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The final leg: New Caledonia to Queensland

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Photo courtesy of Moonshiner Monday 13 th November, Rivergate Marina, Brisbane, Australia. Brisbane!!!!!!!!! We're back! Very exciting and very weird at the same time. We docked at 1800 last Wednesday, got checked in and allowed ashore on Thursday, found a microbrewery, caught up with the Masters, the Chens and half the crew of Matilda, had a Bunnings sausage sizzle, took the Citycat to town, visited West End and now I'm packing to head to Perth on Wednesday. All a bit hectic really. Karl sets the world record for dock to sausage sizzle. Leaving New Cal, after we checked out of Nouméa, we headed down the lagoon to Amédée island, right beside the channel, to position ourselves for a quick getaway once the weather was right. Amédée is a tiny little island with a very impressive lighthouse opened in 1865. It was manufactured and assembled in Paris for structural and wind testing, then disassembled and shipped to New Caledonia where it took 9 months to reassemble on Amédée. Durin
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New Caledonia: waiting.....waiting......waiting......

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  Wednesday 25 th October, Nouméa, Nouvelle Calédonie. Bonjour a tous! We are once again back on French territory and enjoying all the civilised treats that come with that. We're anchored in the harbour off the capital Nouméa just waiting, waiting, waiting (along with lots of other Aussie boats) for the elusive weather window back home to Brissie. In the meantime we're keeping a close eye on the lovely Lola – a cat 5 cyclone that's hitting our neighbour Vanuatu at the moment. She's forecast to weaken before she gets to us so let's keep our fingers crossed. I guess it was to be expected – we did get that late season cyclone just after leaving Mooloolaba in May 2019 so it's nicely symmetrical that the Universe has thrown this early season (earliest on record actually) one at us too. All that's missing now is another earthquake. Grand, soft, Irish day in Nouméa. So we escaped Fiji and had, shock horror, a perfectly uneventful passage to New Cal and, shock ho
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Fixing the boat in exotic locations: Tonga & Fiji

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Tuesday 10 th October (Fiji Day), Port Denarau, Fiji. Fiji? I thought we were going to New Cal? Well, you know how to make the Gods laugh – tell them your plans. So we're not in New Cal with our friends eating entrecôte and drinking Bordeaux Superieur, we're stuck in Port Denarau. On the bright side things are looking up again (it got pretty low there for a while) and we should be leaving tomorrow bound for New Caledonia at last. So, long story, but let's start back in Tonga after the new stay and refurbished furler arrived (happy days!). The day finally dawned to get the new stay up and the crew of Mac kindly volunteered to assist. We got Karl climbing up the mast on a halyard secured to a deck cleat and when he was half way up the cleat started to rip out of the deck. Brilliant. Gráinne's literally breaking up around us. So we got him back down and used a different cleat (and added "fix cleat" to the to do list). Karl went back up, we sent the stay up af
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Rugby World Cup in the Kingdom of Tonga

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  Monday 18 th September (Birthday of Crown Prince Tupouto'a 'Ulukalala), Neiafu, Vava'u, Kingdom of Tonga. It's Rugby World Cup time again, yay!!! The rugby has nicely bookended our trip, we watched the 2019 games in Mauritius, Reunion and South Africa and now we're lucky enough to be stuck in a rugby-mad nation for this year's early games. And, to add extra spice, Tonga are in Ireland's pool!  We're using today's public holiday to recover from the big Ireland - Tonga game yesterday morning, Karl's pulling the forward cabin apart looking for the spare tyre for my bike ahead of tomorrow's cycle down to a nice snorkeling spot, Wednesday we're going for a couple of dives, Wednesday evening is the Former Drag Queen show at Le Galion bar, Thursday is quiz night at The Kraken, Friday we'll be the finish line for the afternoon's racing (big responsibility), this weekend is the start of the Vava'u Blue Water Festival kicking off wi
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