[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,16,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-new-caledonia","category-passages"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVSN-XT","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svslowflight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svslowflight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svslowflight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svslowflight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svslowflight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3713"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/svslowflight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3724,"href":"https:\/\/svslowflight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3713\/revisions\/3724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svslowflight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svslowflight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svslowflight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}