November 17, 2001
New Caledonia Gets Hot on Clearing Procedures, and THETA VOLANTIS Gets Sloppy on Power Use

It does seem odd that a country the size of New Caledonia (which incidentally is supported by the full force of the French customs/quarantine and immigration service) has only one Port of Entry for yachts: Noumea, on Grande Terre.

Situated on the southwest side of Grande Terre, it is convenient if you are arriving from the west--i.e. Australia. It is very inconvenient if you are arriving from the east (Fiji, Vanuatu), since en route to Grande Terre you pass the Loyalty Islands, but are not allowed to stop there.

Last month two yachts ignored the rules and stopped over for three days. When they arrived in Noumea, customs knew about their stop and they were severely reprimanded. Large fines and other punishments can be imposed.

Unfortunately to return to the Loyalty Islands after clearing means a 100-mile passage back the way you came and a good chance that the return trip to Grande Terre will be a beat. Perhaps by way of compensation there are no charges for clearing in at Noumea, and you are given a free night's mooring in the marina and a free drink at the yacht club for each crew member.

Port Moselle (the marina where you clear in) is right in the heart of town next to the market; it could not be more convenient. The museum is just across the road, as is the post office, and you're spoilt for choice for restaurants for lunch and dinner. At the end of the visitors' pontoon is the yacht club which serves excellent food and has Internet services. After five months of cruising remote areas, all this convenience is positively overpowering.

Literally.

Tied to a pontoon for the first time in months we plugged into the power and dropped our regular generator charging routine--and with it, all of our subconscious power conservation measures. Slowly we noticed that small routine practices had lapsed. The gas solenoid switch was left on after cooking; the water pump switch was not turned on and off each time we needed to use water. We did not slide as far as leaving lights on in the cabins (some habits are just too deeply entrenched to suffer short-term dereliction) but occasionally a fan was left on though no one was sitting next to it. We could argue that we were saving power by not running the anchor light, but the computers running for hours on end more than made up for that.

None of it mattered, of course, while we were plugged into the mains power, and we quickly moved back into conservation mode when we left the marina. We are fortunate in having 1800 amp hours of batteries on our Sundeer and our DC generator puts in 300 amps per hour, so we are not short of power. But we like to run a quiet boat, and the more power we use, the more often we have to run the generator. (Brian's favorite boat job is not oil changes, either, so the more we keep the generator hours down, the better it is for him.)

We've found the best way to learn power conservation is to check what each item uses. Turn off everything on the boat and then turn on each item separately and make a note of what it uses. That way you can conserve effectively by being careful with heavy usage items and you can make a big difference to daily consumption in surprising ways. For example, we discovered that our switch panel lights and digital displays use 3 amps, which is 72 amps over a 24-hour period. The gas solenoid uses another 1 amp. By just turning those two things off when not in use, we are saving 100 amp hours per day, or 20 minutes of generator time.

Conversely we discovered that our 12-volt fans use hardly any power, so we no longer swelter overnight but run them with impunity.

Now that we are unplugged and back at anchor, we have rapidly reacquired our old conservation habits. We are listening to the birds instead of the drone of a generator.

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