Day 159, Year 2: Happy Birthday to Heather
Date: Sunday, September 30, 2007
Weather: Winds E to ESE 15 to 20; Lots of Clouds, But Still Sunny
Latitude: S 20 degrees 43.147 minutes
Longitude: E 166 degrees 25.423 minutes
Location: Mouli, Island of ouvea in the Loyalties, New Caledonia

Our first born is 32 years old today. Happy Birthday, Heather! She, Jed, and Sam are spending the weekend in Boothbay, Maine, attending the wedding of Jed’s cousin John V and Michelle. Jed’s great-grandfather was a whaling captain and bought a farm in Boothbay when he tired of being at sea. The family still has the farm there and it is a wonderful gathering place. Maine is beautiful this time of year, so I know Heather is having a wonderful birthday in the surrounds of lots of family.

We are not in Maine. That I can say definitively. We arrived in Ouvea in the Loyalty Islands this afternoon and it is breathtakingly beautiful–a 28 kilometer long white sand beach surrounding a huge azure-blue lagoon. The guide books all refer to this as an “authentic” South Pacific destination. I would assume all destinations in the South Pacific are “authentic” but after visiting the main island of Grande Terre and then sailing back to here, I understand what the guides mean. Grande Terre
is in the South Pacific, but it is totally modernized and very French. It is not like the other islands we have been visiting this season. Out here in the Loyalties, the beauty is overwhelming and the people live more traditionally. If you were flying in for a South Pacific vacation in New Caledonia, you would want to come here, not to Grande Terre. The difference is like night and day.

With a sky full of clouds, normally I would have called today party sunny. But not here. Even with clouds, the sun shines through brightly. I was beginning to think the sun always shines here, but late this afternoon, it really did get totally overcast. We could use some rain to wash the copious amounts of salt off Windbird, but the rain seemed to vere around us. If we don’t get rain overnight, I’ll use some precious fresh water to wash things off in the morning. We have so much salt on deck
as a result of today’s sail. It was an exhilarating sail, but salt water was spraying everywhere.

We just got an email from Mike and Linda Stuart back in Concord this evening, and they tell us there was an earthquake in the Loyalty Islands this week. That’s news to us. Hard to believe we are here and that we had to find this out from someone in Concord, NH! But then, earthquakes are pretty common place in this part of the world. New islands emerge which is a problem for sailors, but otherwise, no one seems to pay attention.

We arrived at the pass into the lagoon here with Ranger, and at the same exact time that Scot Free II arrived coming from the north. We parted ways a couple of days ago, but here we were entering the Ouvea lagoon at the same time. We are all anchored off the village of Mouli which we will visit tomorrow. Galaxie is also here, but anchored about seven miles further up the beach at the village of Fayaoue. Incognita stopped in a little atol just northwest of here called Beautemps-Beaupre (B-B).
It was my number one choice of a place to visit, but the pass in looked very tricky. We opted for the safer entrance into Ouvea, but if we hear wonderful reports from Incognita, we might just have to give B-B a shot.

070929 Day 158 Grande Terre, New Cal–Baie de Ugue to Lavaissiere

Day 158, Year 2: Ready to Head to the Loyalties
Date: Saturday, September 29, 2007
Weather: Sunny Days with More Clouds Than Usual; Winds E to ESE 15
Latitude: S 21 degrees 29.533 minutes
Longitude: E 166 degrees 03.667 minutes
Location: Anse de Lavaissiere, Grande Terre, New Caledonia

We forged our way directly into the wind another 40 miles down the coast of New Caledonia today and are poised to leave very early in the morning for the trek back east to the Loyalty Islands. Ranger is with us and we just talked to Galaxie on the Ham radio. They went across to the Loyalties today but are going to have to stand off until morning as they arrived too late to go into the pass. Scot Free and Incognita are in the anchorage at Ugue tonight, the same anchorage we were in last night.
The wind is continuing to come more from the east, so we are glad we have come far enough south that we should have a good sail tomorrow. Again, the emphasis here is on the word “should”–we shall see.

Sometime late morning I got inspired and decided to bake bread. French baguettes are just not our thing. We like our whole wheat bread. We were able to buy whole meal (almost whole wheat) bread in Fiji and Vanuatu, but our experience in Hienghene tells us that it is back to white bread here. So I’m in the baking business again. It was so hot in both Fiji and Vanuatu that baking was an act of cruelty, but here it is not bad. We arrived here around 2 pm and had hoped to explore the area in the
dinghy, but we got lazy and decided to just continue reading. Besides, I was in the middle of baking, so exploring would have been a bit of a challenge. We talked to Paul on Ranger and he said Marie is not feeling well. I sure hope she doesn’t have whatever I have. I am better today, but it is a slow uphill battle.

So at 5:30 AM we are off to the Ouvea in the Loyalty Islands. Ouvea is supposed to be absolutely beautiful. The Lonely Planet says that arriving in the Loyalties from Grande Terre is “like entering another world.” The Kanak people in the Loyalties live in traditional cases (houses) and in Ouvea the cases are on the beautiful white sand beaches. We have seen no evidence of traditional housing or villages here on the east coast of Grande Terre, so we are anxious to see Ouvea. We should arrive
tomorrow afternoon and I should have a full report in tomorrow’s log.

070929 Day 158 Grande Terre, New Cal–Baie de Ugue to Lavaissiere

Day 157, Year 2: The Ugue-ly Side of New Caledonia
Date: Friday, September 28, 2007
Weather: Beautiful Day; Winds ESE 10-15
Latitude: S 21 degrees 08.979 minutes
Longitude: E 165 degrees 32.624 minutes
Location: Baie de Ugue, Grande Terre, New Caledonia

We traveled almost fifty miles down the coast of Grande Terre today and are anchored in the Baie of Ugue tonight. We are calling it the Baie de Ugue-ly as it is the home of a huge nickel strip mine. The exposed soil on the tops of the mountains is a rusty orangish-red and erosion has caused gashes of that same color running down the mountains through the green vegetation. The mountains look like they are bleeding. And these mines continue as we head even further south, so I think we will see more
of the same tomorrow.

The southeast trade winds are kicking in over the next few days. We had to motor into head winds today, but at least we were behind the reef and had fairly calm seas. We could have headed straight to the Loyalty Islands which are basically the same direction, but without the protection of the reef, we thought the ride would just be no fun. We will go further southeast tomorrow and then we should have a nice angle of sail for getting to the Loyalties. The key words here are “should have.” The
winds and waves have a mind of their own, and no matter how much planning and data gathering you do, you are just never sure what you will really get once you are out there.

The goal for tomorrow is Anse de Lavaissiere. This anchorage has no nickel mine, but it does have white sand beaches, a deserted village to explore, and snorkeling. Sounds much better than Ugue-ly. I still have this hacking cough and probably won’t be snorkeling, but Mark, Paul, and Marie might get to jump in and explore New Caledonia underwater.

070928 Day 157 Grande Terre, New Cal–Hienghene to Baie de Ugue

Day 156, Year 2: Getting Ready To Head South To Go East
Date: Thursday, September 27, 2007
Weather: Same Old Story–Yet Another Picture Perfect Day
Location: Baie de Hienghene, Grande Terre, New Caledonia

This weather is totally unbelievable. We have had day after day of brilliant blue skies and sunshine since we arrived here. The days are sunny and warm, in the low 80′s, and the nights are clear and cool, in the upper 60′s. There is virtually no humidity, so it is very pleasant. We have enjoyed the time here, but it is time to move on. The captains returned last night just after 8 PM and they were able to successfully get us checked into New Caledonia. This was not easy as the first person
they talked to in the Customs Office had never heard of checking in without having the boat in Noumea. But after some negotiation, he found a superior officer who directed him to go ahead with the check-in. We are continually surprised at the lack of communication and the misinformation that is circulated out here. There is just no source of credible information. But now we are legal and we can travel on. We want to head back east to the Loyalty Islands, but the winds are blowing from the east
this week. So we are going to travel south down the coast and then head northeast to the Loyalties. This will give us a much better angle on the wind and will give us a chance to see more of the east coast of Grande Terre. Tomorrow we plan to travel 50 miles south, so we will be up and out of here by 6 AM.

Mark’s first job today was to try another fix on the dinghy propeller. He put more screws in to keep it from slipping and he drilled and screwed them in deeper. Since he was not able to buy a new prop in Noumea yesterday, this was our only shot. And it worked, at least for now. We went into town to do our last provisioning and the dinghy motor ran fine the whole time. We had no replay of yesterday’s folly. Ranger went into town at the same time and we walked to the store together. Later this
afternoon, we invited everyone in the anchorage to Windbird for Happy Hour. We had a wonderful time visiting and watching that beautiful full moon rise over the anchorage. Tonight it looked like a huge orange harvest moon. It was beautiful.

Our destination tomorrow is Baie de Ugue. More when we reach Ugue . . .

070927 Day 156 Grande Terre, New Cal–Full Moon in Hienghene

Day 155, Year 2: Sailing Women on the Loose . . . and There’s a Full Moon
Date: Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Weather: Yet Another Picture Perfect Day
Location: Baie de Hienghene, Grande Terre, New Caledonia

It is sunset here and the full moon is in all of it’s glory rising above La Poule Couveuse (the chicken) and the other Linderalique rock formations within our view. It was another absolutely stunning day weather-wise and the rising of the full moon is a wonderful closure to that day. But if we go back to the early part of the day, we have another tale to tell.

So what happens when the captains of five sailboats leave their mates aboard? Mark, Paul, Simon, Bruce, and Gerry left at 0400 this morning in Ranger’s dinghy to go into port and get in the little rental car that would hopefully take them to Noumea. We haven’t heard from them since by Ham radio or email, so we assume all is well and that they will get home tonight . . . sometime. I got up at 7 AM and launched into a chore I have been meaning to do this whole season. I am an earring person. I
have lots and lots of earrings and most all that I own are here on Windbird with me. But some of them are not faring so well in the sea air, so I sorted through the collection, putting those that should go home in tiny snack-sized ZipLoc baggies. Not a big job, but one that I have wanted to do for some time. Once that was done, I was ready to head to town. The guys took Ranger’s dinghy in early this morning. It is the dinghy that only starts in reverse, and then with some effort. That left
Scot Free II’s dinghy that starts but doesn’t always run so well, Galaxie’s dinghy that runs beautifully, but slowly, and is very small, Incognita’s dinghy that is just the right size and runs well, and Windbird’s dinghy that hit a rock a couple of days ago and is limping along with a propeller that could go at any moment. There was a call on the radio, and all women decided to go to town. I said I would take Maree on Galaxie and Marie on Ranger with me, and Janine on Incognita said she would
take Donna on Scot Free II. Incognita left first and zoomed into town. Windbird picked up Marie on Ranger and then Maree on Galaxie, and by this time the motor was straining. I decided to go ahead, but as we motored across the expanse toward the path that would lead us to town, we went slower and slower. And because we were going so slowly, we were being set by the current closer and closer to land and more shallow waters. We got to a point where the breakers were coming over the back of the
dinghy and we were in very shallow water. We were barely moving forward, so I turned off the engine and Marie and Maree jumped into the water to pull us forward. I stayed in the dinghy trying to raise the dinghy motor, but inexperience cast its spell and there was no way I was going to get that dinghy motor up. So here we were with waves crashing over our stern and two women trying to pull us forward to deeper water. We finally got there and I started the engine. Oh, no! It started, but it
would not go forward or backward. The damaged prop that Mark had tried to temporarily fix was not not responding. We were dead in the water and now the current was pushing us closer and closer to land and still yet into shallower water. Marie and and Maree once again got in the water and pulled us back the way we had come. We decided to try and row Windbird’s dinghy back to the anchorage and then take Galaxie’s dinghy to town. Essentially a twenty-minute dinghy ride turned into a two-hour nightmare.
We left the first time at 10:15 and finally at 12:20 we pulled into the marina in Hienghene in Galaxie’s dinghy. What an ordeal!

We met up with Janine of Incognita and Donna of Scot Free II and went to the bakery to see if there were any goodies left. There was not much there, so Marie on Ranger and I ended up getting a dark chocolate and coconut Magnum bar, basically a frozen Mounds bar for lunch. It was delicious, but not much of a lunch. We won’t tell the guys about this. Then we all walked across the bridge to the other side of the river to the little grocery store. Marie and I stayed and shopped, while the others
went to the Cultural Center. Maree of Galaxie wanted to use their free internet service to check for messages from home, and Janine and Donna were just going to visit the center and hang out. When Marie and I finished shopping, she walked back to town because she didn’t want to go on with the load she was now carrying. I went on to the Cultural Center to find the other women and do a little more exploring. It took Maree on Galaxie a little longer than she had planned to check her email and respond
to messages, so Janine, Donna, and I sat on the lawn of the Cultural Center and just enjoyed the afternoon. We got back to the boats sometime between three and four in the afternoon, and I’m sure all of us launched back into chores we had left behind in the morning. And I’m sure we all cooked dinner anticipating the arrival of our captains.

It is now 7:30 PM and the captains have not returned. My best estimate of arrival is 8PM, but it could be even later. We had set a radio check-in at 6 PM if they were not going to be able to get home tonight, but there was no contact. So we assume they will get home sometime this evening.

The admirals did fine today with the captains, but I must say that life is MUCH easier when Windbird’s Captain is around. He’s a pretty handy fellow and I think I have more to learn that I thought!

Day 155, Year 2: Sailing Women on the Loose . . . and There’s a Full Moon
Date: Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Weather: Yet Another Picture Perfect Day
Location: Baie de Hienghene, Grande Terre, New Caledonia

It is sunset here and the full moon is in all of it’s glory rising above La Poule Couveuse (the chicken) and the other Linderalique rock formations within our view. It was another absolutely stunning day weather-wise and the rising of the full moon is a wonderful closure to that day. But if we go back to the early part of the day, we have another tale to tell.

So what happens when the captains of five sailboats leave their mates aboard? Mark, Paul, Simon, Bruce, and Gerry left at 0400 this morning in Ranger’s dinghy to go into port and get in the little rental car that would hopefully take them to Noumea. We haven’t heard from them since by Ham radio or email, so we assume all is well and that they will get home tonight . . . sometime. I got up at 7 AM and launched into a chore I have been meaning to do this whole season. I am an earring person. I
have lots and lots of earrings and most all that I own are here on Windbird with me. But some of them are not faring so well in the sea air, so I sorted through the collection, putting those that should go home in tiny snack-sized ZipLoc baggies. Not a big job, but one that I have wanted to do for some time. Once that was done, I was ready to head to town. The guys took Ranger’s dinghy in early this morning. It is the dinghy that only starts in reverse, and then with some effort. That left
Scot Free II’s dinghy that starts but doesn’t always run so well, Galaxie’s dinghy that runs beautifully, but slowly, and is very small, Incognita’s dinghy that is just the right size and runs well, and Windbird’s dinghy that hit a rock a couple of days ago and is limping along with a propeller that could go at any moment. There was a call on the radio, and all women decided to go to town. I said I would take Maree on Galaxie and Marie on Ranger with me, and Janine on Incognita said she would
take Donna on Scot Free II. Incognita left first and zoomed into town. Windbird picked up Marie on Ranger and then Maree on Galaxie, and by this time the motor was straining. I decided to go ahead, but as we motored across the expanse toward the path that would lead us to town, we went slower and slower. And because we were going so slowly, we were being set by the current closer and closer to land and more shallow waters. We got to a point where the breakers were coming over the back of the
dinghy and we were in very shallow water. We were barely moving forward, so I turned off the engine and Marie and Maree jumped into the water to pull us forward. I stayed in the dinghy trying to raise the dinghy motor, but inexperience cast its spell and there was no way I was going to get that dinghy motor up. So here we were with waves crashing over our stern and two women trying to pull us forward to deeper water. We finally got there and I started the engine. Oh, no! It started, but it
would not go forward or backward. The damaged prop that Mark had tried to temporarily fix was not not responding. We were dead in the water and now the current was pushing us closer and closer to land and still yet into shallower water. Marie and and Maree once again got in the water and pulled us back the way we had come. We decided to try and row Windbird’s dinghy back to the anchorage and then take Galaxie’s dinghy to town. Essentially a twenty-minute dinghy ride turned into a two-hour nightmare.
We left the first time at 10:15 and finally at 12:20 we pulled into the marina in Hienghene in Galaxie’s dinghy. What an ordeal!

We met up with Janine of Incognita and Donna of Scot Free II and went to the bakery to see if there were any goodies left. There was not much there, so Marie on Ranger and I ended up getting a dark chocolate and coconut Magnum bar, basically a frozen Mounds bar for lunch. It was delicious, but not much of a lunch. We won’t tell the guys about this. Then we all walked across the bridge to the other side of the river to the little grocery store. Marie and I stayed and shopped, while the others
went to the Cultural Center. Maree of Galaxie wanted to use their free internet service to check for messages from home, and Janine and Donna were just going to visit the center and hang out. When Marie and I finished shopping, she walked back to town because she didn’t want to go on with the load she was now carrying. I went on to the Cultural Center to find the other women and do a little more exploring. It took Maree on Galaxie a little longer than she had planned to check her email and respond
to messages, so Janine, Donna, and I sat on the lawn of the Cultural Center and just enjoyed the afternoon. We got back to the boats sometime between three and four in the afternoon, and I’m sure all of us launched back into chores we had left behind in the morning. And I’m sure we all cooked dinner anticipating the arrival of our captains.

It is now 7:30 PM and the captains have not returned. My best estimate of arrival is 8PM, but it could be even later. We had set a radio check-in at 6 PM if they were not going to be able to get home tonight, but there was no contact. So we assume they will get home sometime this evening.

The admirals did fine today with the captains, but I must say that life is MUCH easier when Windbird’s Captain is around. He’s a pretty handy fellow and I think I have more to learn that I thought!

070926 Day 155 Grande Terre, New Cal–Women in Hienghene; Men to Noumea

Day 154, Year 2: Checking-in, Quarantine, and Touring Around
Date: Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Weather: Another Picture Perfect Day
Location: Baie de Hienghene, Grande Terre, New Caledonia

The three-day holiday weekend ended, so our first task today was to go to Heinghene early and see what we could do about officially checking into New Caledonia. We thought there was a port captain or someone in charge of the port here, but actually at young woman at the tourism office was our contact. All she could do was copy our boat papers and passports and send them Customs in Noumea. Our hopes for not having to travel there to be officially checked-in were dashed. We could either sail straight
to Noumea, arriving there in three days, or we could choose to send the boat captains there by land to visit both the Customs and the Immigration Offices. We opted for the latter and the young woman called the closest car rental to see if there was a car available–an hour away with no way to get there. She also called Quarantine in the town of Kone on the west coast of this island to have them make the two-hour trip here to do the Quarantine check. You can have passports stamped by Immigration
and fill our Customs paperwork without being on the boat, but Quarantine has to visit the boat. Poor Gerry on Scot Free II. He is the only one of us who really speaks enough French to carry on business, so he had to listen to us, listen to the young woman from the Tourism Office, talk on the phone to the car rental place, and try to make us all understand what was being said. No easy job. But successfully managed to arrange for a local to drive he and Bruce of Incognita an hour south to Poindemie
to rent a car and to have Quarantine arrive at 11:30 AM to check the boats. It sounds easier than it was. Having ten people with ten different ideas of how to do things is hard to manage. But with a little give and take, all were happy.

Gerry and Bruce waited at the Tourism Office for their ride to get the rental car while the rest of us walked to the open-air market to check out the fresh fruits and vegetables. The choices here are limited, but there was lettuce, tomatoes, a few carrots, some local vegetables, and bananas. We didn’t buy anything since we hadn’t been visited by Quarantine as yet. We kept walking and went across the bridge spanning the river and to the cultural center on the opposite side of the river. We didn’t
have much time since Quarantine would be visited at 11:30, but we toured the grounds and got to see the examples of cases or traditional Kanak homes. There is more to explore there and maybe the admirals will go back there tomorrow while the captains are in Noumea. We stopped at the only grocery store in this area on the way back to town. It is small and doesn’t have much, so reprovisioning here is going to be a bit of a challenge. It was at this point that I learned that the open-air fresh produce
market would be closing at noon today and not be open again until Friday. We will be gone by then, so knowing that was our only shot at fresh produce, we decided to go back and buy things and ask the young woman at the Tourism Office to keep it until after we had cleared Quarantine. By the time we walked back, not much was left to buy. I was able to get a little lettuce and a local squash that we like. There is another tiny store on the waterfront and I knew from yesterday’s visit that they had
potatoes and onions. So I stopped there and got onions and some nice tomatoes. We all left our bags at the Tourism Office and headed back to the boats. But there was a problem. On our way in, the fear that we had damaged our dinghy prop when we hit a rock yesterday became reality. We had to motor in at a very low speed, and going home was even slower. We did make it, though, and Mark did a temporary fix. He hopes to be able to find a prop in Noumea tomorrow.

Jean-Claude was our Quarantine officer and he was very friendly and the whole process was so much easier than we had been led to believe. He did take all fresh fruits and vegetables as well as honey, but he didn’t take dairy products and dried fruit as we had read. He also would not have taken meat, but all of us had eaten that so it wasn’t an issue. The issue is that we are out of meat and there is no meat here to buy. But I’m sure we’ll find a way to make do. Before we started cruising full-time,
we ate very little meat, so we will just go back to our old, healthier ways. I thought for sure I he was going to take my live plants, but he just check to see if they were bug-free and left them aboard. I don’t think I’ll be as lucky in Australia, but at least the plants (an ivy and a mint) have made it this far.

Paul and Marie on Ranger had all of us over for dinner tonight for Wahoo tacos. Marie made the taco shells and the Wahoo tasted as good as it did when it was first caught in Ambrym. We had a segregated evening–men in the cockpit and women in the main saloon. It wasn’t planned that way, but the guys had lots of planning to do concerning their trip to Noumea tomorrow and it gave the females a chance to get to know one another a little better. Marie, Donna, and I know one another, but Maree of
Galaxie and Janine of Incognita are new to the mix. We had a great evening topped off by one of Donna’s fabulous desserts. Tonight it was apple crisp. Delicious.

In order to make it to Noumea and back in one day, the guys leave at 4 AM. If they make it back by tomorrow night, it means that we might be able to leave here on Thursday, Friday at the latest. We will go south a few miles and then head back northeast to the Loyalty Islands. By going south we will prevent ourselves from having to bash directly into the trade winds when going due east. Hopefully by the weekend we will be in beautiful Ouvea.

070925 Day 154 Grande Terre, New Cal–Centre Cultural Goa Ma Bwarhat

Day 153, Year 2: Happy Spring, Happy Fall!
Date: Monday, September 24, 2007
Weather: Picture Perfect Day
Location: Baie de Hienghene, Grande Terre, New Caledonia

Today was the first full day of spring for us and your first day of fall. And I think both of our days might have been similar. The daytime temperature here was in the seventies and even though the nighttime temp only went as low as 70 degrees, it felt very cool after being in Vanuatu. So we are having beautiful blue sky, sunny days that are not stifling hot and cool nights. Sounds like fall in Maine to me.

In honor of spring, we, along with Scot Free II and Ranger, took our dinghies a few kilometers up the La Hienghene river. It was the first time I have been close to the town of Heinghene, so I enjoyed seeing it up close. We went past the brand new sports complex, the brand new marina, and the brand new downtown mini-shopping area. We went under a bridge and as we headed away from town the river wound around and headed inland. It was very shallow near the banks and we had to make sure we stayed
on the outside of the curves as it was much more shallow on the inside. The sky was bright blue with puffs of white clouds here and there and the lush growth along the river banks contrasted nicely with the drier mountains rising up behind. Along the river bank there were coconut palms, huge stands of bamboo with new light green leaves popping out all over, and some of the very tall, thin pines that grow here. There were also African tulip trees with their bright orange blossoms and a tree that
has a red bottle-brush blossom like the Puhutakowa in New Zealand. It was a feast for the eyes. And somehow while we were ogling at the beauty, we managed to hit a rock with our propeller. Ouch! Mark pulled the motor up immediately, and we thought everything was fine, but as the day wore on and we took other dinghy trips, we were given reason to believe that the propeller’s days are numbered. Other than our unfortunate encounter with a rock, the rest of the river trip was without problems.
As we went further and further inland, the river narrowed and started to feel more like a big creek. At this point, we turned around and headed back to Hienghene. We enjoy watching men standing on the gravel beds casting nets into the water, saw a couple of horses, and a couple of houses, but for the most part, the river was ours. When we got back to Hienghene, we tied up to dock that was built to accommodate launches that shuttle people to and from cruise ships and walked along the waterfront.
This whole complex was built just a couple of years ago to accommodate visitors from a cruise liner, but we don’t know if that cruise liner still comes here. The huge mooring ball that we had read about is no longer out in the harbor, so we will have to ask tomorrow. There was a very tiny little mini-mart, a restaurant of sorts where you could get cold drinks, an building to accommodate an open-air market, a pharmacy,and a laundromat. And today there were two French-speaking couples sitting under
a little gazebo that were very helpful for us. Gerry can speak basic French and he was able to find out things about travel to Noumea and neat anchorages to visit on the southeast coast. We could understand very little of what was being said, but still we enjoyed meeting the couples. They were very friendly. After they left, we had a cruiser confab trying to figure out how we will get to Noumea to do the Immigration part of our check-in if they won’t do that for us here tomorrow. We have all
kinds of schemes but not sure what we will really do. First, we need to find out what the Port Captain recommends tomorrow morning.

Mark and I went back to Windbird for lunch and then we took off in the dinghy once more to explore the waters around the interesting rock formations here. We took off for La Poule Couveuse and Le Sphinx. In French, “poule” means chicken, and La Poule does look like a hen sitting on her nest. If you are old enough to remember those little ceramic dishes with a lid that had a hen’s head and tail, then you can imagine what this rock formation looks like. Except, of course, that it is huge. There
was lots of beautiful coral on the north side of the rock island and we floated over the coral and around to some other interesting formations. We motored most of the time, but when it got super shallow, we rowed. We circumnavigated La Poule and then headed across the bay to another formation known as the Sphinx. On the way there, we met Marie and Paul on Ranger who were coming in the opposite direction and we invited them to stop by Windbird on their way home. We had fun talking about our cruising
plans for New Caledonia, but we can make no certain plans until we find out how and when we can complete the check-in procedure.

070924 Day 153 Grande Terre, New Cal–Exploring Hienghene

Day 152, Year 2: Thinking of a Dear Friend Back Home
Date: Sunday, September 23, 2007
Weather: Beautiful Day; No Wind
Location: Baie de Hienghene, Grande Terre, New Caledonia

An email arrived last night with bad news about a good friend. Barbara O’Brien is a teacher at Beaver Meadow School back in Concord, New Hampshire, and over the years we became good friends. She is considerably younger than myself, but heart problems don’t seem to strictly go by age guidelines. The email I received last night said that Barbara had been taken from school on Wednesday to the hospital in Concord for a cauterization and then on to Mary Hitchcock Hospital in Dartmouth for a by-pass
operation. I was in total shock. Barbara’s partner is Chris, a young man that was one of the first student teachers I supervised when I left the classroom and went to work out of the Central Office in Concord. I have stayed close to him over the years, and I know he must be in shock as well. Barbara is a “giver” and it must have taken its toll. She has given her life to her two children that she loves so dearly and to each and every child in her multi-age classroom year after year. If there
is a first or second grader at Beaver Meadow that is in desperate need of love and attention, they seem to end up in Barbara’s room. She has a way of healing the wounds that young children should never have had. So now, I can only hope that all of that giving can come back to help heal her. Barbara, I’m thinking of you and sending positive thoughts your way. I miss you and love you and hope you are back up and running (well, not literally) soon.

I spent the greater part of today doing something I am not very good at, and that is doing nothing. Mark and I probably drive other people crazy with our constant “on the go” mentality, but we didn’t sit still on land and we don’t sit still out here. In fact, I think we are much more aggressive about being on the go out here. We made the decision to sail around the world so we could see as much of the world as possible. So that is what we aim to do. I did spend part of the morning studying the
anchorages in New Caledonia. Since we had originally planned to arrive in the Loyalty Islands instead of here on the main island, I wanted to go back and refresh my mind with the reasons we wanted to go to the Loyalties in the first place. They are beautiful. I guess that was the reason, but now we have to weigh just how difficult it will be to go back east to those islands while fighting the prevailing winds against just how beautiful they are. I then studied the anchorages down the east coast
of Grand Terre to see what we would see if we day hop our way south. And then I took another look at the Iles of Pines off the southeast corner of this main island. The clock is ticking, and as always, we won’t be able to do and see everything, so we want to make our choices carefully. When we retired to go sailing, we both used spreadsheets extensively in our jobs. When we produce spreadsheets of our planned itineraries out here and share them with fellow cruisers, you can see them cringe.
They came sailing to get away from things like spreadsheets. But Mark and I both loved our jobs, and I guess we love spreadsheets, because we keep producing them to track weather, make travel plans, to tell us where things are stored on the boat, and on and on. Excel really can be a good friend. So in the next day or so, I’ll bet we come up with another spreadsheet of our proposed itinerary for the next three to four weeks. Then it will be on to Australia and the end of another cruising season.

Now to why I did basically nothing today. I am still not feeling good. Whatever I have is not letting go no matter how positively I think. I have a deep chest cough and it doesn’t sound good. Supposedly rest is good for healing the body, so I’m giving that a try. But I’m not sure how many days of this I can stand. Probably not one more! And of the five boats here, the women on four of those boats have this same thing. Marie on Ranger is the only healthy women among us. Let’s just hope she
can stay that way.

Batteries. Yes, Mark spent his day focused on batteries. Since the end of July, we have been having to charge our batteries for more time each day than we are used to. He has had friends come aboard and give us advice. He has read and reread every manual and book we have aboard dealing with the electrical system and he has tried every test he knows to try. But still he has not been able to isolate the problem. Today we ran the motor for almost five hours while the batteries equalized and he
consulted with Bruce on Incognita a couple of times and used various borrowed meters to check the flow of electricity. He thinks we has found one problem in our battery switch. Amperage comes in but a drastically reduced amount goes out. That confirms his theory that he needs to run a new line directly from the alternator to the battery bank. He bought the line in Port Vila, but he needs another connector. So Mark paid a visit to Gerry on Scot Free II. Gerry had just the connector he needs
so he plans to run the new cable tomorrow and see if that solves the problem. Unfortunately he thinks that the batteries are failing. They are about 5 years old and may need to be replaced in Australia. In the meantime, we will just have to run the engine twice a day to keep the electricity flowing.

Tomorrow is New Caledonia Day so we will probably take the dinghy up the river and see if anything is happening in town. If not, we will probably take a walk to a high point to get a view of the bay. There is also a cave just across from where we are anchored and I definitely want to check that out. Then on Tuesday morning we will check in with the authorities, give up all of our fresh fruits, veggies, dairy products, meat, and who knows what else. The authorities in Australia will take even
more, so this is just a warm-up.

I just asked Mark to come over and read this log to get it ready to send, but he was too busy. Guess what he is doing . . . making a spreadsheet!

Day 151, Year 2: Arrival in New Caledonia
Date: Saturday, September 23, 2007
Weather: Beautiful Day; No Wind
Latitude: 20 degrees 40.934 minutes
Longitude: 164 degrees 56.890 minutes
Location: Baie de Hienghene, Grand Terre, New Caledonia

Last night was the what is referred to as “dead calm.” As the sun set, a reddish haze set in all around the horizon. The water was totally glassy, and that along with the haze was almost eerie. The last time we remember having an evening like this was the night we crossed the equator. The calmness stayed with us throughout the night and we could see the reflections of little pinpoints of light from the stars in the water. Around 1 AM, we changed course just slightly to head to a new waypoint,
and the course was just right to allow a path of moonlight to lead the way. The first night out of Vanuatu, I felt chilled, so last night Mark got out a polar fleece blanket for me. I still have this cold and the night air didn’t feel as good as it usually does. Even though last night was much warmer, I still enjoyed cuddling in that blanket and following the moonlight. Not long after the sun came up this morning, we started getting a little wind. Not much, but enough that I could let out the
mainsail, cut back on the RPM’s, and still maintain our 5.2 knots that would allow us to arrive in mid-afternoon. Galaxie and Ranger arrived a couple of hours before us, and we dropped anchor around 2:00 in the afternoon.

Paul on Ranger and Simon on Galaxie were headed into town about the time we arrived. Not long after we anchored, we got a radio call from Paul telling us that everything in town was closed until Tuesday–everything, that is, except the gendarmarie or police station. Monday is New Caledonia Day and people here are certainly taking the holiday seriously. The gendarme explained that we would have to wait until Tuesday to check-in, but he called Noumea and found that with a copy of our passports and
boat documentation on file in his office, we were free to roam about this area until Tuesday morning. So the good news is that we are not confined to our boats. If the gendarme is correct and we can fully check-in on Tuesday without having to make a land trip to Noumea, that will be fantastic. It is just another one of those cases where we have to wait and see.

Mark and I took a dinghy ride over to the Mission D’Ouare on the far side of the bay. There is a tribu or Kanak village there and Hienghene’s Catholic mission. It was just after high tide, but even so it got very shallow the nearer we got to shore. We finally had to pull up the dinghy motor and row the last little bit. We had hoped to find out what time mass would be tomorrow morning so we could attend. We thought that if we attended church we might get an invitation into the village. But we
had one huge problem. We speak no French and no one we met could speak any English. There were no adults to be found. We could hear that they were all in the village singing and dancing. There were a number of teenagers around, but try as we might, we could not successfully communicate. So shallow water and a lack of information will keep us from attending mass. Instead, we will probably just explore the area by dinghy.

In the late afternoon, Incognita and Scot Free II came sailing in. We are all anchored with La Poule Couveuse (the brooding chicken) and Le Sphinx surrounding us. These rock formations are beautiful and remind me of a cross between the Bay of Islands in New Zealand and the islands of the Marquesas. As in the Marquesas, we need to brush up on our French. “Bon Jour”, “Au Revoir”, “Merci Beaucoup”, and “Parlez-vous Anglais?” are about as much as we can handle. I guess we’ll pull out the French
dictionary and carry it with us.

While looking at the chart today, we realized we are now in the Coral Sea and will remain so until we reach northern Australia next season. This is still part of the South Pacific, but sets itself apart. Just looking at our latitude and longitude, it is easy to see that we are in a different part of the world. In our study of the computer guide to New Caledonia, we see that we will also start getting our weather from JCUMetSat, James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, instead of from MetVuw
in New Zealand. And it is very cool here in the evening. That should be a welcome relief from the hot and steamy nights in Vanuatu, but I’m not sure I’m ready for cool. These are a few of the differences we are noticing, but I’m sure we are going to find many other differences as we get closer to Australia and to a more modern society. We feel so blessed to have been able to share the traditional values and lifestyles of the people of the Western Pacific. And I’m sure we are going to continue
to enjoy each and every new place we visit. But right now, we just feel a little emptiness having just left Vanuatu–a very special place on Planet Earth. Now on to New Caledonia.

070922 Day 151 Grand Terre, New Cal–Passage and Arrival in New Caledonia