Tag Archives: catamaran

New Caledonia to New Zealand: A Surprisingly Happy Sail!

Leave a reply

Some passages are memorable for their wild seas, howling winds, and tales of survival. Others are memorable because nothing much went wrong! And after leaving beautiful New Caledonia for New Zealand, we were delighted to have the latter.  Come along with us as we have a lovely sail across the Pacific.

Note:  As you know, our blog posts usually run 6-8 weeks behind live events.  However, I inserted this update in true time so you know where we are now, New Zealand.  Our blog posts will resume tomorrow from New Caledonia until they catch up with us 🙂

Our passage treated us to light winds, favorable seas, and sunny skies. Sugar Shack sailed along happily, the weather cooperated, and Mother Nature seemed to have decided we’d earned a little kindness.

We happily repaid her kindness with some Citizens of the Sea Sampling three times a day, every day.

Ideal Conditions

Now, those of you who follow our adventures know that I’m not exactly the poster child for enjoying a rolling ocean. I get seriously seasick, so a passage with gentle conditions and sunshine is about as close to sailing paradise as I can get. No dramatic waves, no wrestling with the elements, and—best of all—far less time negotiating with my stomach!

Of course, even an easy passage requires watchkeeping, navigation, and keeping an eye on the weather. But when the seas are friendly and the skies are blue, it’s a whole lot easier to appreciate the magic of life at sea.

Navigating at night always keeps us on high alert.

And just like that, our New Caledonian adventure gave way to the familiar comforts of New Zealand. We arrived grateful for a safe, pleasant passage and reminded once again that sometimes the best sailing stories are the ones where the ocean lets you enjoy the ride.

Matt hoisting the yellow quarantine flag.

Matt and I sailed from New Caledonia to New Zealand in 5.5 days with an average boat speed of 6.4kts.  We crossed the Pacific Ocean in early October 2026.

Out blog posts typically run 6-8 weeks behind live events.  However, I inserted this into our schedule so you know where we are now.

Our blog posts will continue in New Caledonia – but rest assured, we are in New Zealand.

Here we go again. Day 5 and Arrival

Leave a reply

Another gorgeous day for sailing. Day break the wind started building, up go the sails and off to the races. A perfect 10-12kts from the west now. Everyone loves beam reach.. The light winds and direction change, means the seas were also very kind. Zoom Zoom on to New Zealand we go.

Drug the lines for a bit, until the boat speed was touching 8kts and above. Nothing small is going to catch the lure at those speeds and certainly didn’t feel like slowing down just to have to clean a fish, even with another Mahi being reported by boats behind us. 🙂

Final sunset.

The final sunset, was beautiful. We still had a long night and a time change to deal with. We lost 2 hrs, so our midnight arrival was really going to be 2am on Kiwi time.

Preparing quarantine flag for arrival, just before sunset.

As we were just approaching the BOI (Bay of Islands) the wind pipped up, which is opposite of normal. Normally it gets softer at near the bay, so that last bit of sleep was put on hold while speed was up. With the auto pilot still being a bit finicky it seemed prudent to be near the helm just in case he decided he needed break after 6 long days of 24/7 service. It was a good call, as he tried to take a break a few times during the final miles ..

Yellow “Q” flag, says we haven’t been cleared into country, immigration/ health / bio security/ customs.

Now that we were close enough, starlink data was full on, no longer billable by Gigabyte. I did a quick google search on the Autopilot issue, and the suspicion was correct, time for a new RAM or at least a maintenance project. It seems the ram is supposed to be sent into get serviced every 1000 hours, and with our 40,000 miles we were well past service at 8000 hrs, who knew. So guess what gets service/updated in NZ, and of course a spare brother picked up. If you have 2 on board, you’ll never need the spare, or so goes the theory.

Arrived dock at 2am, with next to no wind, perfect for negotiating the dock in the dark, spinning around 180 and getting tied up. By 3am we were settled, and finally had a cold beer before the ever too short sleep before customs / immigration / biosecurity arrived. Super efficient and we were cleared to leave the Q dock an hour after the process started. Time for some more work to rinse the boat and get a proper sleep.

Save a favorite Mongolian Pork for the final push to rid the fridge of the ‘forbidden’ items.

Interesting that the only thing Biosecurity needed to remove from us in the end was a salami that we purchased in NZ before leaving that was made in Christ Church NZ. No worries, all the officers said Christine was super organized, and made the process super easy/efficient and we were done within 1 hour.

Back in the land where we read the labels, and what’s not to love about Snaka Changi marketing.

Back to the regular scheduled posts that will no doubt have a different spin on the short daily stories.

5 days, 17 hours

900 miles.

Water-maker fitting and autopilot hiccups, or bad at all for an ocean passage. Hope the next one is just as sweet.

Here we go again. Day 4

Leave a reply

Another great day of sailing on this big blue lagoon. Nothing much happened, Very un-eventful. A little struggle during the previous night with the port chart plotter, I pressed ‘display off’ and it would kindly remind me to to press a button to enable the display in bright white letters. Its pitch black out, I wanted to turn off the display to preserve night vision, but every 2 minutes, a bright message would say press here to turn on the screen.. Who designs this stuff? So next I tried, stand by mode, at least that standby mode lasted around 5 minutes before coming back on? B&G can do better, The starboard one had a different issue months ago, but worked through that one with support, now need to remember or contact support again to figure out the magical reset sequence.. The new NEON based chart potters do not compare with the previous versions. Enough there back to sailing.

Tried our hand and trolling today, after news that friends just landed a Mahi, the elusive fish that mostly escapes me. I even had fresh new lures the guy at the shop said were good for Mahi Mahi.. No such lock so it was a trolling day, not a fishing day. To be fair, it’s going to have to be a fast Mahi to see and catch the lures at 8+ knots, like today.. Should have put the larger lures in, but didn’t want to catch a tuna that dives deep then clean it. So just sailed along peacefully.

With no excitement from the trolling lines, We resorted to working, or more correctly volunteering Christine’s copious time. She signed us up to study the world one droplet of sea water at a time. We toss a torpedo looking weapon off the back of the boat and tow it for a bit, hope that a shark doesn’t mistake it for lunch, then pul it in to see what lurks in the waters around us. I have asked If I can paint the torpedo to look like a giant lure to attract and serve as a flasher / teaser and get reminded this torpedo is for science, my toys are just toys. I do as I’m told, occasionally. Christine does all the work of collecting the samples and logging them to the Citizens of the Sea app, and when we arrive we will turn over the samples for the real scientists to make discoveries of what lies beneath or within our oceans. This is part of our daily routine on passage.

Picture of part of the process as we left New Caledonia

Damn the TORPeDNA! Launching the Citizens of the Sea collection unit.

And Yes, we do play Tom Petty on the stereo during this process.

All in all another good uneventful day. Few miles closer to the destination, 300 or so, looks like 2 more sleeps out here on the ocean. Tomorrow is shaping up to be an engine day, but before we get there a frontal band has to cross our path. Possibly rain and 30kts gale force winds.

Sausage / Egg / Bagel for breakfast and another crowd favorite Pulled Pork quesadillas for dinner.