We left midnight Tuesday 11 October for Atoll de Huon which is 286 nm from Espiritu Santo Island. This is the most northern island of New Caledonia. We figured that is would take us 2 and a half days to arrive Friday morning during day time. We had great sailing conditions the swell was small and the wind range from 12 to 18 knots on the beam and later on a broad run. This was great we did our best ever on a 24 hour run of 165 nm, we average 6.25 knots for the trip.
Unfortunately this great sailing conditions made our arrival time at 9 pm on Thursday night, so we decided to hive-to for the night and enter the anchorage in the morning. The wind conditions changed during the night to stronger winds about 20 to 23 knots, which made it a bit more uncomfortable hive-to. Sailing vessels Mamalu and Xyra only left Wednesday morning as they are faster boats. Both of them had to slow down during Thursday night as well to time their arrival time for Friday morning. We all entered the anchorage around 7:00 am local time.
The Atoll exists of one long island which have lots of different types of birds breeding and also lots of turtles. After we anchored and got the boars settled, we all went for a walk on the island. Very beautiful, we took lots of photos of the birds and some of the turtles. Dinis and myself were a bit tired and opted to catch-up on lost sleep after the initial island exploration, the rest went for spear fishing and snorkeling.
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