Noumea to Ile des Pins
Friday, September 28th – Our destination today is Ilôt Maître, about an hour away across the lagoon. With plans to leave in the late morning, The First Mate heads out early to the local produce and fish market. The Captain is dispatched in the opposite direction to buy 3 bags of ice and 6 crusty baguettes. For the next 3 weeks of cruising, there will be absolutely no markets to restock. From soup to nuts and everything in between, we must have all we need with us.
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1100 – We motor out of the harbor staying close to the boats moored on our left and away from the reef on our right. Centre Ville fades away in the distance behind us.
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Ilôt Maître’s nearness to the harbour of Nouméa makes it an ideal weekend location for the many local cruisers in the area. There is a resort on the island, and to our delight, we learn that they are friendly to cruisers. There are mooring balls, internet access and a large picnic/barbecue area. It looks quite interesting as we approach.
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A row of pitched-roof contemporary-styled Cases are strung out over the water in front of the mooring balls and anchorage area. The Captain decides not to grab a mooring ball. Avante is a big boat, and our policy is not to use a mooring ball unless we know for sure it can hold us. The information we have says that the balls are for boats up to 10 meters. Avante is 16 meters. Anchored in sand at a little over 20 feet, this is a secure anchorage. We don’t need a mooring ball.
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What happens to the bottom of a boat left unattended in the water for 3 months? Like a laboratory petri dish, it offers itself up as a fertile medium for marine growth. Our yacht agent had not recommended a bottom cleaning service while we were gone. He said that we would not need it. Boy, was he ever wrong! Motoring the short distance to Ilôt Maître, Avante was sluggishly unresponsive. The Captain, more attuned to these things than The First Mate, knew he had his work cut out if we intended to sail this boat anywhere. After lunch, he digs out bottom scraping equipment and snorkeling gear. Sitting down on the sugar scoop to put on his gear, he dips a testing foot into the water and climbs back aboard to find the wet suits. That water is cold!
The
weather here in New Caledonia has surprised us. Accustomed as we are to
the warmth of French Polynesia, Tonga and Fiji, we had ignored the fact
that New Caledonia is further from the equator than those other island
nations. Its weather is not as tropical. Generally, it’s cool at this
time of year. It is still spring here, and summer is at least another
month away. Days are warm, maybe in the 80’s. Nights are cool with a
sweater often needed. Out on the water, the coolness is felt even
more. In the water, it is downright cold!
We
have not used our wetsuits since the Galapagos Islands, 2 years ago.
Where have they gotten to? We find them. With assistance from The
First Mate, The Captain pulls and contorts himself into his. Soon he is
overboard scrapping away while The First Mate is left to work up her
nerve. In addition to the cold, The Captain had reported some really
big fish swimming around down there. Finally, unable to live with her
guilt, she dons her wetsuit. Sitting on the sugar scoop putting on her
fins, she sees a big, fat fish below. Does she really want to do this?
No, but she must. Maybe if she makes a big enough splash, it will go
away. She does, and it swims away.
The
bottom of the boat is a maze of white, hard, crusted squiggles with
scum, weeds and other unmentionables growing happily and rapidly. With
her plastic scrapper, she swims over to The Captain to work side by side
with him. Though we each have wetsuits, we only have one weighted belt
which The Captain is wearing. Without weights, The First Mate
discovers that she cannot stay underwater to scrape the bottom without a
fight. She’s a human cork. After about the 10th time of being
propelled to the surface by the buoyancy of the suit and being scraped
along the crusty side of the boat in the process, she decides to stick
to the surface. There’s plenty of work to do there anyway.
The Captain swims over to start working on the other side of the boat leaving The First Mate to struggle on by herself. That big fish returns. He’s at least 3 feet long, maybe 4 feet, and there’s another slim, pointy one deeper down. These are not man-eating sharks. “Ignore them,” she scolds herself and keeps on scraping. After 2 hours in the water with hands white with cold, The Captain calls it quits. Alone, now in the water, The First Mate returns to the relative safety of the ladder where she works a while longer on the rudder. She finds that she can beat the upward pull of her wetsuit by clinging and pulling herself down the rudder as she scrapes. Not a bad idea except that darn big fish is one curious fellow. He swims nearer, circling around to see what is going on in his underwater world. It is really kind of neat working away with this big guy nosing around, but finally her temerity gets the better of her. This is a 3-day job anyway. “Get thee back on land (the boat) where oxygen-breathing, non-finned mammals belong,” she tells herself.
Saturday, September 29th – A totally delightful, very relaxed day is spent at anchor here off Ilôt Maître, though, of course, the bottom of Avante still needs work. With the cold water, 2 hours is the max for The Captain. An hour is as much as The First Mate can stand. For her, not only is it cold, but the curious big fish shows up to follow her. Is it the same one? Who knows? They all look the same to her. She returns to working on the rudder. That’s the nearest point to the ladder and escape if necessary. This guy seems pretty benign, but one never knows, you know.
In the afternoon, we head ashore to look around the island and the resort. The resort is nice, quiet and a bit boring. We walk to the other side of the island and are rewarded with an expanse of isolated beach and a great view back to Nouméa with the mountains rising above the city.
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Returning to Avante, we enjoy sundowners while watching the sun set. On clear, cloudless nights, there is supposed to be a flash of green as the sun finally dips below the horizon. The First Mate has never seen it. On this cloudless night, we both follow the sun, eagerly looking for that flash of green. The Captain swears he saw a very small flash of green. His imagination? The First Mate saw nothing other than the sun setting as usual. Maybe next time….
For dinner, we have a new fish, “Saumon de Dieu”. God’s Salmon. How can one miss with a name like that? It was priced right up there with sushi-grade tuna so The First Mate figured that this had to be a good fish. It turns out to be a very bland fish. Okay, but not great — and certainly not worth the price. Mahi-mahi would have been a better choice. The First Mate is very grateful for two things, among many things, as she cruises the world with this Captain of hers. One is that we have the resources that allows her to hit the markets and experiment to her heart’s content. Many cruisers out here are on severely strict budgets which would not allow such free flights of fantasy. The other is that The Captain is tolerant and willing to go along with her creations — just stay away from peanut sauce and curry, and marital bliss will remain strong on their floating home.
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Sunday, September 30th – Iles des Pins is our next destination, but we cannot easily get there in one day. We will retrace our course from when we first sailed into Nouméa last June and spend the night in Baie du Prony. After we raise anchor, we sail along the southern coast of Grand Terre. In the distance, we can see paragliders taking off from a mountain on the mainland.
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We pass Ilôt Porc-Epic, the island that The Captain has christened “Bad Hair Day Island”. Those straight spikes are actually Column Pines, similar to Norfolk Pines except that their branches are much shorter thus creating that spindly-looking tree.
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We enter the Canal du Woodin. It would have been nice to sail down this strait, but with the wind now directly on our nose, we turn on the motor.
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This part of New Caledonia is infamous for its red soil. Like clay, it sticks to everything – shoes, anchors and anchor chain. Like indelible ink, it permanently stains everything – clothes, body and boat. Impressive from the distance, we are very glad our wash down pump is working. White decking stained red is not what we want.
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Entering Prony Bay, we pass by the first anchorage because there are already 2 boats at anchor. Motoring around the corner to the next bay, we find ourselves delightfully all alone. The vegetation is lush. The chirp, whistles and warbles of birds fill the air. They are in the trees somewhere, but we cannot see them.
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To The First Mate, this area looks and feels more like New Zealand than a South Pacific tropical island. It is cool like New Zealand can be giving us no thoughts of eating dinner on deck. When does it warm up around here? For dinner, The First Mate experiments with an island dish: Chicken and Pineapple cooked in coconut milk seasoned with cinnamon, tomato paste and lemon — an interesting combination that turns out to be very, very good!
Monday, October 1st – 0730 – We are underway for Ile des Pins, 35nm ahead of us. The morning is cloudy and cool, and the wind is coming directly from the direction that we want to go. There are a number of reefs in the Great Southern Lagoon, and we need to go around one and then between some others. So far, our sailing in New Caledonia has mostly been on the major channel going around the south end of the island. Today, we are headed across less traveled regions. We usually motor when we go through reefs where we have not been before, especially if the visibility is not good. So, the sail cover comes off but the sails stay furled, as we head off under power. Once again, we are impressed with how civilized the navigation is in New Caledonia. The charts are accurate, and the hazards are marked.
Because we are headed directly into the wind, we end up motoring the whole way to Ile des Pins. Baie de Kuto is the principal anchorage in Ile des Pins, and by 3:00 we are anchored along with 13 other cruisers and a big P & O Cruise ship. The cruise ship and all its passengers dampens our spirit of exploration. Already there is a long queue on the dock of people waiting to catch the launch back to the cruise ship. We assume that it will leave sometime later in the afternoon or early evening. We’ll explore tomorrow with the cruise ship gone. After 6 years of cruising, we have become real cruisers. Even The Captain! We can contentedly spend part of the afternoon sitting on deck watching the world go round with a little bit of reading or snoozing for diversion, and that is exactly what we do.
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We are in a very pretty bay rimmed with a white sand beach. Up from the beach, thick vegetation takes over with the unique column pine adding interest. There is a trail up to the top of the mountain which we intend to climb tomorrow. A small convenience store and a boulangerie are a short walk up the road she has been told.
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The First Mate is entranced by the sea turtles. She had been told that there were so many in the bay that one had to watch where one steered one’s boat. There are not that many. Still there are enough that every few minutes, she hears a puff of air like that of a snorkeler coming to surface. Looking in the direction of the sound, she spies a turtle, not a snorkeler. One little puff of air, no sound of an inhale, and down it goes again. These fellows have definitely evolved an efficient breathing system.
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The
day remains overcast, and by 6:00, it is getting dark. New Caledonia,
The First Mate thinks, is a little like the desert. It’s warm during
the day, but as soon as that sun goes down, everything cools down. She
would definitely need a sweater if she wanted to remain on deck. We
enjoy cocktails as we watch the P&O cruise ship motor off to the
west.
Tuesday, October 2nd – Waking up to an overcast, cool morning, The First Mate hears a cry of anguish from The Captain. He had just spotted another P & O Cruise ship heading into the bay to disgorge its passengers. Two days in a row. So much for our plans to explore this morning. Oh, well, we still have more bottom cleaning to complete. We later learn from another cruiser that our timing was unlucky. He had been there over a week before seeing yesterday’s cruise ship. By mid-morning the sun has burned through the cloud layer. If we can’t have dinner on deck with all the stars overhead, it is at least warm enough during the day to enjoy lunch out there under the sun.
With high winds and rain forecast for tomorrow, we head ashore in the afternoon to climb that mountain. The beach area is clean, and the sand is a delight to walk in as we follow the curve of the beach to the road that will lead us to the mountain trail head.
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Column Pines line the road, and it is pleasant walking along in the shade that they provide.
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The trek along the mountain trail is exposed, and the red dirt seems to throw back its heat at us. This dirt is like clay when wet, and with that rain coming in tomorrow, we are glad we are climbing this mountain today.
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This cross is not visible from below, but its rustic simplicity catches The First Mate’s camera lens. The very top of the mountain, up behind the cross, is tree and shrub covered offering no views, but from this spot, we have almost a 360° sweep of the island.
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The southern lagoon of Grand Terre, which we are planning to explore, is dotted with small islands rimmed with white sand and reefs. We can see some nearby. Oh, if the water was not so cold! Not even The Captain is interested in doing a little recreational swimming.
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Back down on the road, we loop around and back to the anchorage walking down a road that is overhung with tree branches. What a delightful walk – even with The Captain pointedly urging The First Mate to keep moving. “It would be nice to get back to Avante before dark!” he chides. We are. Showers and a dinner of Pasta e Fagioli await us. By 8:00, the rains have started. The winds will not be too far behind.
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Wednesday, October 3rd – Rain and heavy winds all morning. We had hoped to walk to the boulangerie for a crisp baguette. One needs to get there by 9:00, for they sell out in rapid time. No walk this morning. Who wants soggy bread? Instead, we both work on our tardy Fiji blog, the one The First Mate could not write last year when we were there, because her Apple (Bad Apple) computer would not charge.
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By mid-afternoon, the storm has passed leaving us with partial blue skies and a stiff breeze. We decide to head ashore to find the convenience store and the bakery. Maybe the boulangerie will not be sold out of baguettes, and another packet of butter might come in handy in a week. At the small store, we are able to buy butter. It is a very small store, and it is a good thing we do not need anything more.
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A
sign on the boulangerie says that it is closed until 4:00. We have
about half an hour to wait, but no worry, there is exploration for us to
do.
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Up a short stretch of dirt road is an abandoned water cistern. A sign on its facade says “1874 – 1975”. We marvel at the construction and design. “Only the French,” thinks The First Mate, “could turn something so utilitarian into a work of art!”
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The English were not the only ones to establish penal colonies on their new-found islands in the Pacific. Here on Ile des Pins, the remains of what looks to have been a very large prison complex are open for all to freely explore.
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We wander around pushing our way through the thick island vegetation seeking to reassert its claim on the land. Inside those thick walls, it is dark, cold and oppressive. We cannot help but wonder about the lives of those long-gone prisoners. What had they done to deserve such a punishing exile?
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Exiting the prison enclosure, there is a certain sense of relief to be outside its stone-cold interior.
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On our way home, we stop at the boulangerie. They have one baguette left, but from the way the shop owner pulled the bread up from behind the counter, The First Mate feels that it is being saved for her family’s dinner. A fresh, crusty baguette is a delight for us but not an intricate part of an evening meal as it may be for this family. She declines, and it looks like her suspicion is correct.
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Winds pick up into the evening. It is again over 20 knots out here. “What ever happened to calm anchorages and restful evenings?” The First Mate wonders.
Thursday, October 4th – Ile des Pins is as close to an island paradise as we have seen. Beautiful white beaches with sand that is talcum-powder soft. The only problem is that it is cool, even cold. The water is that vivid turquoise blue, but who wants to swim in it other than fish and turtles? It’s cold and made even cooler by what is beginning to feel to The First Mate like a constant 20-knot wind. Sitting on deck in the sun and the wind, she is even wearing a sweater. This she had not expected! It may be a beautiful blue-sky morning, but with the wind still howling down on us, it is anything but balmy. Our plans were to explore some isolated small islands nearby, but with these strong winds, anchoring would not be comfortable.
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What to do today? We decide to continue working on the Fiji blog and then hike around the peninsula at the end of the anchorage later in the afternoon. The hike is beautiful and a bit rugged, cutting as it does through jagged lava rocks. We have been told to watch out for really big spiders hanging down from tree limbs and snakes writhing along the ground. “Great!” thinks The First Mate. “I’ll let him lead.”
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The vegetation is thick, vibrantly green and varied. It looks like the perfect hiding place for spiders and snakes. We hike on with eyes scanning upwards for spiders and downwards for snakes. We encounter no spiders, but at one point, we find ourselves stepping over and around 5 snakes that are criss-crossing our path.
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The snakes on these islands are black-banded fellows about the size of a garden snake. They are poisonous, but their mouths are so small that they really have to be provoked to attack and bite. They are also supposed to be very timid creatures. Taking no chances, we quickly step around them and out of their way
Back
on the boat and cleaned up, we are ready for sundowners, our gin and
tonics. The First Mate is trying something special for dinner. A
fellow cruiser, leaving last June for Australia and realizing that he
had way too many items that were going to taken away by Australian
customs, gave us several cans of meat. One was a can of “confit du
canard”, duck confit. This is something she would never have thought to
buy. There are 4 leg sections in this can, or for us, 2 dinners. She
serves them with mashed potatoes and fresh haricots verts sautéed with
onions. What a deliciously decadent dinner!
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Friday, October 5th – We are up and on the road to the boulangerie at 0700! There we buy 3 crisp baguettes. Back on board Avante, a European-styled breakfast is served. Our freshly baked baguette is accompanied with a variety of cheeses, a paté and island-ripe pamplemouse. What a treat!
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We discuss our plans for the day over breakfast. We would like to visit one of those white sand-rimmed islands we had seen on our mountain hike, but the continued high wind is a factor. None of these islands offer any real wind protection. We ask ourselves what we are going to do once anchored off a small island. Swim? Not on your life! Too cold. Hike the island. Sure, but what do we do after that half hour excursion? These are very small islands.
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We decide to stay put for another day. The wind is supposed to lessen by tomorrow. Even with the winds whistling down on us, it is beautiful here in the bay. White sand, azure blue water — our floating home in the midst of all this beauty. Who’s to complain? Not us, for sure!