New Caledonia
Maybe October 2006?
Yup, I’m pretty sure it is October, getting the hang of the cruising lifestyle now!
Well, at long last, a good trip! It was still a bit windy for the first day (it took us just under 2 days) with the wind being 20-25 most of the time, but it didn't get above 30 knots, and the swell was reasonable and even, not like the random multiple swells the other trips have dealt us. The last night & morning were great - 15 knots, moderate even swell, fine weather, self-steering working, aaahhh, this is more like the brochure! After the last 2 passages we were both gun-shy about going out and having the snot kicked out of us yet again. The days before the passage consisted of cruisers huddling together and trying to get their courage up to go back out to sea, and on the night before we left, Bruce was going "Nooooo, I don't want to go and get kicked around again!". I was quite serene, which was the perfect illustration of the benefits of administering 5mg of Valium in a marine environment. So at least we now know it is possible to passage-make without pain. Even our food proceeded in an orderly downward manner through our digestive systems, a pleasant relief! And the self-steering worked brilliantly, so hopefully the modifications Bruce made to it in Vila have done the trick.
We cleared in at We, the main centre of Lifou in the Loyalty Islands, just north of the main island of New Caledonia. The usual procedure is to clear in with Customs there and then you get 7 days to get to Noumea to check in with Immigration, but we were fortunate enough to arrive with a bunch of other boats so we clubbed together to have the Immigration Officer flown out from Noumea, so we got all our clearance done in We, which means there is no rush to get to Noumea.
← Bruce & Richard & Jen from Mystic Rhythms on the beach at Luengoni, Lifou, Loyalty Islands
We got together with some friends on Mystic Rhythms (or Plastic Ribbons, as a French Canadian boat called them on the radio) and hired a car to drive around the island the other day, which was great except for one interlude, which while annoying, was educational. Bruce now knows that 'J'ai enferme mes cles dans la voiture' is French for "I have locked my keys in the car." Eventually the rental company arrived with a spare set, extracted a stupidity tax from us and we were back on the road. It was quite an interesting trip - the island is still very traditional, with only one "top-class" resort (more like an average motel) with the rest of the tourist accommodation being "Would you like a grass hut that sleeps four or eight?". As those of you familiar with my dislikes know, I hate beaches, small towns & children. While I have been known to make exceptions for the latter two, I have never found a beach I liked. The main reason for this is sand. I hate it, it is gritty, gets everywhere, feels horrible and you sink up to your ankles in it when you try and walk on it which is also horrible. Well, that has changed, Luengoni Beach has got my seal of approval. The sand was amazing, pure white and like talcum, very soft and so compact you didn't sink into it. It was also unspeakably scenic, so has my best beach of all time award. This was followed by Drueulu Bay which was more scenic (Loyalties have just knocked Samoa off my most beautiful place top spot) but had coarser sand. You have seen all the photos of unspoilt white beaches with turquoise water and no-one around, well they do exist and they are here. See it before it gets spoilt.
We also did a good score on nautilus shells. We had passed a couple of roadside stalls selling them on the honesty box system, and noticed some posts were decorated with them before the penny dropped and we headed to the beach and picked up about half a dozen of our own.
The bay we are anchored in at present, Jokin Bay on the north of Lifou, is large & steep-sided with the most amazing caverns in the cliffs. The whole island raised coral and the limestone nature of it means the caverns are full of stalagmites /ctites all visible from anchor - absolutely spectacular.
Jokin caves →
Went mad at the local market yesterday - the food is so fresh the taste is amazing! Got the best carrots I've ever tasted, an amazingly fragrant melon, little potatoes, avocadoes and a bunch of fern fronds that I have been dying to try since Fiji. They sort of taste like, um, fern fronds. Will try them cooked in coconut milk tonight. They might be better.
Well better go as it is lunchtime. The french bread & pastries here are even BETTER than in Vila, but the crusty crumbs are playing hell with my vacuuming schedule!17 October 2006
Well, we are in Noumea now, getting ready for the trip back to NZ. I got all excited coming into the harbour yesterday to see a large building marked "Cin City" and had planned a trip to explore that until I discovered that it was really Cine City, the local movie multiplex. Damn!
Ouvea was stunningly beautiful - 25 km of uninterrupted white sand beaches, and 25 miles of turquoise blue lagoon. The beaches were pristine but the island doesn't seem to have a rubbish collection, so the roadsides have piles of cans & bottles and other junk that has had attempts to burn it. It also had the best bakery to date (new rules for navigating in French colonies: 1) locate the bakery 2) anchor off it) and we spent a few days there waiting for some howling winds to die down, the theme of our cruising this year. I have definitely got gun-shy with the weather - the day we were going to leave Ouvea to do an overnight trip to the mainland it was still blowing quite hard and I was howling "I don't want to go out there, it will be horrible, we'll get snotted again!" and Bruce attempted to calm me by saying that it was OK, if it made me happier we could go the next day when the swell had died down a bit. "Nooooo! I don't want to go, I want to live in Ouvea for the rest of my life and wear silly palm frond hats and take the piss out of the gendarmes like a local and never have to be thrown around in a boat with waves coming over the side again!" We went out and once we got a few miles out the swell died down to a couple of metres & it wasn't too bad, so that made me happier.
The Loyalty Islands were amazing - I'm really glad we got a chance to go there. Cruising with Richard & Jennifer on Mystic Rhythms was fun, Jen is a pastry chef and makes a damn fine cheesecake & Richard can put together a great margarita. They are both divers, which can be a worry: you happily snorkel your little bit of reef by the shore looking at the pretty little fish while they head over to a deeper one a few hundred yards away and come back with stories of the sharks they saw ("Big grey ones, really fat with huge teeth & they looked hungry!" - Jen also has my overactive imagination when it comes to things of horror): there are some things I'd rather not know about.
← Church, Fayaoue, Ouvea, Loyalty Islands
Loyalty highlights: 1)the ATM machine that was beyond French: it came up with the option of proceeding in French or English, but when you pressed the "English" button it went ahead in French anyway - you could almost see it giving that Gallic shoulder-shrug 2) traditional grass huts with satellite dishes 3)realising we had become real cruisers when we could drink margaritas on Mystic Rhythms all night and not be hung-over (I'm sure tequila-tolerance is developed from the same brain area as overcoming seasickness) (and all that lime juice has got to be good for you...) 4) sunsets - just amazing.
Speaking of phenomena of the sun, when the days get longer here, it only seems to happen at one end - the beginning. Consequently dawn starts around 4.30am and dusk still stays at 6.00pm. This means I can be found sitting in the cockpit at some ungodly hour (Sparrowfart? Not even! The sparrow hasn't even had a chance to yawn & scratch its nuts!) drinking coffee & watching the sunrise. The corollary is that about 7.30pm you start looking longingly at the bunk.
Dawn, Baie Kaouakoue →
After we left Ouvea we headed over to the East Coast of the main island (Grande Terre) and spent the night in a glorious deserted bay, Baie Kaouakoue, all big bush covered hills and clear deep water, then at 5-something am the next morning we motored about 40 miles down the coast to Havannah Passage through the reef at the south end of Grande Terre. We timed it perfectly and went though just before high tide with a smooth but fast ride - if you go through on an outgoing tide it can get viciously rough. We spent that night anchored in a little bay in an arm of the Baie du Prony (very lovely & not a damn coconut palm in sight!) and then had a great sail up to Noumea where we arrived to the usual dock party of friends yesterday. A long day but we still managed a Cointreau session with Wendy & John on Beyond. Such stamina! I also went to the supermarket where I cried with joy at the things available. Why oh why didn't NZ get colonised by the French??? I even got fresh asparagus, something I have been craving for the last month.
Apart from the stinking water in the marina, being in here does have its charms, mainly the hot showers! Unlike Vunda & Vila the hot showers here are properly hot water, not solar heated. Solar heating means to get a warm shower you have to a) wait for a sunny day & b) time it right - too early & the water hasn't heated up, too late in the afternoon & everyone else has used it up. Just as well really, because the LAQ here is much lower than Fiji or Vanuatu. (LAQ = Local Aroma Quotient, which means the higher the LAQ (smellier) of a region, the less you feel obliged to shower. As long as you are at the mid point of the bell curve, you are doing fine).
← Daemon first off the mark at the jetty to the bar, Port
Moselle Marina, Noumea
Another formula appropriate to marinas is that mooring cockups are directly proportional to the number of people watching. Dock perfectly and there will be no-one watching. Cock it up hideously as a big Swiss catamaran did the other day, taking out 3 boats and bouncing all along the piers (the idiot tried to sail on to a berth in a strong crosswind in a very tight marina, then got his motors going & went full ahead instead of reverse) and you just know there'll be a crowd at the bar watching. They were also a great attraction at the dock as everyone tried to count the different colours of paint smeared across the bows from his close encounters.
We are very close to the local markets here, so can pop out and get pastries and
fruit for breakfast - very handy. The main downside is the ukulele players who
greet the charter boats when they dock. I have developed a major allergy to
ukuleles during this season in the Pacific and have been considering starting a
charity to rehabilitate ukulele players and teach them useful skills. The
markets have all sorts of great produce, but it can be exhausting & stressful
trying to do your shopping in a foreign language. I can deal with the names for
French foods, and even small numbers, but when it gets to deciphering large
numbers of francs as stated rapidly by the stall holders my brain goes into
spasm. How does one deal with a language which goes from 60 to 60+10 (70), 4x20
(80), 4x20+10 (90)? I ask you! However, there are little treats, such as when
you leave the markets with your brain spinning to walk out into the square to
find a Tahitian dance group performing. Those Tahitian guys, whoar!
We have been amusing ourselves by the usual social visiting and seeing the
sights. Yesterday we went to the local museum, which had some great Pacific
exhibits. We also went halves with Beyond in hiring a car and went to see some
of the island. It wasn't particularly scenic, but it was a great day out. One of
the highlights was stopping at a small village trying to get a coffee and
meeting a young Wanganui woman who lived there with her boyfriend, a local
French guy. She had come over as a jockey on a contract, met him & stayed, and
they run a small butchery in the town. Their meat was excellent, and she was so
happy to have someone to speak kiwi to she gave us bacon, venison chops & salami
that they made, and we bought steak & sausages. Mmmmmn! Meat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Notre Dame de Lourdes, Easo, Lifou, Loyalty Islands →
There is some excitement here at the moment, with the development of Cyclone Xavier so early in the season. The marina has been put on pre-alert which means we are supposed to hire divers to tie our boat to chains on the marina floor. Being a bunch of tight cruisers, we didn't want to spent our money on unnecessary fees if the cyclone didn't arrive, so we reached a compromise: a bunch of us got a diver down to have a look, and we all stood on the jetty, conferred and looked concerned. This seemed enough to satisfy bureaucratic honour, and the diver promised to return if needed so everyone was happy. It was a bit scary, but quite amusing - at any one time a group of a dozen weather "experts" would be gathered on the dock, winding each other up.
6 November 2006
Well, we are home! The trip back was pretty good, the wind never got up over 30 knot gusts, and the seas were pretty reasonable, and apart from a small wobbly in the early hours of the morning when I had to go out and sit for 3 hours on watch in the rain (after 3 days of a cloudy showery front that was stalking us) we had a pretty good trip.
The prevailing SW winds we expected we noticeably absent, which was annoying after we had gone west of Norfolk Island, passing it as the sun rose, and had to crash our way east against E & SE winds. When we got to North Cape we ran out of wind and had to motor down to Opua from there.
← Passing Norfolk Island at dawn
Our "welcome back" was amazing. Within an hour of making landfall at the Three Kings Islands we were surrounded by whales, dolphins & albatross. Just magic.
Bruce's birthday fell on our last night out, so we dropped the sails and turned the motor off, and had dinner & wine to celebrate, while watching the sun set off the Cavalli Islands. We tootled slowly down the coast and sat out in the main part of the Bay of Islands and came in to Opua at dawn and tied up at the Customs dock. Customs & MAF arrived around 9.00am and after a very painless check in, we were home & legal.
So, our first season was done, and despite the crap weather and the reefs, I can't wait to head back again.
Look, it's November and I always wear shorts in November!" →