Day 5 - New Caledonia to Australia

You may be wondering why this post is so late? Or not because yes we arrived here already 3 days ago. Here are the passage stats

Time:         5 days 1 hour

Average speed:   6.6knots

Distance:      808nm

Fish caught:      ZERO

So why the big delay? Well as with everything in life you are thrown curve balls and the result is how you cope with it. In our case the team responded amazingly and we arrived on schedule as planned except the captain was incapacitated. So how did that all happen?

Well as you know I left under a cloud of illness but was sure I was on the mend. And I was for sure. Day 3 and 4 I was feeling much better but suddenly on Day 5 with at still about 30 hours remaining, my ear started feeling sore in the morning. Nothing crazy at first but because of a history of bad ears I was mildly concerned. I had Delphine take a look with her special ear camera we have for Alex and she recorded redness but nothing crazy. I decided to start antibiotics and tried some possibly dubious ear drops. Within a few hours I was in excruciating agony and taking every opioid we had on the boat. I was in the kind of pain you where you are completely incapable of doing anything. I was banging my hands against the wall trying to relieve the pain elsewhere futilely. I felt like my head was going to explode. Fortunately a few hours later it did. My eardrum burst and out came blood and puss which greatly reduced the pain. However I was in no way capable of stepping outside into the wind. Fever and dizziness were big problems and I just remained in my cabin as Delphine, Arabella and Liam sailed the boat onwards to Australia doing their best to sidestep the many squalls we encountered on the last day and night of the passage. The wind was strong and the sea was rough. Obviously we made it safely or else this post wouldn’t have this tone but the whole event has given me enormous confidence in my crew and their readiness to respond without me. It is arguable that they are far more functional without me driving us forward faster and faster like I love doing when we are sailing. They were incredible and not only did a great job sailing but tendered to me like I was a newly born infant. How come men are so useless when they are sick? Or is it just me? Anyway, all the girls would spend time with me and come give me cuddles over those last 100nm or so. I am truly blessed and grateful for having such a competent and loving crew/family.

Apart from me (so hard to move this post away from me) I must report that we still managed to not catch a fish. This whole saga has actually become comical. One of the reasons I was so excited to have Liam join for this passage was to have another bloke onboard passionate about fishing as I am. We had been talking about it for a few weeks before departure and were all so excited about sailing through some of the best fishing waters in the world. We even went super fishing shopping in both Fiji and New Caledonia and spends hundreds of dollars buying new fancy lures and improving our rigging and even buying a new rod and reel to add to my massive stores onboard. To be fair the back of our boat looked more like a fishing charter boat than a family cruiser. I was amped for this passage. Talking about catch and release because we planned to catch so much. Well ain't that a joke. 4 days crossing from Fiji to New Caledonia and 5 days form New Caledonia to Fiji and the total fish caught trolling? ZERO!. Truth is all we caught was a nice little Spanish Mackerel whilst trolling the reef of New Caledonia. It’s funny and tells you the truth of fishing is a lot like business. There is a part of it which is skill but for the most part you need a little luck. But here is the irony. On Day 5 whilst I was sick in my cabin we experienced the most bizarre event. Hundreds of mostly Tuna and some other unidentifiable fish started following our boat. Liam tried for hours to catch them through casting spinners alongside our moving boat but nothing. Now I have sailed almost around the world and spent a lifetime at sea before that and never ever have I witness fish swimming alongside a boat like dolphins would. This is just not a behaviour I am familiar with. Well it happened and for about 3-4 hours. The only explanation I could come up with was they were trying to use our boat as some kind of protection against much larger fish that were chasing them. Who knows?

Talking of dolphins, we did get numerous visits from dolphins along the passage but we didn’t see any Whales which is also quite odd for this time of year. Fortunately we did have epic few hours with a pod of Humpbacks in New Caledonia (see next post with videos for this).

In conclusion, this was the final passage crossing the Pacific and also for us it feels like two thirds (2/3rds) of our journey complete. We have completed over 20,000nm so far and around 10,000nm in the Pacific Ocean alone. It’s been one hell of a journey and we are all very excited about the final Indian Ocean remaining. But for now we will enjoy a couple of months in Australia and try a little life on the road which should be fun.

From SV Arabella in Australia

Sayonara Koala