Pasage to New Caledonia - Day 4

Peaceful sailing all day with light winds from the NE. The seas gradually came down to match and we celebrated by baking bread in the pressure cooker. The loaf turned out well despite the gently rolling motion of the boat. Rani cut up and preserved our eggplants, since we expect to lose all our fresh vegetables and fruit when we reach New Caledonia.

We saw our first birds in three days - some sort of fork tailed sea birds with grey wing tops and white under bodies - possibly terns. There were 6 of these fishing near the boat and crying out to each other like terns do.

The winds were so light that we turned south of our rhumb line to keep the sails filled. Later in the day the wind rose a little and we returned to a rhumb line course for 4 or 5 hours by poling out the jib opposite the main. This made the roll worse as it reduces the steadying effects of having two sails set on one side and a steeper angle to the wind, so we reverted to our former course south of the direct one around nightfall.

Our position at 0600 on Oct 15 is 21 36 S 170 09 E We sailed about 129 miles in 24 hours yesterday of which about 120 were in the right direction.

Pasage to New Caledonia - Day 3

The wind dropped below 20 knots yesterday morning around the time of our check in to the SSB radio 'Drifter's Net'. The seas evened out and began to decrease, too, and by nightfall, the wind clocked around into the northeast. We had been expecting this based on the automated weather forecast data we download via the radio. Because the wind was now behind us (we are heading southwest) and becoming light, it was no longer feasible to sail our desired course. We hoisted the main sail, and gradually shook out the reefs. Later in the day we turned to the south to keep the sails filled to steady the boat and keep her moving along.

Yesterday was the first day we have been able to cook and eat normally and we even managed to watch a movie after dinner - Key Largo - a Bogart and Becall classic. Despite the lighter winds we made 148 miles in 24 hours. We are currently about 260 miles from Havannah Channel - our entrance into the reef at Grand Terre, New Caledonia. That puts us more than half way across!

Our position at 0600 on Oct 15 is 20 39 S 171 35 E

Passage to New Caldonia - Day 2

Yesterday was a day of strong easterly winds and rough bouncy seas. We learned from the SSB radio nets that there are a couple of other boats who left Fiji on the same day to make the same passage to New Caledonia. They departed from different places and are larger and faster than us, so it is unlikely we will see anything of them before we arrive.

Our position at 0600 Monday Oct 14 is 19 04 S 173 20 E. We are averaging around 6 knots in 20-25 knot winds with just a partly furled jib up.

On the way to New Caledonia - Day 1

Our last few days in Fiji were spent in the typical dance of provisioning, watering, saying good-byes, and finally clearing out with customs and immigration. The sleek catamaran 'Light Speed' was in Lautoka during this period and we spent am enjoyable day with Dave and Cathy in a small harbour to the north of the port, hiding from strong southerly winds.

The customs officer fills the roll of immigration, too, when you check out of Lautoka, and he asked that I row him to our boat to make sure that it was just me and Rani on board. The young man weighed well over 100 kgs and we had a few tense moments getting into and out of our little dinghy. Fortunately we avoided a repeat of our check-in to Tonga when we dumped the health inspector into the harbour!

We are about a hundred miles offshore now running off before a strong breeze with a furled jib only. The wind and seas surprised us, as we had expected fairly light trade winds and even seas. For a while last night we were down to half the small jib and a three-reefed mainsail and were still averaging over 7 knots on a beam reach. We dropped the main altogether after an hour of this and turned off the wind to make things more comfortable so that the off=watch person could get some sleep. Things are still pretty bouncy and it took a while to tie down the spare water bottles and anchor floats and to stop the crockery and condiments from dancing their noisy little dance.

Our position at 0530 on Sunday Oct 13 is 18 03 S 175 38 E. We are running west now in anticipation of an easterly shift as a front passes below us.

Birthdays, Music, and Cocoa

We are back in Lautoka and about to check out of Fiji and sail for New Caledonia. Our remaining days in Musket Cove were spent hiking around the island and with friends. There is a common barbecue area where we would meet up on most evenings. We also celebrated our friend Bob's 65th birthday. Bob and Linda are cruising on 'Bright Angel' and made the crossing from Mexico around the same time as we did last year. Rani made a cake for the party and Bob and Linda treated us and 3 other couples to beer and pizza at the Musket Cove restaurant.

Bob and Linda celebrate Bob's 65th.

Rani walks the path leading to the chapel at Musket Cove

Chapel windows

Chapel angels

We also finally met Paul and Catherine from the British yacht Kahia, whose boat we had first seen in Tonga last year. Among other skills, they are musicians and we spend a fun afternoon on Kahia playing uke, guitar, and flute and singing. We exchanged song books and plan to get together in New Caledonia after we have practiced some tunes. I also played some music at the resort. On Saturday night we watched the resort band play some Fijian and western numbers. Rani told them that I played uke, so they invited me to do a number with them as well as sharing their (very strong) kava with us.

The resort has a large organic farm where they grow lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, herbs, and many other vegetables and fruit for the restaurants.

Tomato beds at the Musket Cove farm. They use mulch and seaweed to improve the soil.

We finally got around to roasting the cocoa beans we collected on Rabi and Kioa. Bob an Linda had helped us process these back in Kioa (by sucking the tasty sweet-tart fruit off the beans) and they asked us if we had finished processing the beans yet. Today we roasted the beans in the oven (about 100 deg C for 20 minutes) and removed the husks before grinding. We then made our first cup of 'from scratch' cocoa by boiling a couple of tablespoons of ground up beans in three cups of water and adding whole milk powder and sugar. The results were quite good with a lovely chocolate aroma and especially satisfying because we picked and processed the pods ourselves.

Cocoa beans roasting

Roasted and de-husked beans are ready for grinding

We use a small pestle and mortar to grind the cocoa into coarse powder

Chris enjoys a cup of steaming cocoa..

Return to Musket Cove

We sailed back to Musket Cove a couple of days ago, departing the anchorage of Bekana Island at Lautoka under sail. The winds have been strangely at variance with the forecast southeast trades for the last few days, swinging into the northwest and sometimes the southwest. As we sailed past the city, the plume of black smoke from the sugar mill rose straight into the air. We were just able to make headway with a couple of knots of breeze from the northwest. This very light breeze proved to be only an interlude between wind shifts and the wind swung back into a nice solid southeasterly coming off the land.

We rolled in a bit of the big jib and tucked a reef in the main, setting up the wind vane to steer us on a reach down the coast. There are many reefs and sand patches on the route from Lautoka to Musket Cove (on Malolo Lailai), so we entered a couple of GPS waypoints provided by Curly, a local cruiser out of Savusavu, to keep us in deep water and pass just clear of two barely visible sand patches.

As we cleared Vuda Point, the wind and fetch began to build, rolling at us across several miles of open water. By rolling in more jib and adjusting the traveler to de-power the mainsail we balanced the boat and the wind vane steering was able to handle the odd gust with only a tweak or two to keep us running true. A big ketch under motor hoisted her sails as she saw us approach and for a few minutes we sailed together before she romped away from us.

Chris removes the shells from tamarind pods we collected in Momi Bay. We will dry the fruit and remove the seeds.

The entry to Musket Cove was very easy this time. It is amazing how much more comfortable you feel on approaching a tricky entrance the second time. We were now quite familiar with the hazards from our slow exit a week ago, tacking out through the channel and around sand bars and coral patches. The only stressful moments were when we had a 'discussion' over where we should anchor.

We share a drink with our good friends Bob and Ann from Charisma

There are quite a few cruisers here whom we either know well or have bumped into over the last two years. It was a treat to catch up with our friends, Bob and Ann, on Charisma and we managed a hike with them around a good portion of the resort island, despite their recent colds. They have a very detailed blog with great photos you can check out at  sailcharisma.com.

The Musket Cove resort provides wood fired barbecue facilities on a little coral spit beside the dinghy dock and we met up with friends there last night and shared a meal and drinks. Most people are starting to plan their escape from here as cyclone season approaches. The majority, like us, are heading south to New Zealand, but a few will sail north to the Marshalls (as we had originally planned) and some will leave their boats here either in an earth pit on the land or in a marina.  

Farewell to Our Guests

We dropped our guests, Chris and Vladka off at the sea wall in Lautoka yesterday after a peaceful day sail from Mana Island in light winds that ranged from southeast to northwest. The four days we spent with them were a lot of fun. We enjoyed sharing with them what it is like to cruise on a sailboat and they were great guests, pitching in with the cooking, cleaning, and sailing.

Here are a few more photos from our stay at Mana Island. Most of the underwater pictures were taken on the reef outside the pass into the Mana island lagoon.

Vladka and Chris pose for a couple shot

Mushroom coral - photo taken by our guests

Vladka enjoying a swim on a very calm day

Damsel fish

Lagoon triggerfish (Rhinecanthus aculeatus), also known as the blackbar triggerfish, or Picasso triggerfish.

I think this is a wrasse of some sort.

This fellow is quite large and has the most striking contrasting colours - oriental sweetlips.

The reef outside the pass at Mana had very clear water and some larger schools of fish like these convict surgeonfish.

Nurse shark. We also saw an octopus on this reef

I like this shot of Chris and Vladka upside down

It was nice to have someone else take a few pictures of us as a couple.

Sunset at Lautoka

Mana Island Walk and Snorkel

We had a full day today snorkeling on the reef just off the beach here where no fishing is allowed. The fish are plentiful and there are more varieties than we have seen anywhere else in Fiji. The visibility was not bad and improved as the wind died out this morning.

We always see these little fish in among the corals in pairs.

Squid

Squid detail

And another squid shot

Not sure of the name of this fish

Moorish idols

These fish puff their fins out like this when alarmed

Military style camouflage

The reef was home to many larger schools

Later we went for a hike around about half the island following volcanic rock shelves and beaches including the spectacular Sunset Beach on the island's west coast.

Fisherman hand lining.

Heron in flight

Romantic walk

Our guest, Chris took this nice shot

These shelves made walking around the island easy.

From Momi to Mana

It has been a while since we posted, so here is an update on the last week. We sailed to Musket Cove (Malolo Lailai) from Momi Bay and stayed there for a couple of days while the winds howled and the rain poured down. There are three resorts on the island, an airport, and rental and private houses. Roads lead all over the island and provide some fine walking with views in all directions. It was a bit of a shock sharing an anchorage with 40+ boats after so many weeks on our own! The anchorage is deep (about 15 meters) but the holding very good and we safely sat out gale force squalls and torrential rain.

View over Musket Cove

Anchorage at Musket Cove

Next we sailed to Lautoka and anchored off the container pier and sugar refinery. There were several boats in this anchorage, about half of which were in the process of checking out of Fiji to head for Vanuatu and New Caledonia. We were here to meet our guests - friends we had last seen in Auckland. The next morning, we awoke to a boat coated in a fine layer of black ash from the sugar refinery. I would not want to spend more than a day or two here because of this. We rowed in, re-provisioned, and returned to the boat where I left Rani to pack things up and returned to town to meet our friends.

Anchorage at Lautoka

Ash from the Lautoka sugar mill

Chris and Vladka were waiting in the market when I arrived and we returned to Ladybug and set sail for Tivua, an island we had passed on our way here. The winds were gusty and strong and we put two reefs in the main and beat our way out of the anchorage, with our guests taking turns at the helm. An hour later, we dropped the hook off an extensive reef and went for a snorkel. The visibility was not great here, probably because the higher winds had stirred up the sandy bottom.

Our guest Chris kicks back on Ladybug

Vladka prepares a salad for the potluck.

Today we sailed to Mana Island, stopping for lunch and a snorkel at a sand quay that lies south of Elevuka Island. The pass into the lagoon at Mana Island is very narrow with a dogleg. Strong gusty winds swept across the channel and the sun was in our eyes, making the whole experience hair-raising, despite the poles that clearly mark both sides of the channel. However we made it safely into the lagoon, seeing nothing shallower than 9 feet below our keel. Our friends, Bruce and Craig on Gato Go are anchored here and we are just back from a very pleasant potluck evening on their lovely catamaran.

We plan to stay at Mana for a couple of days snorkeling the fringing reef and hiking on the island.

Are Two Sails Enough?

When we sailed Ladybug in the relatively protected waters of the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, we kept a largish genoa hoisted most of the time. This sail - about a 145 (145% of the area between the mast, fore-stay, and fore-deck) overlaps the mast by quite a lot when pulled in. It is quite a heavy sail - I can barely lift it on deck in its bag. The big genoa is wonderful in light airs giving up to an extra mile per hour. However it is harder to furl in and when furled a lot, its shape is a bit too full to allow Ladybug to go well to windward. It is also difficult to tack because of our inner (cutter rig) stay. It usually requires a helping hand on the fore-deck to work the sail past the inner stay or that you roll the genoa in a bit to get it around. Also, because the sail extends so far aft when sheeted in, it induces additional weather helm.

When we left Mexico, we took the big genoa down because it needed some restitching and a repair to the UV protection where it had chafed on the spreaders while tacking. We repaired it and then folded it and put it away in its bag until two days ago, using the smaller jib that is around 110 to 120% of the fore-triangle. In the last 18 months or so we have sailed over 10,000 nautical miles (20,000 kms) with this smaller jib. It is easy to reef by hand without overloading the roller furler, tacks better, and even in light airs has proven to be adequate (or maybe I am just getting more patient!) It has also required virtually no maintenance until now. We took the sail down because I noticed some stitching on the UV protection strip was coming undone.

The small jib is, I believe, the jib that came with the boat back in the late 1980's. When a new taller mast was put in Ladybug about 10 years ago, this jib was modified slightly and restitched. The sail cloth must be a good one because it is still in very good condition and it holds its shape quite well even when beating in heavier winds or furled in a few rolls. I will repair the worn stitching by hand, using the machine stitched holes and a heavy darning needle and palm to replace the worn stitching with fresh polyester sunbrella thread. This will likely take me a day of labour. I will then re-hoist this as our working jib.

We used the big jib for the passage yesterday and were reminded of its strengths and weaknesses. The passage started in light winds and the speed we were able to make in these put a smile on my face. But that smile disappeared as the wind increased to 10 and then 15 knots on the nose and I had to reef the main. In these winds we would normally use our full small jib, but the boat was just overpowered with the full larger jib. We had more trouble tacking and we had to reef the beast in order to keep the boat at a decent angle of heel. The loads on the roller furler while reefing were substantially more and even though we ran off downwind to do the furling, it was all I could do to haul in the line by hand.

The reason I am writing this is to suggest that from our admittedly limited experience in cruising in the South Pacific, if you are setting off on a similar cruise, I think you could get away with one modest furling jib in your sail wardrobe - something not too big and cut so it can be roller reefed in heavier winds and still work adequately to windward. The advantages are many - less expense, less storage required below, ease of handling, etc. The only major downside I can see is a small loss of speed in lighter airs.

For very light airs we have a cruising spinnaker and while we rarely use this, I suppose some sort of light air sail makes sense unless you have large fuel tanks and like the sound of your engine. That said, we have used our smaller jib/mainsail combo in very light airs - keeping the sails filled if necessary by pointing more to windward, off our desired course. I think we have used our cruising spinnaker only 5 or 6 times in the last 18 months and most of these uses were on the passage from Mexico to the Marquesas. We might have spent an extra day or two at sea had we not had this sail on board.

Re: storm sails - I have met people who have never used their storm tri-sail or storm jib at all during a circumnavigation and we have never had the storm jib out of its bag except to do a trial hoist. In heavy weather we can put three reefs in the main and heave to or fore-reach. If we need to beat to windward we use a scrap of unfurled jib, which seems to work for us up to about 35 knots. A storm jib would obviously be useful beyond that, but so far, we have found that in the heavy weather we have encountered, we have been offshore with plenty of room to either run off under a scrap of jib or to fore-reach under reduced mainsail alone. So maybe you can save some more money and storage space here.

Many books on cruising advocate an extensive sail wardrobe - at least three jibs, a light air nylon sail or two, and the mainsail. I think if you are on a smaller boat or a more limited budget, you can save the $5000 to $10,000 and spend it on the cruise itself, by going with one good quality roller furling jib and a sturdy three reefed mainsail of similar quality. BTW - if you intend to use an older jib, having it restitched before you leave with good quality UV resistant black thread probably makes sense. The dark colour resists UV better than light and it is easier to see if a stitch has failed on black against white.