We left New Caledonia on 12 Nov 2015. We sailed off of our mooring at Ilot Maitre with our friends aboard SV Dream Time sailing behind us to send us off in style. They broke off to head to another year of lovely gunkholing around Noumea, and we continued sailing out Dumbea Pass pointing at Sydney.

We knew we would hit a front around 28S and after that the weather was unpredictable but with nothing too scary in the forecast and the MJO was behaving itself. We hoped to sail to Sydney but we knew we wouldn’t know if that was possible until we started pulling weather forecasts after the front.

We started out in 10-15 knot winds, had a bit of light air sailing which over the course of a few days clocked around to the NW. Instead of a few hours of fickle wind while the front passed (as has been our experience in the past) the wind simply flipped 180 degrees to the SSE in the 20-25 knot range. We reefed down and pointed East until the winds slowly backed around to the ESE and we could continue sailing toward Sydney. After a day or so of this, the forecasts were showing the possibility of an East Coast Low forming over Sydney and so we turned for Coffs Harbour.

At this point we had a 24 hours spinnaker run with an eddy in the Australian current pushing us toward Coffs. Light wind, flat water, sunshine and a favorable current – a Pretorien owners dream! Note: This site gives an excellent visual of the current state of the current.

The clearance was easy peasy. They took our produce, eggs, cheese and milk and canned meat (poor pate gone) – all as we had anticipated. They examined our shells, took a few pictures, charged the stupidly expensive fee of $380AUD and were on their way. Nice guys.

Coffs Harbour was a surprising treat. It is a dirty, dusty, slightly run down port filled with a interesting, diverse, salty crowd of honest to goodness sailors. The staff were super friendly. The town was cute and we were picked up when hitch hiking immediately and even given a ride when we were just asking someone about the bus. The showers were hot, high pressure, and with shower heads taller than I am. As an aside, for whatever reason, even though I am only 5’8” most S Pacific shower heads are positioned at my neck requiring (on the few times we’ve been in ports or haul outs) me to crouch down to shampoo. If Coffs were closer to Sydney we would have stayed there for a while but the lure of Christmas and NYE in Sydney proved too difficult to resist.

We made it!

As cruisers we tend to spend a lot of time searching out tiny islands surrounded by clear water and fantasyland (fantasysea?) colors. The downside of such tendencies is that we spend a fair amount of our time in lumpy anchorages. Every once in a while the bump gets to us, particularly in a long stretch of windy conditions, and we find ourselves retreating to bays (when available).

New Caledonia has a huge main island, riddled with bays with reasonable anchoring depths and great holding. We’ve spent most of our time here exploring the islets in New Caledonia’s lagoon and have visited only a few spots on the main island besides the capital city of Noumea. Two of those main island anchorages were recent stops in Maa and Uere. Both are wrap around anchorages, protected from most conditions and very well protected from trade wind conditions even allowing for the wind to slop about a bit in angle. They also are another visual and textural side of New Caledonia – big land mass, sometimes desert looking. It’s been lovely, tranquil and we are starting to regain our drive to explore lumpy anchorages again.

Since we arrived in Tonga/Fiji/New Caledonia it has been a balance for us between time in exposed fabulous anchorages and flat less gorgeous (to us) areas. In the flat we catch up on chores, cleaning, boat work, writing, long walks, etc.

I think this is why we love atolls so much. Even though they are exposed from many angles, you can have very strong trade winds and still be in flat, flat water. On the contrary, small islets get wrap around waves and the wind doesn’t have to change angle much for them to become more exposed.

Sometimes of course we get flat windless conditions in the more exposed anchorages. Those times are marked in my memories as some of the best cruising we have had. That windless day in Mopelia. Our recent time in Mato. Tauna in the Gambiers…

Sometimes it is fun to be in a crowd, at a park, particularly on a holiday weekend. We had a great time at Ilot Nge on Halloween weekend. The anchorage and mooring field were packed on the weekend as boats full of working stiffs escaped the capital city of Noumea for a weekend of playing at this marine park. Even with this rush, there were only a hand full of kiters here and we had the water relatively to ourselves (and our friends).  Launch spot: S22°19'35.70" E166°19'13.88"

The North side of the island was good kiting at all tides. The South side got a little “crunchy” with coral at all but high tide. You could work your way upwind to the waves or to this gorgeous area of flat water over sand where the only obstacle was some spikes coming out of the water from an old shipwreck.

Some of the moorings are in water too shallow for us but there were plenty to choose from and you could anchor outside the mooring field in slightly lumpier water if you chose. We had three excellent days of kiting there and a fun Halloween party on the beach with the crews of Dream Time and Andromeda.

With the exception of passages to weather, we’ve never really had to wait for weather windows. For as long as we’ve been cruising, when we say “we’ll start looking for a weather window on X date” we have nearly always had an immediate, too close in time window that requires us to scramble to prep or to check out of the country. Instead of fighting boredom and working on our patience, we have historically had to make certain we aren’t rushing and leaving so quickly that we (and the boat) are underprepared.

And so it is with some amusement that I note that we are getting shut down on our upcoming passage to Australia.

I have been watching the weather in between New Caledonia and Australia on and off for months, and I have not seen such disturbed weather, for such a long period of time, between the two, until now. There was a decent, albeit strong wind window before we were ready to start looking and since then the weather windows have either involved long sections of motoring or big fronts (and associated strong wind and seas) anticipated at arrival.  We are listening to the relevant SSB nets to monitor boats on passage, checking the windows we didn’t take and so far, we correctly predicted that they weren’t the right windows for us.

The nice thing about Australia is that although we have preferences on where we make landfall we have nearly 700 miles of coastline, interspersed with legal arrival ports, as a target. This is wildly different from most of the passage making we have done in which we have to arrive at a very specific point in the sea, where there is a pass into an atoll or a safe arrival path into a single clearance port. On the other hand, this is a longer passage, which makes it more difficult to time generally, to a country which is fussy about after hours and weekend clearances, which makes the timing important.

And so we wait and watch. We have another two weeks or so before our visas expire. Depending on who you listen to the S Pacific hurricane season has either already begun or begins at the end of the month. Little pressures that we snuff out before they grow in our minds.

Waiting and watching means keeping the boat in a constant state of near readiness. We have done all of our pre-passage chores. The boat is tidy. We have bought what groceries we could buy in advance for the passage, then eaten them, and now are readying to buy them again. We are still kiting, swimming, and playing, but every move has to be planned with the passage in mind. We can bring out gear if we have time to let it dry and pack it away before leaving…

At the same time that we become antsy, we also don’t want to leave. The tropics at this latitude are starting to truly feel like summer. The weather is glorious, the already excellent kiting conditions now include warmer water and constant sunshine. There is a reason that cyclone season is considered by some to be the best time to cruise. We are very, very jealous of our friends with EU passports who get more than 3 months in French territories.

It has been quite a while since we posted a critter report and we’ve seen a lot of fun ones in New Caledonia.

The most novel of which are sea snakes. We first starting seeing these in Niue, but New Caledonia is crawling with (and swimming with) them. Carol has had several close encounters with the buggers, crawling across his feet, giving him a little snuggle on the leg while he was wading out to get the dinghy at night.

They are gorgeous and we see them and their skin all over the place.

We saw a dugong from far away but didn’t get a picture.

We’ve seen heaps of turtles. HEAPS!

So many turtles that when we had friends visiting we decided to have a turtle selfie competition at Phare Amedee which Carol won hands down (see left).

We have had regular visits from dolphins and one set of mother-baby humpbacks in which the mom was breaching and the calf was making hilarious attempts at mimicking.

The underwater scene has been varied but we’ve had some spots with lovely coral and loads of fish. That’s it for now.

Another dream.

Another memory of being snuggled up between reefs, in mind blowing blues and greens, in unbelievably clear water.

It’s another one of those many, many cruising experiences I can’t convey in words and can only capture a sideways glimpse of with photos.

I sit down to blog about it and I think how overused the words that I want to select are, even though I *swear* that this time the colors really were blowing my mind and the clarity of the water was actually difficult to believe.

When I give up trying to explain and say “you have to have been there”, I say it because I wish that for other people. I wish that they could see something this intense, float in it, and let it sink in slowly over hours, over days, over different angles of light and different levels of view. I was so glad to be able to take our friends from “back home” to Ilot Mato to share it with them.

Places like this are why I am out here.

Longtime readers might remember our Mexican beer tasting in 2011 with SV Bella Star. We haven’t sailed to any countries that make enough different types of beer to make a tasting worthwhile since. New Caledonia is the first place since Mexico that we’ve sailed to where I saw more than 2 or 3 types of beer on the shelves that were made in the country.

I bought 8 beers and invited the crews of Dream Time and Bella Vita over for a beer tasting. The first beer tasting was interrupted by a squall which sent everyone scurrying for their vessels to make sure ports were shut and anchors well set. Safety first! The second part of the beer tasting happened a little over a week later.

Based purely on labels I arranged the beers from light/fruity, through light, to dark…or at least as dark as the beers. I (Livia) poured the beers and so was the only once influenced by the label or logo.

With 5 tasters on board, and our pirate themed tasting sheets in hand, for you dear reader, we diligently made our way through this most difficult task ;)

There was a fair bit of consensus and in the end the rank ordering was:

1) Number 1 Extra Malt

2) Manta Intense

Tied for 3) Hinano/Manta Gold

4) Havannah

5) Number 1 Zest

6) Number 1

7) Manta Citron (last by a good margin)

We were all fairly shocked that a beer with the words “extra malt” could be our favorite. You might notice that Hinano, a French Polynesian beer, is in the mix. That is because it is also brewed and bottled for local consumption in New Caledonia under the supervision of Brasserie de Tahiti. You’ll also notice that three of the beers are made by Manta and three are made by Number 1. Not as much diversity as 8 beers might sound like at first glance.

A very, very big thank you to Charity and to Jamie & Rose, whose liquid motivation made this possible!

Powdery white sand, the kind that is difficult to brush off your skin. The signature pine trees of Ile des Pins. Glowing blue lagoon waters. And, the usual crowd of sea snakes!

Only boaters visit uninhabited Ilot Brosse – boaters and tourists brought in small groups by small tourist boats. We had the island to ourselves each night we were there with only our buddies aboard Dream Time sharing the anchorage.

It was a nice place to for beach walks, beach fires, an amazing view from the cockpit and generally relaxing. The underwater scene wasn’t that exciting. We definitely could have spent longer here but, as we only have 3 months, and guests coming (yay!) we limited ourselves to only three nights.

We’ve always enjoyed spending a night or two anchored off resorts, particularly the ones with bungalows. It reminds us that our everyday anchorage view is something people spend a lot of money per night to experience briefly.

Ilot Maître is actually mostly a park, and only partially a hotel. The park portion has zones for swimming only, wind sports only, and then a section you can come into with your motor (dinghy in our case, but skiffs and small power boats also) to reach the beach. It also has moorings for overnight which we used.

The big highlight of the place for us, is that they have tables, wood BBQs, with nice grills, with prestacked piles of wood to use – for free.

We organized a beach day with two other boats – Nomad and Dream Time, good friends from French Polynesia early days – and lazed about while BBQing, eating and digesting a big lunch and some wine.

The kiting was fun and there were loads of kiters who had taken the ferry over. Too shallow for safety at low tide but great at high tide and surprisingly flat water for the wind strength. I’m sure we’ll be back!

We love small uninhabited islands with reef systems we can wiggle into. It’s part of the dream for us.

Ilot Goeland is a little bit of sand and scrub breaking the surface of a large shallow sand bank, a short beam reach from Noumea. It is slightly farther than Ilot Maitre, another kite spot, which has moorings and a ferry service. This means that for the most part, the only kiters or windsurfers at Ilot Goeland are those with their own boats. The exceptions are the occasional hard core windsurfers who brave a few miles of open water to cross between Ilots Maitre and Goeland on their boards. Tough Frenchies! The anchorage at Goeland is also less crowded with local boats than Maitre and we had it to ourselves or with just our friends a few nights.

The anchorage is great holding, sand, with a few isolated bits of coral and grass easily avoided. It gets slightly lumpy at certain tides (ebb against trade winds) but was still comfortable. The kite spot is useable at all tides but certain areas get sketchy (coral) at the lowest tides so you have to change your line when the tide is too low.

If you don’t kite or windsurf you might get bored quickly but the colors of the lagoon in the sun are worth a short visit even for non wind sport people.

This was our first kite spot in New Caledonia and already it was better than anywhere we kited in Fiji…

Arriving in New Caledonia was like coming home. Not because it is French (although, man, the French know how to pick them), but because it has everything we love about the South Pacific: insanely clear water, jaw dropping lagoon colors, shallow sandy anchorages floating in those colors, uninhabited islands, and great sailing conditions inside a lagoon with easily predictable wind and land effects. 

In addition, because it is French there is a large community of water sports participants which include a strong contingent of women, people sailing their boats in every wind direction, very little restrictions on what you can do as a boater, and not a lot of fuss over what bits of your body are covered. Try telling a French woman (or man) that women have to cover up to be respectful of the locals and you will quickly learn why French colonies don’t play that way. We are not Francophiles by any means and we have been surrounded by French boaters for long enough to know the downsides to these upsides, but still, we love these upsides.

Too bad they only give us North Americans three months… Still, we are going to enjoy the crap out of what time we have here.