SOLOMON ISLANDS CRUISING INFO. BY DAVID LEWIS - S.V BRAVE. Current at September 2020
ABOUT THE LEWIS FAMILY AND HOW WE CAME TO SPEND CYCLONE SEASON IN THE SOLOMON ISLANDS We moved onto our boat in July 2018. Our home port was Picton in The South Island of New Zealand. We made our way up the coast of NZ to Opua in preparation for departing for Australia. While in Opua, waiting for the right weather window, we met Sally and Forfar, who had done the Down Under Rally - Go East Rally the previous year. They highly recommended the rally, and since we knew absolutely no cruisers in Australia, we thought it would be a great way of meeting people who would be heading East. We sailed from Opua to Coffs Harbour, about 1300nm, at the start of December 2018. Onboard, we had extra crew, including my 19-year-old nephew and a Canadian who had just sailed from Panama. The extra crew made the shifts much easier. We had a fairly uneventful trip until we started getting close to Australia, where we ended up in the EAC with sustained winds of 40-45 knots for a good part of our final night. We spent the summer cruising down to Sydney and then slowly back up to the Gold Coast before departing for New Cal in May 2019.
