Saturday, August 29, 2015

Updates to New Caledonia -

After a glorious four months in Vanuatu, we took the tiny leap to New Caledonia. They are French here, in fact very French. They even speak in this funny language, and spell words with letters you don't even pronounce!

It was a good crossing, with wind in the low 20's to the mid 30's. We now have our main at a permanent triple reef, and run the Jenny at 100%. By sailing like this we do go a little slower, but there is no need to reef, even in the squalls. And the best part is the mainsail does not jump off its track! (We are going to need to get that fixed one of these days).

We did catch a big yellow fin tuna, and the children played for hours bouncing/jumping when the waves would lift the bows out of the water, then crash landing as the boat falls from under them. This was followed by squeals of laughter, and discussions about who did the highest jump, and the craziest falls. And for the really big waves there would be re-enactments of how they flew through the air.

The motorcycle got launched quickly, and after a couple of hours of buzzing around town, had a pretty good feel for the land.
This is a beautiful country, and the whales are here, so we will probably be heading out for a month or so once we find Cassidy!

Courage

Friday, August 28, 2015

New Caledonia

We made it to New Caledonia. Upwind, but we moved along nicely and arrived this morning. All checked in and tied up to an end tie at the visitor's dock. 2 sets of kid boats down the dock, so we've been playing all day. Just still getting used to the fact that it appears that everyone here gets up in the morning, gets dressed, and combs their hair. Whole new standard than we've become accustomed to.