We, Lifou Island, New Caledonia
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 6 Sep 2008 08:19
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20:55.126S 167:16.704E
We delayed one additional day in Port Vila, waiting
for the perfect wind for the sail to New Caledonia. It worked. We
left yesterday morning (Friday, 9/5) with Storyteller and an American boat from
Portland, Oregon that happened to be headed in the same direction, and had a
marvelous sail all the way to the island of Lifou, which is part of the Loyalty
Islands, just east of New Caledonia's 'Grande Terre' (big island). There
were only a couple of bow slams and a few hours of heeling over more than
twenty degrees in the beginning of the trip, and then smooth sailing with the
wind just forward of the beam the rest of the way. Aside from
the hazards associated with heating up lunch in the port-side microwave with the
boat heeled hard to starboard (which include having the glass turntable as
well as the heated up lunch fly out at you when you open the microwave
door), the hardest part of the 28 hour
trip was squeezing our 53 foot selves onto a tiny 18 foot
finger in the extremely cozy (as in small) Marina de We.
Although the husband and wife crew on board the French boat next to us were
a bit nervous as Don maneuvered (as in shoe-horned) us into our berth, there
were no mishaps and we are now bouncing gently between the nervous French boat
on our left and another uninhabited boat on our right. All is right in our
world.
More about Lifou, the Loyalty Islands and New
Caledonia later.
Cheers from even further down under.
Anne
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