Good Morning New Caledonia!

We had such a weird last night at sea. We couldn't settle into our usual routine. Lunch had been late and too much. Efforts to eat up some of our fresh provisions with an extra large salad didn't pay off. We didn't feel like dinner and to be sure, excitement of making landfall by morning had been mounting. The Bloke would not go below and get his rest despite it being necessary for him to be alert by morning while we negotiated the 'crinkley' bits - The Dumbae Pass, Amedee Lighthouse etc..

We continued to be bothered by strange current that twice spun us about which must have been very disconcerting for Cruising Kitty, a Rally boat that had been ghosting us on our southern horizon all night. Somehow they had become disconnected from Paw Patrol and were lagging behind.

We thought we should spruce up and fly our new Red Ensign - the other being very faded

Land hiding beneath those clouds and we were beginning to smell it too

Seeing as we were in New Caledonian waters it was time to raise the courtesy and quarantine flags

We were really a bit fatigued, so when the radio started to crackle to life at dawn, it was a bit difficult to make sense of what were were hearing. An Australian girl's voice announcing something like "This is Australian Woolchip Wungo". The Bloke cottoned on much sooner than me hearing the transmission through a different speaker and asked in a jocular fashion, if we were at war with France. Of course not, it was just the HMAS Woolongong- or Australian Warship Woolongong, heading into Noumea. Oh, how very nice of them to escort us in and just as well that we'd improved our appearance!

Clearly, our AIS was on the job!

Early glimpses of the outline of the Amedee Lighthouse - although it had been flashing at us half the night.

We were very excited to discover that Two Up Together, one of the two catamarans that had left the previous week, had spotted us on AIS and were coming out to greet us. Our journey time from the Gold Coast Seaway to the pass through the Reef at Amadee was exactly 6 days.

   

It doesn't get much better than that - being greeted!

We flirted and took photos of our boats for a while and exchanged information before heading into Port Moselle to complete our arrival formalities and re-connect with the rest of the  Rally fleet.

Our flags were the wrong way round but we fixed it as soon as we realised

One of the benefits of joining The Downunder Go East Rally was that much of the arrival formalities and running around was being taken care of by an agent - the marvelous Herve. We'd arrived at the tail end of a 4 day public holiday and none of the earlier arrivals had been able to clear in. Everyone had been confined to their vessels pending the first working day. The delay in departure due to the cyclone, also meant that marina berth reservations were all messed up. Everyone was anchored out in the Baie De Orphelinat. The Bloke took the dinghy into Port Moselle Marina to fill in the Customs forms and drop off Passports etc and we joined the queue to be visited by 'Biosecurity'. Our proximity to the first of the 'after lunch bunch' rather than our arrival time, meant that we were the 2nd boat after lunch to be inspected. This didn't give us enough time to eat up or heat up more of our fresh produce and we greeted the Biosecurity staff with cheeks bulging with cherry tomatoes -ooops!

John Henbrow - Rally organizer delivering the inspectors.

   

Enough with the P's and Q's - we'd been cleared in.
With the formalities completed and $30 of fresh produce destined for the incinerator it was time to celebrate our achievement - safely crossing the Tasman/Coral Sea, shorthanded to a foreign land. A culmination of 6 months of planning and work.

Q flag down and Veuve Cliquot out of the fridge

Time to celebrate - and phone the family!

The sun had barely finished setting before we were down the companionway and in our bunk for the first time in 6 days for a leaden and dreamless sleep.

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