We don’t eat out at restaurants very often, but we do love eating ashore. We’ve cooked breakfast in a volcanic steam vent, found secret grottos for picnic lunches and dragged our BBQ up a river to cook sausages beside a fresh water swimming hole. If there is a beach around we’re planning dinner over an…
Category: New Caledonia
Top Ten Ways You Know You’ve Been Sailing in the South Pacific for a Long Time
Top Ten Ways You Know You’ve Been Sailing in the South Pacific for a Long Time You can communicate a whole range of greetings and emotions with your eyebrows alone. The smell of rancid coconuts rotting in the midday sun doesn’t bother you anymore. When you ask a local a question and they answer “YES”…
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To make a Brummel Splice in Dyneema
This time last year we were bashing to windward with our newly installed dyneema inner forestay and staysail flying. It made the three day trip from New Caledonia to Vanuatu a whole lot easier. Read about how to splice dyneema in the June issue of Cruising World Magazine!
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Markets: Food for the Soul
Amidst the unfamiliar countries and uneasiness of travel the markets are where I find a connection to the people, to the landscape. Although I have a deep and passionate relationship with food this is not why I seek out these places. It is the everyday-ness of the market that I crave. Disconnected from family, country,…
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Returning to my roots
I started traveling in the pre-digital era. There was no Facebook or Instagram, almost no one carried a phone and internet cafes, when you could find them, worked on dial-up. It was also pre-digital photography, so documenting the places I had journeyed far and wide to see meant lugging some heavy equipment, insisting rolls of…
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Bottle Shock and Amnesia
Before we departed Noumea I hit the grocery store and stocked up on a few things; not exactly essentials but items that make the occasional afternoon a little less ordinary. I found excellent prices on olives, sun-dried tomatoes, smoked mussels and pate- yes, I know pate, but at $1.00 a tin even we can afford…
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Au revoir
After two days of beating against 20-25 kt winds we are finally tucked into Port Boise just inside the Havannah Pass, almost exactly where we started from a month ago. Tomorrow morning on the out going tide we are planning to slip through the pass and point NE to Vanuatu. Winds look like they will…
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Galley Notes: Cardamom Scented Applesauce and the Good Life
We had a heck of a sail back to Noumea the other day, stronger than expected winds, low cloud, and constant rain cut visibility down to half a mile and made for a pretty bumpy ride. When we hit the grocery store late that afternoon there was a cart full of must-go’s in the produce…
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Lost in Translation
We’ve been sitting out a little bit of weather for the past four days. A big high down south and one heck of a low around Tasmania have given us re-enforced trade winds, a steady 20-25kts with local gusts upwards of 35kts, so says Meteo Nouvelle Caledonie. They’ve brought with them low clouds and lots…
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Row, Row, Row Your Boat…
We’ve been doing a fair bit of rowing over the past few days. Not because we’ve been trying to be super quiet so not to disturb the animals as we meander down that gentle stream. Or because we’ve been so close to shore it only takes three strokes to get there. It is not because…
