Author: kerri

13 December 2016 (+11 UTC)
CONGRATS to Nikki on completing her circumnavigation!

COMMENT: Beach House – Moored  – Newcastle, Australia
More later, quite a rough last 30 hours!

Safe arrival. We\’re at the Quarantine Buoy awaiting check in first thing tomorrow (Wednesday morning

TIME: 2016/12/13 01:31
LATITUDE: 32-56.34S
LONGITUDE: 152-30.64E
COURSE: 267T
SPEED: 7.7
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 23
WIND_DIR: NNE
WAVE_HT: 0.5M
SWELL_DIR: NNE
SWELL_HT: 2.2M
SWELL_PER: 6
CLOUDS: 20%
VISIBILITY: 35
BARO: 1014.4
TREND: -1
AIR_TEMP: 24.4C

11 December 2016 (+11 UTC) Eastern Hemisphere

Dear Friends and Family,
After waiting 24 hours for a very strong SW system to pass Lord Howe, we were stuck behind the reef and didn\’t feel safe to exit the Lagoon at Lord Howe.
Conditions calmed over night and we\’re now en route to the Great Southern Land!
We\’ve about 375 miles to go and hope to be in late Tuesday p.m.
The weather will be a bit tricky on this trip.
We\’re now in no wind with a very large southerly swell left over from the system that has just passed.
Heading a bit south of rhumb line to try and get out of an adverse current and into a positive one. From there, we may head west in anticipation of
big northerly winds which will start building tomorrow (our Monday night) and into Tuesday.
This will be a real sleigh ride if we can get in front of it.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki

COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Lord Howe Island – Sydney, Australia
TIME: 2016/12/11 03:55
LATITUDE: 31-58.60S
LONGITUDE: 158-12.82E
COURSE: 245T
SPEED: 5.4
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 3
WIND_DIR: ESE
SWELL_DIR: S
SWELL_HT: 3.0M
SWELL_PER: 9
CLOUDS: 80%
VISIBILITY: 30
BARO: 1022.7
AIR_TEMP: 26.1C

01 December 2016 (+11 UTC)
Dear Friends and Family,
The last 24 hours was a turning point as the winds finally began to lighten and the seas calmed down. We are now in very light air and motor sailing directly to Lord Howe which is 185 miles to our SSW. We expect to arrive there tomorrow before noon.

In August of this year, we applied for a permit to visit Lord Howe Island en route from New Caledonia to Sydney, Australia. It is a natural stop as the island is nearly on the direct course and it\’s supposed to be a gorgeous and interesting place. We sent the request and were immediately told to fill out the forms and then issued a permit by the Lord Howe Island Council. They even gave us a mooring assignment 4 months in advance! We were thrilled and thought all was well….not so much…

We were told to send them an update as to our exact arrival at least 96 hours in advance which we did. There were some canned statements in the three people\’s email that confirmed our arrival about that we couldn\’t be checked in at Lord Howe and would have to \”check in\” when we arrived at a port of entry which of course, Sydney is. No problem with us! Yesterday, I get an email from the Customs and Border Protection at Lord Howe telling us that our stop is to be a \”technical stop\”.
This means, food, fuel, water, necessities, weather window and off you go! I wrote back that we were given a permit 4 months ago to make this a tourist visit.
There must be some misunderstanding? I received an email back telling me that the local council goofed. They were supposed to tell me we were to check into Sydney FIRST, then come back! Well, this is a small boat in the middle of the ocean and backtracking 500 miles is like asking someone to drive 2000 miles round trip. Not too mention the weather down under around the North Tasman Sea can be WILD to say the least.
In other words, that wasn\’t going to happen.

So, we\’ve been told that we will be allowed ashore, but we can\’t essentially be tourists. I also find this rather odd since most boats that would visit here would come from the East (as we have) and therefore are essentially excluded from this unique stop. As the Islands economy is entirely tourist generated, this makes even less sense. We don\’t get to make the rules, so we\’ll be there in about 24 hours and find out what restrictions we\’ll have on our \”technical stop\” as our permit is essentially invalid. This is a classic bit of bureaucracy where the \”left hand doesn\’t\’ know what the right hand is doing\”. Sound familiar?…:-)
It reminds me of our experience with US Customs in St. John in the American Virgin Islands. As a reminder, we were told Nikki couldn\’t enter the USA on a \”non commercial carrier\” in the Visa waiver program. Ah bureaucrats…got a love em\’… That story can be searched back in the Ship\’s Blog archives and is why we got Nikki a US Visa!

In any event it will all work out and we\’ll take the next \”weather window\” the last 450 miles of our journey into Port Jackson/Sydney Harbour. We should be there before the middle of the month.
Just yet, another \”sea story\”…:-)
KIT,
Scott and Nikki

COMMENT: Beach House – EN ROUTE – Isle Amedee – New Caledonia – Lord Howe Island, Australia – Day 3 – 160 nm
TIME: 2016/11/30 21:51
LATITUDE: 28-41.74S
LONGITUDE: 160-33.22E
COURSE: 206T
SPEED: 7.8
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 8
WIND_DIR: ESE
SWELL_DIR: SSE
SWELL_HT: 2.5M
SWELL_PER: 9
CLOUDS: 35%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1012.6
TREND: 1
AIR_TEMP: 25.0C

26 November 2016 (-11 UTC)
Dear Friends and Family,
We had a very nice 10 days or so in New Caledonia with highlights of driving up to the north and taking a one hour ride in a small plane to see the \”Heart of Voh\”.
Google this for an interesting aerial view of a mangrove shaped like a huge heart. Tres Romantique!
We also toured the Tjibaou Museum and did a small day tour around Noumea City.
We\’ll write it all up in the main ship\’s blog with photos. We\’re almost to Australia, only another 1100 miles to go! Then real internet and photo blogs galore.

We\’ve done our shopping and boat prep, checked out with the authorities and confirmed our Yacht Arrival report with Australia (they require at least 96 hours notice) and confirmed my long stay visa. We\’re now at the small Eco Island of Signal about 10 miles west of Noumea on a mooring and watching the weather for a likely Monday (Sunday Western Hemisphere) departure. The next leg is about 700 miles – 5 days or so and that will bring us to within 400 miles of Sydney.
Lord Howe Island is apparently spectacular and looks a bit like the Bora Bora of the Eastern Pacific.

For now, use this email and by all means, KIT! (keep in touch),
Scott and Nikki

COMMENT: Beach House – MOORED – Isle Signal – New Caledonia

IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/11/26 05:34
LATITUDE: 22-17.62S
LONGITUDE: 166-17.44E
MARINE: NO
WIND_SPEED: 12
WIND_DIR: SSE
CLOUDS: 90%
VISIBILITY: 10
BARO: 1010.8
AIR_TEMP: 28.3C

10 November 2016 (+11 on UTC)
Dear Friends and Family,

We arrived off the small bay here at 0630 local time. The first issue was that this area is so remote and apparently, the volcanic ash so prevalent that it changes the bottom here often enough that there are actually no depth indications on the charts! Yikes. We\’d also heard that the bay was very shallow. It is! We\’re anchored in a bay that is 250 yards in diameter and very surprisingly to us – absolutely no infrastructure.

We thought we\’d find a small town or a large village, but really, just a few local cottages and the Port Resolution Yacht Club. We suspect the \”Yacht Club\” may be a backpackers hostile and we\’ll see when we go ashore. There is no dock and we\’re the only boat here. A \”wet landing\” (as we call beach landings), will be the order of the day. A local, Patrick, paddled his canoe up to us and fortunately spoke perfect English. He told us where to go (The Yacht Club) to organize a tour to the volcano – hopefully tonight?!

All is well for now, it\’s very overcast and we can see the volcano smoking pretty heavily from the anchorage. Fortunately, we\’re upwind of it – for now…:-)
KIT,
Scott and Nikki
COMMENT: Beach House – Anchored – Port Resolution, Vanuatu

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/11/09 19:14
LATITUDE: 19-31.57S
LONGITUDE: 169-29.79E
MARINE: NO
WIND_SPEED: 12
WIND_DIR: ESE
CLOUDS: 90%
VISIBILITY: 15
BARO: 1014.2
AIR_TEMP: 25.6C

08 November 2016 (+12 on UTC)
Dear Friends and Family,

We had a slow night with shifting winds. The winds were strong and light and this morning we went through some squalls. Overall, just a normal day. Today, we\’ve had good winds from the port beam and have been flying along.

This afternoon however, both Nikki and I heard what sounded like a large screw fall from the mast!
This does my stomach lining no good. We both looked up and all around and couldn\’t find a missing anything and the part, whatever it was, went into the ocean so we couldn\’t know for sure if it was critical to keeping our mast up in the air!

About 4 hours later, I noticed that the six screws that hold our boom vang plate to the boom were all loose and one was missing! This is good news.
I tightened three of them, two are stripped and one is gone. That was what we heard \”hit the deck\”. This is not a serious issue and I can just keep an eye on it till we get to Australia. These were re-installed when we had our boom gooseneck fixed in Tahiti, so they\’ve lasted 6000 miles, they should be okay now for another 1500.

If it would have been critical, we would have dropped all sail and motored. Fortunately, it was just a small scare and we\’re just truckin\’ along.

We\’re just under half way to Vanuatu and getting settled into our routine. We hope to arrive at Tanna Island on (our Eastern Hemisphere) Thursday morning, the 10th.
KIT,
Scott and Nikki
COMMENT: Beach House – En Route – Fiji to Vanuatu

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/11/08 04:49
LATITUDE: 17-57.16S
LONGITUDE: 174-05.13E
COURSE: 243T
SPEED: 8.2
MARINE: YES
WIND_SPEED: 18
WIND_DIR: SE
WAVE_HT: 0.5M
WAVE_PER: 6
SWELL_DIR: ESE
SWELL_HT: 1.6M
SWELL_PER: 6
CLOUDS: 50%
VISIBILITY: 20
BARO: 1012.7
AIR_TEMP: 28.3C