We found the descriptions of the anchoring at Coffs a little confusing and didn’t have a guidebook yet. The inner anchorage, more protected in general from the swell wrapping in is between the old pier and the marina. The outer anchorage is anywhere outside of the old pier including snugged up against the breakwater to the SE (out of view in the picture). While we were there the boats in the outer anchorage were always rolling more than those in the inner anchorage. We anchored for an hour in the inner anchorage awaiting room inside the marina for us to come in and clear customs.

Coffs Harbour was an extremely walkable/bus-able place for boaters needing to get to various supplies. There are also tons of small restaurants in the marina area itself and a 5 minute walk outside of the marina. If you want quick groceries, there is a small IGA close by and the enormous Cole’s further away towards town is enough to boggle the mind of someone who has been in the islands for a few years.

As we’ve already mentioned in our passage notes, we found Coff’s welcoming, cozy and in general to suit our tastes. There are gorgeous beaches on either side of the marina with loads of happy dogs, families, surfers and wind sports folks. The small hill overlooking the marina is a great walk with a nice view of the ocean for fun, for exercise and if you want to get a sense of what the swell is doing before you leave.

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…

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.

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…

What an odd time we had at this place.

Ono is inside Astrolabe Reef – a big dive area. We anchored in Naqara Bay to present our kava root so we could snorkel at the nearby manta spot and perhaps do some diving. When we sailed into Ono, after having left Savusavu hoping to make it Fulaga, we saw a handful of lovely little islands, the kind that spark our imagination as cruisers and we foresaw ourselves staying for a while. It turns out we only stayed a handful of days, and didn’t do the diving we wanted because we saw what we thought (for the third time) was a good weather window to head to Fulaga.

This was our first experience giving the village kava in what is called a sevusevu ceremony. Historical information from cruisers waxes on about how to appropriately dress and behave in a sevusevu, and how to clap, and how to drink the kava.

Our sevusevu experience is very, very limited but even in moderately remote places like Ono and Fulaga the ceremony we experienced was low key, no one was uptight about how we dressed or whether we knew when to clap, and in neither ceremony did they prepare and drink the kava with us.

What made the experience odd in Naqara was not the sevusevu experience, but it was the very first time we had multiple villagers coming to us, ashore and on the boat, asking for things from our stores. Not asking to trade, just asking to have. This is something we had expected to happen before we sailed to the South Pacific, that really hasn’t happened until now. A difference from the Eastern and Western Pacific perhaps? Who knows- we don’t.

We were asked for snorkel masks, floating rope, super glue (twice, this is a hot item apparently), gasoline (they offered to pay for the gas but we couldn’t spare any because we were heading to an even more remote location), fishing hooks and whether we would trade our personal snorkel fins with a local (his were child’s fins).

The snorkel and mask was asked for by the village elder to support their pearl farming project and we had an old snorkel aboard that we happily donated. The rest we politely said no to except the fishing hooks which we had aboard as a good giveaway item because helping people feed themselves is always a warm fuzzy feeling. We also had planned to give away some old charts to the school (which we did) and some frisbees we’ve carried across the South Pacific without using.

TIP: We didn’t have much time to explore the area before we headed to Fulaga but we did swim with mantas again (approx S18°51'53.70" E178°30'50.19"). This is always amazing to me and even though we have swam with mantas a dozen or so times, every time is otherworldly.  We showed up during a sun break in the middle of an otherwise cloudy day and immediately saw mantas including one huge, all black (even on the belly) giant. Then, we went for a surprisingly amazing snorkel (approx S18°51'53.99" E178°30'49.84") through scattered coral heads some not so great, but many loaded with soft and hard corals and swarming with fish. We were very surprised at the liveliness and even more bummed that we didn’t dive outside the lagoon. All thwarted by our desire to make it to Fulaga.

We anchored in the far eastern corner of Viani Bay, carefully dropping in sand and buoying the chain over the coral heads. The winds were blowing like stink and the fetch travels right into Viani Bay in southerly wind. We escaped the fetch in the Eastern corner and watched the rest of the fleet bobbing restlessly.

As the wind switched farther east, the island of Taveuni mostly blocked the wind from entering Viani Bay and things flattened out considerably.

We arrived at midday and the next day were visited by Jack who apologized for not coming earlier to greet us. We apologized for not having come to him because we were too lazy to reflate our dinghy post-passage. For years Jack has offered a service to visiting yachts where he will go out on one yacht, direct the yacht to a safe anchorage or mooring and guide snorkeling or diving trips off the famous Rainbow Reef in Somosomo Strait. He charges only $10FJD pp for this service and that is an absolute steal for his years of experience with this particular reef. We did 5 dives – more on that in a separate post.

Jack also will organize a long boat to Taveuni and then a taxi into Somosomo for provisioning trips. Reportedly, you can anchor off the town as well in your own boat but many people (including us) take him up on this offer. We schlepped over a jerry can and came back with cash from the ATM, groceries, produce and gasoline.

The produce market is small and the MH grocery less stocked than some of its other Fijian counterparts but after so much time in places like the Tuamotus and Tonga, it was still big enough for us.

Viani Bay is so open and exposed that we felt a little comfortable when we first poked in. Add into that the fact that the bottom has coral and after the first night we weren’t sure we would be happy staying there long enough to see what we wanted to see on the reef. After careful buoying and with the ESE winds blocked by Tavueni it was quite comfortable in the end. Still, if the winds were going to do any clocking around or stay too southerly we would probably have ducked out and come back.

That’s just us though and many boats were happy on Jack’s two moorings, or anchored in the more exposed part of the bay.