Month: September 2009

27 September

We are about to spend our third night anchored on the north side of Ile Puen.  Before talking about this place, let me get up to date with our other stops.

On Tuesday, September 22 we left Ilot Kouen for Ilot Tenia, about 25 miles further up the west coast of New Caledonia. Ilot Tenia differs from other small islands in the lagoon in that it is right up against the fringing reef that encircles New Caledonia. Like Ilot Kouen, it is uninhabited but busy on weekends when French-Calendonians take to their boats.

On arrival, there was only one other sailboat at anchor — “Robyn’s Nest” with our friends John and Chris plus Chris’ visiting friend Karen from Calgary. They had us over for drinks and chicken curry that evening and told us where to snorkel the next day. John likes Ilot Tenia because he can surf in the adjacent Passe de Saint Vincent in the morning, and kiteboard in the lee of Ilot Tenia in the afternoon when the wind rises.

On Wednesday, we headed out in our dinghy through a small gap in the reef to snorkel (in full wet suits) near where the ocean meets the fringing reef. It was quite spectacular, with many large fish including big groupers, a school of humpheads, a Spanish mackerel, and a black-tipped shark. We sat on the beach of the island for a few minutes to enjoy the sunset but were attached by a swarm of mosquitoes, the effects of which we still feel.

We planned on staying a few days at Tenia, but weird weather Thursday induced us to leave. Every day since we left Noumea, we have had nothing but blue skies, low humidity and sunshine, until Thursday morning. It was sunny and cool (68 degrees F) early in the morning, but there was a line of gray clouds, and what looked like fog or rain, in the distance. Within the hour, a cold front pushed through turning the boat around 180 degrees in a wind shift, a freshening breeze, choppy seas, but just a trace of rain. Ilot Tenia is a very unprotected anchorage, so after waiting a bit hoping that the dark clouds and “fog” would dissipate, we decided to head to Ile Puen, where there is a protected place to anchor. As we prepared the boat for the short sail to Ile Puen, we noticed that the decks were covered in red dirt. As it turns out, the “fog” was a huge dust storm that came off of the Australian outback, passed over Sydney (delaying flights), and made its way 1000 miles to New Caledonia. It was all over the news here and seems to be unprecedented.

Ile Puen is a privately owned island, and we needed to ask permission to come ashore. On landing the dinghy, we were greeted by a large extended family of French-Caledoniens (“Caldoche”) with a ramshackle weekend home. There were a dozen children, ranging in age from 1 to 18 years, running around a having a good time. We were also introduced to the “proprietor” of the island, Donnie, who lives a 100 meters away. They were all so friendly and excited to meet “les Americains.” The Caldoche, who settled in New Caledonia in the 1800’s, are quite fond of Americans. As we settled into tea and cake with them, they said how the Caldoche appreciate what the Americans did in saving them from Japanese occupation during the war, and also saving France from the Germans. Not something we expected to hear, even though we have seen the small park honoring the US just next to the Port Moselle marina in Noumea.

Donnie gave us a large rump of freshly shot deer and, after seeing the imperfect shells Laura was collecting on the beach, he have her a perfect nautilus shell — quite a rarity.

Yesterday and today we hiked around the island in brilliant sunshine. As we ate breakfast in the cockpit, dolphins frolicked nearby.

Tomorrow, we expect to sail back to Ilot Tenia and snorkel some more. Now that Robyn’s Nest has headed back to Noumea, Sabbatical III seems to be the only cruising boat around.

M.

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September 19, 2009

   We have not been keeping up with our blog as well as we hoped. So let me get things caught up briefly.

 We spend three pleasant nights in Baie Ire on Ile Ouen after our passage from Vanuatu. There was no sense in heading to Noumea quickly since it was the weekend and it seemed possible that we would be confined to the boat waiting for immigration, customs, and quarantine. Sometimes officials do not work on weekends.

 On Monday morning (14 Sep) we sailed the 25 miles to Noumea in great conditions and took the last slip available at the visitors dock at Port Moselle, the public marina of Noumea. Clearing in was quick and efficient (but all our pamplemousse and other fresh products were taken, except for ginger).

 Noumea is a modern, bustling French city of 100,000 with cars and buses whizzing along on wide boulevards, patisseries, chocolatiers, boulangeries, and branches of the largest French supermarkets. There is an amazing assortment of cheese, bread, and other treats which we sampled and added to the boat’s stores.

 We stayed at Port Moselle for four days, provisioning the boat and doing boat maintenance, plus reading internet email and catching up with academic work. We made use of the free Wifi at McDonald’s just two blocks from the marina.

 Friday morning (18 Sep) we sailed off to Ilot Kouen, about 13 miles up the west coast of Grande Terre. The “ilot” is only 100 meters long and 20 meters wide at high tide, perhaps twice that at low. The anchorage is well protected from waves by an extensive coral reef. Unfortunately, the wind has been very strong — 25 knots and more — between noon and midnight both days we have been here. We only got off the boat this morning for a swim. In the afternoons, we hide out from the wind in the cockpit and eat a leisurely lunch and read our books. It is Saturday, and six local (French-Caledonian)sailboats have anchored nearby to kite surf and spend the weekend. I imagine they will mostly be gone tomorrow — heading back to Noumea in a strong wind right on the nose.

 We intend to explore others small ilots along the west coast of Grande Terre over the next few weeks. The water is crystal clear and the coral is healthy and there are lots of fish, plus dolphins and turtles. We only hope that the wind calms a bit.

 M.

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September 12, 2009

 We arrived safely in New Caledonia yesterday, September 11th, after a 40 hour sail from Vanuatu. As with practically all of our long distance sailing, we paid careful attention to weather forecasts in advance, in order to have as easy a trip as possible… and as often occurs, the weather forecasts just were not right. It is very difficult to forecast weather around here , and all of the islands seem to have their own little weather systems that just can’t be predicted. Our sail from Vanuatu to New Caledonia was approximately 300 miles and pretty much in a direction due south. The weather forecast was for two full days of strong, but steady winds from the east and swells of 2 meters, diminishing as we went. A little swing of wind direction from the northeast was even predicted for the second day. This is about the best weather forecast you could ask for to sail south.

 We left Vanuatu at 4:00 p.m on Friday, heading out of Port Vila harbor with our friends Intiaq just behind us. It was absolutely gorgeous out and our first night was moon-lit with moderate seas and good winds from the east. By Saturday morning the skies had completely clouded up and the seas got rougher. By noon the winds started coming more out of the south than the east, which made our progress south more difficult. A large squall blew up and for a couple of hours we had torrential rain and rough seas and winds blowing at more than 30 knots. Not a pretty picture at all. Our friends on Intiaq were about 8 miles ahead of us by this time.

 The winds and swells continued to be much higher than predicted for the rest of the day. By about 9:00 p.m. we sailed past Lifou , one of the Loyalty Islands (part of New Caledonia). We would have liked to stop at Lifou, but since it was already dark, and all of the anchorages were on the opposite side of the island from where we were, we continued on through the 2nd night. Fortunately the seas calmed down a lot from then on, and it became more pleasant. The moon came out of the clouds and lit up the ocean like a spotlight. We had to motorsail most of the night in order to make headway, but it was not choppy or too difficult. By early morning the wind had come up from the north and we had an easy sail the rest of the way,

 By 9 am we were at Passe de Havannah, the channel that leads into the large lagoon of Grand Terre, the main island of New Caledonia. (The lagoon is enormous, with numerous large and small islands scattered throughout it. It is 350 miles at its longest and 35 miles across!) At Passe de Havannah you can have current,wind and waves going against you if you time it wrong- and it can be almost unpassable, with a huge steep chop. We had worked hard, however, to keep up our speed on the passage in order to time our arrival so that we would have the current flowing with us – and with the wind now at our back, our pass through the canal could not have been smoother. We arrived at the same time as Intiaq, who with their 47 foot catamaran, sail faster than us, but who had slowed down to time their arrival for maximum ease of entry. Together we headed to Baie du Prony to drop anchor and rest up for a few days before proceeding to Noumea to check in.

 There are several different spots in Baie du Prony where you can anchor, and it turns out that none of them were suitable for us. The first one we stopped at had good protection from the wind, but the bottom was so full of broken coral that you could not dig your anchor in. When we first tried anchoring there we found that we were not holding well – the anchor just slipping along the bottom of the bay rather than digging in firmly. When we pulled up the anchor we found a HUGE piece of coral just stuck into the anchor and we could not get it off. It had gotten impaled by the anchor. Our friends helped us by hopping into their dinghy and then coming over to us with a rope and some strong hands to help pry the thing off. We retried anchoring twice more – but it was futile. We attempted another anchorage spot in the bay and found that it had good holding (sand, not coral), but it put us too close to shore to be safe.

 We all decided to move a few miles away to another anchorage where there was supposed to be lots of space, no coral, and nice, thick, clay-like bottom to dig your anchor into. Thank goodness we moved, for the anchorage we are currently in is very good. We are at Baie Ire, on the northwest corner of Ile Ouen, just off of Canal (channel) Wooden. The wind picked up and switched around to the south-southwest, and it is blowing like the dickens out there. If we had stayed in the other anchorages, with poor holding, we would most likely have dragged to shore during the night.

 We went to bed very early last night and woke up with the wind howling and the boat bouncing around a lot. One more anchorage change to the other side of the bay at 6:30 a.m., and we are finally feeling comfortable. It is nice to be here – the wind is blowing hard, but the sun is shining, and we are looking forward to eating lunch onboard Intiaq in a few hours. Phew!

 L.

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We have delayed our departure for New Caledonia by one day. We will depart this afternoon at about 4pm local time (9 Sep). The winds and seas were a bit too big yesterday. They should be calming a somewhat today and moving a bit north of due east. The Swiss/French catamaran Intiaq will be sailing with us on this passage.

 M.

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