We're on a family sailing trip to New Caledonia at the moment, to escape the Tassie winter and explore this wonderful country. After a challenging trip up 1600nm in 12.5 days with a couple of gales (50+knots and 6m breaking waves), we've been having a blast. New Caledonia has a massive number of islands and reefs to explore. Our kids have been having a ball playing on the beach, swimming and snorkelling.

I also brought some windsurfing gear along, unfortunately my gear is more oriented to strong Tassie winds and isn't quite enough to get going in the 12-14 knot winds that we've had for days on end. Also many of the nice anchorages are protected from the wind so don't make for good windsurfing. But about once every 10 days we've been anchored in a good windsurfing spot and its been windy enough for me to sail pretty much all day long in the warm water.

We're in Ouvea at the moment, a coral atoll with a narrow strip of land providing protection from the waves & swell in the prevailing winds. Yesterday at lunch time I looked at my gps and realised that I'd already done 130km so decided to have a stab at 200km. Since my gybing is atrocious I decided to do long tacks (up to 12km) to reduce the number of gybes. Perfect conditions for covering a lot of distance! If I'd set out to cover a lot of distance I would have had another rig tied up behind the boat to be able to swap easily as I could sail within meters of the boat on each tack. As it was I got a bit fatigued from being overpowered at times and the last 40km was hard work. Took seven hours all up as I'm a slow poke! Here's a map of the spot: https://www.strava.com/activities/357081562

In Ouvea I couldn't go too close to the shore as the vegetation on the land disturbed the wind in close. Prior to taking up windsurfing I've been to some other atolls where the outer sand/coral reef is unvegetated and you'd be able to sail along on flat water within meters of the beach/coral reef whilst having perfect consistent open ocean trade wind conditions. It seems to me it would be the perfect setup for doing some seriously long distances. If a bumbling beginner can do 200km after a late breakfast...

We're heading back to Tassie soon, but next time I'll have to bring along some better light wind planing gear. Hope all is going well in Tassie, sounds like there are some interesting opportunities for some snowy sailing coming up!

Xarvia.............200KM...........respect....................enjoy the sun while you can

With warm sunny weather and wind all day long 200km wasn't too hard, even for a beginner like me. The special ingredient was being able to do 10km tacks so that I only had to do about 20 crashes/waterstarts er. I mean gybes.

Unfortunately the sun is running out. We have to leave New Caledonia in about 10 days and sail back to Tassie.

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xarvia said..
With warm sunny weather and wind all day long 200km wasn't too hard, even for a beginner like me. The special ingredient was being able to do 10km tacks so that I only had to do about 20 crashes/waterstarts er. I mean gybes.

Unfortunately the sun is running out. We have to leave New Caledonia in about 10 days and sail back to Tassie.

Are you going to drop in on Lord Howe on the way back? The windsurfing is pretty good there.

Also there are a few very keen windsurfers on Flinders Island who would be keen for some visitors.

We wanted to stop in at Lord Howe Island on the way up here but were delayed by a fortnight due to a last minute repair job and had to give it a miss. On the way back it's a bit more difficult due to the prevailing wind conditions, so unfortunately we won't be stopping there this time around.

We might stop at Flinders on the way down depending on the wind, otherwise I'm keen to get there another time, looks like an interesting area with good windsurfing potential.