The crew of Vulcan Spirit is pleased to announce its arrival in New Caledonia this afternoon at 1500hrs NZ time after almost exactly one week’s sailing, sails being hoisted at Russell in the Bay of Islands at 1430hrs last Sunday. Currently anchored in the lee of the huge French lighthouse (fabricated in Paris in 1862, during the reign of Napoleon III) at Amedee Island just inside the ocean pass. Noumea 12nm, tomorrow morning after a swim.

Passage was uneventful, mainly with lots of wind; the only significant event was Ali’s discovery of our long sought ants’ nest yesterday. We have been searching for this for ages (a swarm of flying ants descended on us last year, about 200 miles offshore, and set up home on board). All previous efforts to locate them came to nought and they laughed at our attempts to poison them, but we think the cold NZ weather persuaded them to migrate to the warm cupboard  where they were found. Interestingly this cupboard had been emptied to facilitate the fitting of the watermaker electrics just before we left Opua, and they weren’t there then. Hopefully we’ve now seen the back of them at last.