New Caledonia 2007 Blog
Late May- Early June:
Well, after the horrible passages we had last year, this one was a goodie. The wind was aft of the beam, and never exceeded 25 knots, usually around 15 knots, although we did have a couple of wind-free motoring days. Eight days of pure, uneventful bliss (apart from the queasiness of the first few days), which is how it should be. I remembered why I used to love passage-making.
↓A great day at sea, sailing downwind, gull-winged. Note: no reefs in the sail.
There were some memorable highlights, some being the dolphins playing in phosphorescence around the boat at night, looking like glowing torpedoes exploding around us. Also, off North Cape, we saw huge bursts of phosphorescence, exploding all around us. Spooky.
We picked up a hitch-hiker on the way: just north of Norfolk Island we were going through a band of rain (always on my watch - I swear the weather gods were picking on me for yelling at them in the same place last year) when a small wet swallow started circling us and trying to land. After a few abortive attempts with moving ropes, he landed on the stern rail and looked at me for a while before hopping down on to the winches, and then on to the compass under the dodger whilst fluffing up his feathers and drying out. After deciding we seemed to be mainly harmless, he flew down into the cabin and settled onto the sextant box on the bookshelf, tucked his head under his wing and went to sleep. He must have been completely knackered, as he slept through several watch changes, meals being cooked, 10 hours of motoring and people peering at him from six inches away and saying "I don't think he's dead - he hasn't fallen over!". Bruce swore he could hear him snoring. The next morning at daylight he stretched and flew off out the hatch and was on his way. At Kuto on the Ile des Pins we were lying on the beach watching the swallows play over the shore - I like to think he was one of those.
We passed through the reef into the main New Cal lagoon at
Amadee, without incident and without having to sedate the crew, so last year's
experience is starting to show benefits. We arrived on Sunday afternoon ,just as
the fleet of New Cal pleasure craft was returning from the lagoon - lots of
waving & greeting which was nice. We tried to contact Port Moselle Marina to tie
up at the customs dock, but there was no reply. We decided it was Sunday
afternoon, so there were probably only non-English-speaking security guards on
duty who weren't going to reply to anyone speaking English. Bruce thought that
was fair enough, as he would do the same thing in their place. We anchored in
Orphelinat Bay and spent the evening polishing off as much of our confiscatable
food as we could before Quarantine arrived the next day to remove it. We got off
pretty lightly on this front, an end of a salami, onions, garlic and some
geriatric brussels sprouts were the main casualty - unlike one poor sod down the
jetty who has a whole shoulder of Parma ham confiscated: he was not a happy
camper! Nor was Bruce when he found that he was now allowed to bring honey in to
New Cal (it was the only thing they confiscated last year) after all, and could
have stocked up on the good stuff in Auckland.
After clearing in, we went and reacquainted ourselves with the fleshpots of Noumea - well, the supermarket and market anyway and got our boat jobs done, so much easier this year when we had had time to keep up the maintenance in NZ and after a quiet trip up.
The next day we caught the bus out to the Tjibaou (no, we can't pronounce it either) Cultural Centre to have a look around. It is a memorial of sorts to New Cal's, most prominent Kanak independence fighter/peacemaker, who was assassinated in 1989. They had some interesting contemporary art and a few artifacts (nothing like the New Cal Museum) but the main attraction is the Centre itself, which is an amazing building designed by the Italian Renzo Piano. See the photogalleries for some more shots of it. Why can't we have something that stylish on the Auckland waterfront instead of the monuments to mediocrity that get proposed?
Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Noumea →
13 June 07
Back in Noumea again after a few weeks out cruising. We went down to Il des Pins (Isle of Pines) in the south lagoon area. It was amazing and I didn't want to come back. It is the archetypal tropical paradise with palm-fringed turquoise lagoons with soft white sands and full of wildlife - fish, turtles, sea snakes, manta rays etc.
The weather this year has been far more benign this year (touch wood) and the trip down to the Ile des Pins was fairly easy, a bit of coral dodging through reefs, and lots of motoring as there was no wind, but that was better than the usual 20 knot head wind.
↓Fishermen's canoes, Baie de Gadji, Il des Pins
We arrived first at Baie de Gadji, and when the tide was right, snuck into an enclosed anchorage surrounded by little coral islets, shaped like huge mushrooms. We stayed there a couple of days during some strong winds, then moved down the coast a couple of miles (exhausting - I needed a lie-down to recover!) to Baie de Ouameo . This was a lovely quiet bay, white sand and sheltered from the prevailing SE trade winds, with a small resort on shore.
After a couple of days we decided to be brave and coral-hopped around to Kuto, the main tourist drag (more on that later). The charts and CMap weren't much help - they refused to admit the possibility of navigation in the reefs, "No Information Here", but we were armed with the local cruising guide which had such precise instructions as "Round the bottom of the bay, avoiding the attached reef, and steer 210' T toward the outside of Ile Moro and alter course to avoid coral patches." As you do. There were a few tense moments, especially when a cloud obscured the sun (need sunlight to spot reefs) during the most tricky part, but we got around OK. The bottom is white sand and quite shallow, so the reefs show up well, so wasn't as bad as trying to reef hop in Fiji. The only near casualty was a large turtle (about two feet across) who was sunning itself in our path, but we managed to avoid it with a fast swerve.
Kuto, ah, Kuto. And ah again. It may be the main tourist drag, but on Ile des
Pins, that isn't saying much. In fact the town consists of the police station
(hidden amongst the ruins of the old penal colony administration), a
boutique/souvenir shop (garage at back of someone's house), a hotel (the Kou-Bugny,
inconspicuously hidden from the beach, but they are building a beachfront
restaurant), the Air Caledonie office (shack under a coconut tree), a general
store and a bakery/takeaway bar. These are all spread out along about 3km of
road, with very few houses in between, so it is not spoiled at all. Oh yes, I
forgot the snack bar on the beach, which we didn't realise was a snack bar for a
week, as it has no advertising at all, not even a name. The anchorage is divine,
pure soft white sand and turquoise water so clear you can see the sand ripples
on the bottom in 7 meters of water. All around the boat we had perpetual schools
of small silver fish and we picked up about 5 remora (sucker fish) who attached
themselves to the hull and acted as viciously efficient effluent disposal units
- nothing got further than 2 meters from the boat. It added a whole new
dimension to the term "shitfight".
Daemon at anchor at Kuto ↑
The whole island seems to be much cleaner than the Loyalties - very little
litter and the verges and beach sides are kept shorn by council guys with
strimmers. The beach was very clean as well, and one of the few times I have
pestered Bruce into going into the beach to swim. I think this has a lot do do
with the fact the water is so clear you can see any bitey/munchie/stingy things
approaching from a long way off, which suits my paranoia down to the ground.
They also have great dogs, who come up to you, give you a sniff or lick, then
wander companionably along beside you or sit a couple of feet away from you on
the beach without being annoying. The bay was also full of turtles which made
Bruce a happy boy, as he kept missing them when we were in Fiji (unless curried
on a plate).
We went around to the island capital, Vao, (cue for more coral hopping) to go to
the Saturday morning market to stock up on fruit & veges, as the Kuto market was
only on Wed & Sat between 6am & 8am . However it was tiny, and we only managed
to get pawpaw, avocados, kumara, chokoes & limes, which made for an interesting
diet, although we did manage to score some escargot (snails) in Kuto, which are
an island specialty. They come pre-prepared, frozen in the shell with garlic
butter, and they are HUGE! Each shell is about as big as my hand, and you could
have cut the beasts into steaks! Delicious, but you wouldn't want those little
suckers in your lettuce patch.
Snail boy! →
← Shrine at Baie St Maurice
Vao was a lovely little town, almost invisible from the sea, and the dinghy landing was on a beach with a shrine to Jesus which consisted of a large (rather tacky) silver statue of the aforementioned chappie, surrounded by a palisade of carved wooden totem posts in the old Melanesian style. Very cool. Vao is near Baie des Pirogues where they still make and sail the old outrigger sailing canoes. We went for a dinghy ride up a huge enclosed bay cut off from the sea by reefs and saw heaps of them there, along with more turtles, manta rays and a tricot raye, which is the local sea snake, with (as the brochures tell you) a venom 10 times more deadly than that of a cobra! Gasp! What they don't tell you is that it has such a small mouth and is so non-aggressive, that about the only way to get bitten is to poke your finger down its throat. Well, that's my theory... and I won't be testing it.
We didn't make it around to Baie Oro where the flash hotel is as the wind was
wrong, so Mr Unpopular, the skipper, decided to take that chance to head back up
to the main island. (I loved my little piney island and didn't want to leave!)
It was a great sail back, even if there were tears to see my island disappear
below the horizon. We are now in Baie du Prony, a huge sheltered bay in the
south of the main island. It hasn't had any Kanak settlement as this was
where they fought their battles and was taboo, but when the French arrived they
used it as a penal colony, and stripped the hills of trees to build Noumea and
then strip mined it for nickel. There's progress for you! The hills are
regenerating and it is quite dramatic as the soil is bright Aussie red and
landslips leave scarlet gashes in the green bush. There is an island here with a
deserted resort which some cruisers told us about last year, raving about the
laden fruit trees where you could stock up. However it has since had a caretaker
installed, which put paid to that scheme of food replenishment. Word had
obviously got round about the fruit as there was a stream of boats coming (OK,
3), picking up moorings, going ashore and coming back 5 minutes later
empty-handed and muttering.
We tucked up in a hurricane hole at the top of the bay, where we went to visit
the local thermal pool on the side of the river feeding into the bay. I had read
about it last year and had wanted to visit but didn't get the chance. We kayaked
up at dusk, hoping for a hot soak and a wash, but were underwhelmed. The
facilities were great - a flash jetty & boardwalk, decking around the pool, not
bad for somewhere miles out the back of nowhere, but the water itself could best
be described charitably as "tepid". There was a washdown, a very quick soak and
then back to the boat.
After a few days there we managed to extract the anchor from the thick red mud which the bay is full of (and thus shoes, feet, anchor chains, dinghy bottoms etc - and it stains like a bastard, so has to be washed off instantly) and head back to Noumea, to the lure of fresh food.
Thermal-ish baths at Baie du Carrenage →