Bonjour!

With the Parents off to the States, it was time to take our leave of Whangamata and sail 200 miles North to Opua and the Customs/Immigration office. But, our very last boat project (ha!) was to inspect and re-seal the huge machine screws securing Orca's rigging to the hull; the ensuing quest quickly took a entertaining turn. To spin the shafts without stripping the head, we needed to find an exceptionally large flat-headed screwdriver; the one I already had was impressive but innefective—the blade had broken off. Uncle Dave and I drove to ten different stores. At each, I whipped out my well-endowed but now impotent driver and, attempting to keep a straight face, told them I needed it bigger. At every shop, the clerk deadpaned either "That sounds like a personal problem," or, "I saw a commercial for just that issue on late night television". Eventually, we ascertained that we already had the biggest in Auckland, and, after much thought, were able to circumvent the dysfunctional tool.

We were feeling pretty happy about inspecting those screws when, a week later, we found ourselves beating to the north across the NZ's notorious Colville channel in gusts to 50 knots. Ducking into Port Fitzroy on Great Barrier Island, we were shivering cold, damp, hungry, and salty. We pulled into Smokehouse Bay where there's a public wood-fired bath. The ingenious arrangement was plumbed to a freshwater spring and consisted of a small cabin, insulated hot water cylinder warmed via a heat-exchanger in the wood burning stove. We chopped driftwood with the provided axe and soon the blazing fire produced 50 steaming gallons in the chipped porcelin bathtub. Since we were deep in the off-season, the island was deserted; even the fish had their guard down; we concluded our stay with a dinner of snapper, kawai, oysters, cockles, and mussles.

Fully revitalized, we felt ready to tackle the Customs officials. If you recall, they had jumped us through many hoops when entering the country—the most oustanding was the $5,000 deposit to rescue Orca from customs impound. They had been attentativly beaurocratic, proffering many papers for numerous legally binding signatures when taking our money—but now, having been good little sailors by leaving the country on time, we were entitled to a refund. Naturally, the sympathetic officials in Opua said that they may or may not be able to return the money depending on what the upper-level paperwork looked like that was filed by nameless, faceless Senior New Zealand Customs Officials, and submitted to the equally nebulious Senior Banking Officials, of which the Regular Old Customs Officials—our friends and allies—had no control over. Our buddies would do their best but they were very sorry because, furthermore, the Regular Old Customs Officials were not permitted to submit preliminary paperwork on the situation until ten days after Orca had sailed away, putting lil' old Kara and John well out into the Pacific where we'd be powerless to object to any funny business on the international banking scene.

We were escorted by an albatross and a handfull of dolphins on a fast but uncomfortable passage to New Caledonia, little more than a French mining outpost. The only city, Noumea, is shrouded in multicolored smoke billowing from the smelters. The mountains, once covered in regal pines and ancient kauri trees, have been stripped of vegetation, slashed by roads, torn by strip mines. Each gash and gouge bleeds deep red earth into the ocean as the naked topsoil sloughs from nearly every hillside.

Despite this, New Caledonia is a delightful place. The climate melds the best of all worlds—warm water, turqoise lagoons, tropical reefs, and palm trees somehow coexist with cool dry air, tall scrub covered mountans, and endless sunshine. The island claims the world's second most extensive tropical reef system—the largest is Australia's Great Barrier Reef, where we're heading next—and a magnificient variety of terrestrial and marine life. We sailed miles up the Baie du Prony, a network of desert fjords, hotsprings, and cool mountain streams. Then out into the motu-strewn lagoon where there are entire atolls snared in reef. The lagoon is large enough to be a playground for whales and measures 50 ocean miles across in places, some of the islands along the fringing reef ridiculiously tiny and remote. We stopped at several.

On one, the ringing whitesand beach was completely devoid of human footprints but the sand was scored with hundreds of sinous grooves leading from the water into the bush. We wandered up into the scrub and stumbled to a horrified halt as the leaves around our feet rustled with dry scrapes and slow rustles. Red-and-black and white-and-black coral snakes were everywhere. Like a horror movie, each way we turned revealed a snarl of snakes--under rocks, passing over a root, draped around branch, dangling from a rock ledge, or coiled beneath a log. We both squealed like little girls and tiptoed back to sand. The snakes are highly venemous but classified as "non-agressive"; we might have found out just how non-agressive they really were if we'd stepped on one. Kara had nightmares about sea snakes climbing up the anchor chain and dropping into her bunk that night. We slept stuffy with all ports closed.

A small limestone island we anchored at had a posh resort, completely abandoned. We wandered the deserted buildings being retaken by the jungle, unnerved by the sight of abandoned luggage, TV's, stereos, computers, boats, a forlorn german shepard left behind and delighted to see humans once more. The Mary Celeste of four-star resorts. The dog had survived for months by drinking rainwater caught in the swimming pool and plunging off the docks into the lagoon to catch fish like a pelican.

By this time, we were really wondering if our NZ customs money had come in, so we sailed out to the Ile of Pines where a hotel was rurmored to have internet access. Of course, the money had not arrived in our bank account (and was long overdue by this time). We called our liason at the customs office, but her voicemail said she would be vacationing in Dubai for the next 3 weeks. We called a different customs officer; also out of the office. We called the 24/7 NZ customs 800 number hotline many times across two days to hear endless ringing. At this point, we seriously began to wonder if the entire NZ customs beaurocracy was on holiday, courtesy of the Orca deposit. We eventually found real people and, after a few hours of Skype, we had it all sorted out.

As for us, we're faced with the difficult decision to either sail down to Australia, where we will no-doubt be sucked into a second beaurocratic vortex, or to stay in the tropics through the summer cyclone season and face the possibility of a naturally occuring, but equally inconvienient, meterological vortex. Given the choice of being at the mercy of 200 knot hurricane-force winds or Australian Customs/Immigration/Health/Quarrantine/Agriculture/Termite inspections, fees and proceedures, we choose the latter, but just.

Untill next time,

John & Kara

SV Orca

Ile des Pines, Nouvelle Caledonia