Welcome to Zenitude’s blog where you can follow us while we travel slow in our Lagoon catamaran. We update this blog frequently when we are cruising to let family and friends know where we are. Check the complete story of our adventures that started in 2006 when Zenitude became our home and cruising our way of life. Graciela and Oscar

Saturday 27 July 2013

Underway - From New Caledonia to Vanuatu

Sailing from the north tip of Ouvea to Port Vila, a 200 miles trip, should take us between 34 to 40 hours. Timing is tricky because we need to leave Ouvea with daylight to go thru the pass out to open waters. This means arriving to Port Vila at night.

After buying the last 2 baguettes before leaving French territory we left Fayaoue on Tuesday morning heading towards Ilot Deguala. While crossing the lagoon in a great sunny day we had dozen of dolphins swimming alongside and playing with Zenitude.

Watch the video:    Sailing with dolphins 

We decided not to stop at Ilot Deguala but checked the anchorage, definitely a 'must visit' when back.
Ouvea map and charts show 2 passes for getting out of the lagoon, Passe de la Baleine and Passe du Taureau. Before leaving Fayaoue we asked the local people about conditions in the passes and they said Taureau is better as the other pass has 2 dangerous rocks sometimes hard to see. Our cruising guide does not mention any of these passes but shows that is possible to pass between Ile Jumeaux and Ilots Deguala. The worry is the chart shows this area as 'unsurveyed'. What to do? Neither of the 2 passes looked very inviting and we decided to trust our cruising guide as the area between the islands is wide and the reef was very visible at 1:00 PM when we crossed. Crossing really slowly and checking the depth sounder all the time the pass was calm, clear waters showed no danger and we never saw less than 14 meters depth. Anyway, we only relaxed when we were out in chart surveyed waters.

Leaving New Caledonia behind we had good sailing most of the time, fast and bumpy during the day averaging almost 7 kn but slower at night with the wind calming down. The full moon made the night much more enjoyable. Approaching Port Vila the second night at around midnight we could see the lights showing the entrance to the port. We usually don't enter port at night but this port is easy, well marked, we've been here before, our C-Map chart is spot on, there was a full moon, clear and calm night and our cruising guide gave us all the waypoints up to the Quarantine anchor point. With all of this we decided to get in. Somehow the leading lights to the entrance are not exactly as described in the guide but are clear to understand.

Very slowly we made it to the quarantine anchorage, several boats were already there waiting for next day quarantine clearance. We dropped anchor and relaxed, the night was calm, we were quite tired but happy after a good trip.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

No comments:

Post a Comment