G'day Everyone!

By October we were ready to leave New Caledonia, but the inevitable surprise weather system shut down the trades and left us with four days of light wind—time to get into all sorts of trouble! Easily distracted by a favorable surf forecast, we set out from Noumea and sailed a dozen miles out to sea in search of the outer reef. We let the anchor go behind a reef in the middle of nowhere at Passe Dumbea. An excellent left; Cloudbreak with a heavy west bowl and a steep takeoff way up the reef.

The following day we ran 30 miles down the lagoon to Passe St. Vincent where civilization fades away. In the binoculars we could see a pair of local skiffs anchored near a suspicious bend in the reef. As we drew near a set rose up, draining off the reef and grinding around the corner in geysers of spray. Two local surfers sat wide, a respectful distance from the impact zone. I pulled Orca along side wearing my friendliest smile and asked permission to surf with them. They frowned and began a rapid flow of French, deciding whether to chase me off. The tide of the argument turned when Kara appeard on deck in her skimpiest bikini, and soon the locals were all smiles and thumbs-up. Anchoring was a challenge, depths rising precipitiously from 300 feet to 3—which explains why the wave appears out of nowhere. With Kara jockeying the throttle, I siezed an anchor and dove the coral cliff amongst delicate colored fronds of pristine sea life to wedge the grapnel under a respectably sized brain coral. The surf wasn't more than 8' faces, but very challenging, and the conditions were perfect. It was also quite shallow; all three of us ended up in standing on the reef in ankle deep water at least once during the session. After the tide switch, we moved around the corner and Kara had a delightful surf: long, clean, overhead and peeling.

We stayed too long. After our second session, the sun was already dipping toward the horizion and we were still 10 miles from the island at a very exposed anchorage. In this remote region of New Cal the charts were spotty at best and at night, the clearest water in the world won't help you see an uncharted reef. We'd nearly made it back to the mainland when the depth sounder bounced from 200 feet to 3. Orca went tearing onto a reef, plowing a swath through fragile coral formations before grinding to a halt. With the tide turning and twilight nearly gone, we were stuck fast; engine and sails were no use. Coils of line and our trusty grapnel went into the dingy, which Kara rowed out into deep water. Running the line back to winches on Orca, we brought the rode to guitar-string tension. Over the next hour, Orca slowly slid off the reef, an inch at a time with each swell, untill finally we reach four foot depths and we were afloat again. Thick fiberglass is amazingly tough; damage to the hull was minor; antifoul scoured away but only a few scratches through the underlying gelcoat.

With the hull still mostly intact and trades returning, we were off to Australia. The lowlight of the passage was day five with 30-40 knot winds, 20 foot seas, and a spirit-sapping drizzle-fog. In the vicinity, the Great Barrier Reef compresses the ubiquitous coastal cargoship traffic into a two-way corridor 5 miles across. Lost in the troughs of the swell, fog, and drizzle we could see almost nothing; the situation was like the old videogame Frogger, where the player's frog tries to cross the four lane freeway in heavy traffic by jumping foward and back between lanes. I always seemed to lose, my frog pulped. We sailed forward, backward, left and right dodging 300 foot freighters and supertankers, spray pounding from their bows, flying the length of the ship and blanketing the wheelhouses. The Sagitarius Leader came so close enough that we could clearly see their selection of huge radar arrays: none spinning, all turned off. No response on VHF either. If they don't even have radar on in busy traffic, thick fog, and big swell, no wonder freighters never see poor little Orca! To improve our spirits, a big wave broke over the transom, rolled over the cockpit, and slammed up against the companion way. We'd left the hatch cracked for some air, and the South Pacific came firehosing in and drenched the cabin. One of our radios was knocked out; we scrambled to douse it in denatured alchohol to flush out the seawater.

Safely to the Bundaberg rivermouth, we cleared customs and watched kangaroos on the riverbanks. After spending the requisite small fortune at the local chandlery, we've continued up the shallow river with the high tide and are anchored just off the famous rum distillery, where steam billows from tall chimneys and, when the wind turns, the air smells of brown sugar and yeast.