Thursday 1st July 2010

We had hoped to leave yesterday, however time gets away and weather windows – which are more important in these last few legs as we are coming in to an Australian winter (I don’t think winter in the tropical Pacific counts the same way!!) – come and go. Plastiki arrived in Noumea a couple of days ago and after talking to them about the advice given to them by their weather router we have decided that Saturday is the day to leave. Our auto helm is fixed (new fluxgate compass, as suspected), our anchor winch is too far gone and can not be fixed (but has been removed, leaving a hole in the hull that I didn’t need to know about), our macerator pump has finally, FINALLY been replaced (no more using the aft head which isn’t wonderfully reliably, or worse still using a bucket!) and we will reprovision tomorrow and be on our merry way.


Tonight we are going out for tea with some of the crew from Plastiki (Jo, Skipper; David, Co-Skipper; and Max, camera man filming for National Geographic - keep an eye out for the finished piece!!), which should be good fun. We feel sorry for them – we are expecting a 6 or 7 day passage from here to Coffs harbour; they are looking at around two weeks!

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Tea was fantastic. Apologies to those who are after some food porn - it looked so good that we started eating before we thought to take the obligatory photo.We ordered through Max's translation of the menu - a close call for Stu who thought he would have the hearty venison kebabs before Max suddenly realised that it was actually venison heart kebabs... Stu promptly changed his order! (Dave White and Bruce - I told Stu that you would be very disappointed). A really great evening with fun company, good wine and awesome food. Maybe we could stay just a little longer...