Show Day

0600 position 29-03S 167-58E. At anchor in Ball Bay, Norfolk Island

After breakfast yesterday morning we pulled the hook and powered Van Diemen around to Sydney Bay to see if the swell had moderated as the forecast had predicted. It was still bumpy, but safe enough to stay and land, so we reanchored in our original spot and dinghied ashore to find Zappa, Marie, and Michael waiting for us on the pier. We hoisted the dinghy out of the water and drove up into town to start provisioning for the passage to Australia via Lord Howe Island. We likely won't find many supplies in Lord Howe, a much smaller and more sparsely populated island. The provisions were staged at Claire and Jimmy's house and we headed down to the Olive for lunch.

Our shore crew spent a lot of time at "Show Day 2017", the annual fair put on by The Royal Norfolk Island Agricultural and Horticultural Society, while the anchor watch was stranded in Ball Bay. There were a surprising number of categories in the friendly competition between neighbors at the show. Fifty four categories in the "Vegetables and Farm Produce" section including "turkey eggs"; twenty eight categories of "Fruit", forty nine categories in "Cooking", thirty seven categories of "Preserves" including my personal favorite "home brew", "Potted Plants", "Cut Flowers","Live Stock",... , eighteen sections in all with a total of 675 categories. The crew had a great time and took lots of pictures to share with those of us stuck out on the boat.

After lunch we took a tour of the island heading up to Mount Pitt, the second highest peak, down to Cascade Bay to check it out for possible future visits by boat, and to some scenic overlooks on the northwestern end of the island. Late in the afternoon we cleared out with customs, ferried crew and provisions back to Van Diemen in two dinghy trips, and moved the boat back around to Ball Bay where it would be a calmer anchorage for our last night at Norfolk Island. We set the anchor just as the sun was setting behind the island.

Norfolk Island was a fantastic stopover during this voyage. It was a beautiful, unique, rugged, isolated, and compact oasis of civilization in the middle of the Coral Sea. Claire and Jimmy's over the top hospitality made us feel like locals and all of us would love to spend more time here.

The wind was out of the north when we arrived at Norfolk Island four days ago. It backed to the southwest soon thereafter and has blown from that direction the whole time we were here. At 5AM this morning the wind shifted to the southeast just as the forecast had predicted. That will give us favorable winds, at least for now, on the 490 mile passage southwest to Lord Howe Island. Like Norfolk Island, Lord Howe sits nearly alone (both have one or two smaller islands nearby) hundreds of miles from its closest neighbor. The forecast calls for winds out of the eastern quadrant for the next three days so we should have a pleasant sail. We will have breakfast, get the boat ready for sea, and likely be underway sometime this morning.

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