Kilkea at anchor in Ilot Mato

A beautiful islet.

This is five miles from shore surrounded by reefs

View from Pic N'ga

yachts at anchor

Marian feet sinking into the soft sand

Wow what a beach

Sails in the sunset

If you look close you will see a sleeping whale and her calf

and you wonder what we do all day out here!!

Anne up the mast on Callisto

view from up the mast

Isle des Pins

We are at one of the most beautiful islands we have seen in all of the South Pacific. More on this later but will tell you first how we got here.

We spent two and a half weeks in Noumea where we had a great time with friends from other boats. It is a great little town with all sorts of culture and great walks. We did a lot of these with s/v Callisto, and s/v Tahina walking miles to visit the aquarium and the zoo plus the local museums and shows. We managed a good number of dinners and lunches out at great reasturants along with many evenings having happy hours that went on until close to cruisers midnight which is nine pm as that seems to be as long as any of us can last. Marian got a good checkout by the doctors and she is now certified to sail on for another few years.

On Sepember 16 three of us left Nouema for a little islet called Ilot Mato. This is a small uninhabited island surrounded by reefs out in the lagoon that surrounds New Caledonia which is itself in the largest lagoon in the world. We motored most all the way and after five hours we, s/v Callisto, s/v Tahina, arrived working our way through reefs into an anchorage that would appear to be wide open except for the reefs. The colours of the water were just amazing with great clarity so a swim was in order before another get together to watch the sunset. We stayed the next day and enjoyed dinghing around the reefs walking about on the island and swimming in sapphire gin coloured waters. What again, you guessed it another happy hour this time on Kilkea. Well someone has to do this sort of stuff.

The next morning we upped anchor at 0830 and headed off carefully avoiding the reefs to the Isle des Pins or the Isle of Pines. We had a lovely sail as the seas are flat in the logoon with little swell. On the way we saw humpback whales breaching and blowing. About two miles from Isle dis Pins we had to alter course as we came across a mother and baby whale asleep on the surface fifty meters ahead of us. It looked to us that the baby maybe had just been born. When the whales sleep they are hard to see as they do not put out much breath so the spout of water is very small compared to when the whales are moving about. We arrived into this beautiful anchorage and for a change we all stayed aboard and had a quiet evening.

The next day was a slow day as we got our bearings with a good walk sight seeing one of the most beautiful bays we have seen. The beach is pure white and has the consistancy of flour and the colours!! We resumed our sundowners on Tahina, played a scrabble game and made it home in time to go to bed.

On the 20th we did a climb up Pic Na'ga which is the highest spot on the island. It took us two and a half hours to walk, (climb) up and an hour down. The views were just amazing and will try to enclose some with this blog. If you want to see some real good photos go to tahinaexpedition.com and look at their pictures that they provide to Google. Frank and Karen were the originators of the Google blog and know all sorts of neat stuff. It was a wonderful walk/hike and we finished off in one of two hotels here with a few beers and late lunch.

Again we had to get together to watch the sunset which always puts on a good show and again for some strange reason miss dinner.

Callisto left early this morning heading back to Noumea as Anne is flying out to visit their pregnant daughter in England. Michael is having crew arrive and will then head for Sydney so we will not see them until next year somewhere up on the Great Barrrier Reef.

After they left Marian and I along with Ken and Lori off s/v Trim, and Graham and Sheri off s/v Serenity all went aboard Tahina, which is a big catamaran,50 feet, and sailed out five miles to anchor and then take two dinghies five more miles to a small islet in the middle of a reef system to the south of us called Nokanhui. On one of the three islets is a sand bar that is truely one of the most beautiful south seas scenes we have encountered. After a day out in the sun and sand everyone just had a quiet evening just waiting for cruisers midnight to arrive so we could call it a day.

Isle des Pins

Breaking news

I think I have mentioned that a fellow yachtie from England that we met back in the San Blas island who is a writer has just had his first book published as an e book with Amazon. It will be out in paperback in October. The name is A Man Out Of Time by Peter Bernfield.

The interesting about Peter is he sometimes has a little black cloud flying around him. If there is going to be a problem it will be with him on his boat, a catamaran, called Troutbridge. He managed to drag anchor in the Tuamotu island in French Polynesia and went on a reef. They managed to float it off having only put a few small holes in one hull. He managed to get it all fixed up in Papeette and continued down to New Zealand last November. In May he left with a lot of us to sail up to Fiji. He is by himself and takes crew on from time to time but is not at all good at picking them. The crew up to Fiji was a gal who decided she was going to sleep all the way. So Peter was sailing into Suva at night and being very tired had a cat nap and sailed onto another reef. This time it took two weeks to get it off and it sunk completly with two six to eight foot holes in both hulls. After the French Polynesia experience the insurance was too much for him to afford so he had no insurance and now is trying to rebuild the boat.

If anyone is interested they could help him a lot by buying his book.

He has a blog which he updates three or four times a week and is an interesting read.
blog.mailasail.com/troutbridge

New Caledonia

Hello all,

We are now in Noumea in New Caledonia. When we left Fiji we joined a New Zealand rally group of 18 boats and sailed 500 miles over to Vauatu arriving in Esprito Santo island and stayed in Petersen lagoon beside a resort called Oyster Bay island. It was a very pretty resort but the operators were less than helpful or friendly. Fortunlatly they did have internet and we managed to get a lot of business done and were there for a week. Vanuatu bills itself as being the friendly islands but our experience is the opposite with the people always trying to charge you for everything even walking on a beach!! After Fiji this was not at all to our liking. Also being with the group of boats some of whom we have no idea how they got this far, was not to our liking at all. So after a week the group went one way and we another sailing south to the capital Port Vila. Again this place is dirty with nothing that held any interest for us. So after two weeks we left and did a two night passage south to New Caledonia.

Arriving at Noumea the capital was a very pleasant experince. Not only is the views and country that we saw sailing in very pleasing but so were all the officials we had to deal with at the marina. No problems and everything done correctly in a very efficant French way. No charges at all compared to Vanuatu which cost us close to $300 for the formalities. The city is clean and we feel like we are back in the first world and will be staying hear for a couple of months. The climate is very different from all places we have been in this year. The temperature is cooler and dryer. It is much more livable as you are not continually sweating. The prices are higher here as well but all is French and the food is fantastic. The wine and cheese with baguettes are fast becomming a nightly tradition much the same as we had most of the time in Europe. Lots of fun with lots of good people to enjoy time with. We are starting to have a big meal a lunch and then just snacks in the evening. I will update some more fun stuff soon but just wanted to get this update published.