Au bout du monde

If I thought at all about Noumea before we came here, it was primarily as somewhere French. Baguettes in the tropics (not my legs walking towards the marina, below, but you get the picture).

The tricoleur flies from government buildings and the Blogger website pops up in French  - et pourquoi pas?  The petty officials who greeted us on our arrival had French attitude (gotta love those dark shades on the customs guy who insisted that Captain Wombat retrieve and count the 30 bottles of ultra cheap Venezuelan rum he stores in his bilge, and then, after re-counting the bottles himself  - he's peering under the table to do so in the picture below - officiously sealed the floor opening to keep the pernicious drink in bond).

We’ve been here less than a week however, and I’m getting the distinct impression that this place is less French than I am.

La Vieille France in Rue Sebastopol is a very fine bakery and the Casino supermarket has all the delicacies one would expect to find on French soil but there’s something a bit weird, a bit jarring about the fit between the Pacific and Paris in Noumea. While the French keep a tight cultural rein on their dominion (I see no English-language magazines or newspapers in the news agency), the pungent earthiness of Kanak (indigenous) culture seems to push very hard against the French polish.

Crossing town on foot in the early evening, I pass the bus depot where throngs of brightly-patterned Mother Hubbard dresses (the distinctive, floppy smocks which women of a certain age wear, and which are a hang-over from missionary times) squeeze against each other on the benches. I see loose-jointed, dark-skinned women with weary faces. Swarming the road where the buses turn in, I see sullen-mouthed boys wearing the green, red and yellow insignia of freedom fighters (could that be Che Guevara on the back of his hoodie?) and young girls with lovely bright eyes jostling each other. And there are older men too, looking like they have all the time in the world and no-one to pay them for it. The majority of public transport users are Kanak. I wait to cross the three-lane express-way between the bus depot and Port Moselle, and notice that most of those driving cars are white. 

Of course, I’m making a point. I’m not being objective, not behaving like a journalist (though the habit dies hard). I’m feeling my way into this town. My impression is of a drab, unloved outpost, held for strategic and economic reasons, and not much more. You can presumably live well here. We haven’t eaten off the boat, but I’m told that there are some good restaurants near the beach, and the views from smart houses in the better suburbs must be glorious. We saw Porsche and Audi dealerships near the airport. How their business relates to the currents of despair, insolence and subversion which swirl around me as I walk in the street, I can’t say. Perhaps I’m imagining this two-tier society, white on top, black on the bottom. Perhaps everyone feels part of one big happy French family. Or perhaps the French are keeping this colony (it probably has another, more politically correct name these days, but New Caledonia is part of the empire) by force. They will say it is not so, of course.  

We caught a local bus out to the Tjibaou Cultural Centre (above) on the outskirts of town. Renzo Piano designed the building, and it’s an astounding structure, a little like coming across the Sydney Opera House in the corner of a public housing estate. The centre is deservedly famous, but it houses surprisingly little of substance. It cost France a packet to build (50 million euros) but when you realize that it was opened in 1998, only 10 years after the pro-independence Kanak leader for whom it was named was assassinated, the time frame seems hasty, like an overly generous gift to a widow. For some reason, it puts me in mind of the Memorial for Europe’s Murdered Jews in Berlin.  Both monuments were significant political gestures on the part of the nations concerned, but you ask yourself what other purpose they serve... Aside from a small, interesting collection of contemporary art from the region, there’s not a lot at the Tjibaou centre to get your teeth into.  Ironically, the few old ceremonial carvings on exhibit are all on loan from the Quai Branly in Paris. The Museum of New Caledonia, just across the road from the marina, has much more in the way of interesting artifacts, ancient and modern, but displayed with a curious lack of information. Dates, place names….who needs ‘em? Still, being a person who welcomes the help of cultural hand-grips, these were both good places to visit.

We’re heading out of the marina tomorrow – in the picture above, Kukka is on the left, beside Destiny (with the awning) and Wombat (with the big backside). The Boat Jobs are done. I have discovered that for yachties, being in port is synonymous not so much with getting to the movies but getting to the chandlery. Alex has had two new wind vane covers made for Humphrey - not up to Paris couture standards, sadly. I have loved the proximity of the central Noumea market to the marina (stubby green bananas like those pictured above are stowed on board). I’ve been buying fish - we're eating something called grisette tonight. I'll bake it in coconut milk, with freshly grated coconut, red onions, and sliced lime (I did the same last night, and it was a Culinary Triumph). If you could see the viscosity of the water in Port Moselle, and smell it, you’d understand there is no question of catching fish in here, since you were wondering. I am coming to terms with the limitations of internet use in this part of the world – we are at the edge of the known technological universe (as opposed to its hub). I understand from Destiny and Wombat that Noumea is as good as it gets, and I should count my blessings. We have bought a powerful little antenna, and I will hope for the best in the wireless department as we move out from the kir royale zone.

Staying the course

What a sail! We were seven days at sea. On six of the seven days, the wind blew like stink, the swell was muddled and at cross purposes, and if we weren’t taking great washes of water over our foredeck, we were being dumped on from above. On the seventh day, when the skies cleared, the wind dropped right off, the swell lengthened and the sea flattened, I had a much finer appreciation of the expression “keeping an even keel”. My first ocean passage wasn’t supposed to be like this, but what can you do? Deal with it, that’s what.

We sailed out of Coffs Harbour in high spirits just after midday on Saturday, June 12. With the blue hills of the mid-north coast interior growing smudgy, I rang the kids, and Mum, who was packing for her own foreign travels. The final goodbyes. Our prospects for a good passage looked bright, we thought. The over-size swell of the previous week was predicted to subside, robust winds from the south looked good for at least two or three days and all that was worrying the captain of Destiny, Dr John, was that by Wednesday, if the forecasts held, we would run out of wind. Oh well, that’s why boats have motors.  

All the planning which went into divining the best moment to depart Coffs came to naught in the end. By the time darkness fell at 5 pm, heralding the winter night’s 12-hour blackout without even a moon for cheer, we had 35 knots coming from the south and growling surf coming up our dinger (as Alex would say). This wasn’t the weather we’d signed on for. “I want my money back,” I heard John telling Mike on the VHF.  Mike, at the helm of big flat-bottomed Wombat, was going much too fast for his liking, and when he found himself on a collision course with a tanker, it was the tanker which altered course because Mike made it clear that Wombat couldn’t. After that he sped away, out of VHF range, and we had great difficulty picking up his transmission on HF radio (before departing Coffs, we’d agreed to tune in to an agreed HF frequency at 7 am and 7 pm to compare notes).It was not until we reconvened on the visitors pontoon of Port Moselle marina in downtown Noumea that Mike and Lynn told the full horror story of Wombat’s passage. Categorically “the worst ever”, Mike said. Lynn agreed. If that had been her first passage across an ocean, she said, she wouldn’t be sailing now.

I learned this morning that superstitious mariners never tempt the weather gods by expressing optimism out loud. Perhaps I jinxed Wombat’s passage by suggesting in my previous post that Mike and Lynn had worked out how to stack the odds in favour of comfort? 

So how did little Kukka fare, you ask?

Call it a novice crew’s enthusiasm, or more likely not knowing to expect any different, but we and the boat arrived in good shape. Time has another quality at sea when you are listening for a shift in wind pitch, watching for a pattern in the swell (such a confused swell, and so lumpy), trying to work out the path of rain squalls, keeping a lookout for ships and, of course, adjusting sails and course when needed. Alex did most of that. There wasn’t much margin for error, given that after that first night the wind shifted much further into the east and we had a tough windward sail on our hands. He spent a lot of time thinking about the balance of the boat, and how to get the most of the sail combination in unforgiving seas. At least the wind was constant – it cycled between blowing hard and harder, frequently 30 plus knots in sustained spells. Kukka was often reefed down hard, especially at night, sometimes just the main, but often both main and jib. There weren’t many dry spots in the cockpit. The aim of the game, as I now understand it, is to make the ride “comfortable”, a highly elastic word used at sea in much the same way as it is in a hospital ward. Nurse to patient with tubes coming out her nose, unable to sit up, on a three-hourly pain-relief drug cocktail. “Can I make you more comfortable?”  It’s all a question of degree, isn’t it? After a while, we felt comfortable when the wind dropped below 25 knots, and the angle of heel slipped back to 20 degrees.

While I’ll quibble about comfortable, I am very grateful for the comforting  presence of our mates on Destiny. While Wombat disappeared into her own story very early in the piece, Destiny and Kukka stayed the entire distance together. We were never more than 20 or 30 miles apart and thus always within VHF range, which meant we could chat.  One evening under a beautiful new moon, we had the surreal experience of needing to dodge each other in the middle of the ocean. Destiny, who was under motor, altered course to avoid colliding with Kukka, who was under sail.  I think when John learned from me that Alex was sleeping down below and I was indulging myself with a bit of hand-steering, Destiny gave us an  extra wide berth.

Destiny’s more spacious navigation station enables John to have his computer permanently hooked up (on Kukka we struggled to keep our charts and pencil case in a fixed position), so he kindly shared the forecasts he downloaded en route with us. And on the final stretch, it was Destiny, with Shauna at the wheel, which led the way through the reef opening marked by the Amadee Lighthouse and into the lagoon under a perfectly cut half moon.  We couldn’t have hoped for more congenial company in the watery wastes had we gone looking for it.

The most satisfying achievement in the sailing department was the deployment of our Hydrovane, a nifty British-designed self-steering device which uses no power, just the angle of the wind, to direct its rudder, a so-called trim tab system.(The picture above shows Alex fitting the lovely red vane to the rudder post of the Hydrovane). We inherited the Hydrovane with the boat, and Alex had played with it a little last year in Far North Queensland coastal waters, just enough to get to know its ropes. On this voyage, it proved its worth day after day – and we decided to name it Humphrey, after Sir Humphrey, in Yes Minister, for its qualities of under-stated competence in the most testing conditions. The open sea is where the Humphreys of this world come into their own. The harder it blows, the better he works. Electronic autopilots are brilliant gadgets, but as every yachtie knows, they have a dreadful thirst for power. With Humphrey on duty, and the wind generator harvesting wind power (erratically, I might add – but no more on that here), we were almost keeping pace with the boat’s power consumption even when we were getting little to no sun to the solar panels. Go Humph! Pity about the snaggy collar on the wind generator pole chewing out the tip of Humphrey’s delicate red tongue, but nothing that man with a weighted fishing line, a roll of duct tape, a firm strap of foam and steady hand in a strong breeze couldn’t fix. I’m keeping the man.

Kukka catches (flying) fish - dead on the decks


We had an alternator drama, and without Humphrey we would have been in real trouble. In brief, the alternator belt had a meltdown – literally. Alex replaced it, in a heaving sea, but on day six, when the wind and seas began to abate and we needed to top up the battery charge, a horrible screech from the engine compartment announced that this new alternator belt was about to “shit itself”. Alex had a fall-back position (when doesn’t he?).  With the flick of a switch labeled emergency, alternator duties were handed over to the cruder, but nonetheless capable hands of a parallel system. That got us to Noumea, and for the past two days, Alex and Mike have been working on the pontoon with electric tools, re-casting the alternator frame. So far, so good. Such resourcefulness seems to come with the turf. As John says, the NRMA doesn’t come out this far.

I don’t think Alex had time to open a book during the passage.  I read The Logical Route, an account by the enigmatic Frenchman Bernard Moitessier of an epic voyage he made with his wife Francoise on their 39 ft steel sloop Joshua. I am slightly in love with Moitessier (dead though he is), with his other-worldliness, his intuitive leaps, his shameless romanticism and, of course, his way with words. He was a superb mariner. All the above is laid over a really solid knowledge of the sea, and a single-minded passion for boats. But I like the fact that, unlike many sailors who write books, he allows his inner workings to show. He’s heartfelt, not hearty. I’ll try to find his books here in Noumea in the original French.

There was little enough time for reading even for me though. I did my share of dreaming, of communing with sea birds, of staring at the sky (at least four lovely rainbows!) and the sea, of watching and learning from Alex’s sail trimming, of trying to feel the boat, as Moitessier writes. I also did my share of night watches, plus I cooked, and I navigated. What pleased me enormously was being able to sleep in the clanging, thudding, lurching commotion which fills the interior of a small plastic boat pushing its way through head winds for five days – or nearly. I’d dreaded not being able to sleep in short takes, which is the essence of watch-keeping. By the end of the week, Alex and I had worked out how best to break up the long nights to suit our respective body clocks – and I had ditched the little helpers which made me too drowsy when I needed to be alert and was turning into the capable cat-napper I’ve never been.

And I cooked, come hell and high water. Cooking is my comfort zone. I have some competence there, even when I’m routinely thrown like a sack of potatoes across the galley, and when sliding along the floor on my bottom is the safest way to retrieve food and utensils from cupboards. A chopping board with suction pads is a boon (thanks for the tip, Pelagic) but on an angle, I struggled to keep the chopped onion and tomato juice on the board! The strangeness of being tied up in port is not so much walking on dry land, but walking through the cabin without bracing yourself. And waking up in the night and slipping quickly out of bed ready for a watch.

On the seventh day, Alex gets ready to raise the flags - the Q flag (yellow) telling the French that we are coming in and need clearance and above that, the French flag. New Caledonia is on the horizon.

Finally, we're going to sea

It's a magnificent day for sailing, so we thought we might try to do some. We're heading out to sea on a course of 56 degrees (true) and we'll keep going till we get to the reef protecting the lagoon at the bottom of New Caledonia. Our best guess is that Kukka will take six or seven days to get to Noumea.

So exciting!

The only plan is no plan

We cleared out of Australia today in anticipation of leaving Coffs Harbour International Marina...soon. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow. The skies are clearing, the swell is flattening. The fishing boats in Coffs Harbour (above) may even get a run this weekend. It's a long weekend, and today is Friday. Hence the fast tracking of our clearance. Do you think the customs guys want to be humming and ho-ing about whether we’re going to be leaving on Saturday or Sunday or Monday? No way. So, for administrative purposes, we’re already en route to New Caledonia. And for extra excitement, I've now got my first stamp in my first-ever Australian passport!

Pushing up the coast

There’s nothing so yesterday as an uncomfortable sea voyage. In Coffs Harbour today, the air has that lovely clean after-the-rain feel about it, and the sunshine is working on my memory like an erase button. The line of wet weather gear still hanging in the cockpit tells of the weather that was, but already we’re looking ahead. When’s the next break coming? What day will we be leaving for New Caledonia?

We didn’t get the typhoon – who do I thank? Today’s newspaper tells the story of small towns up and down the NSW coast dealing with flash flooding and, in the case of Lennox Heads further north, a typhoon which came in from the sea and all but flattened the place. What we got were deepest and darkest rain squalls which enveloped Kukka for close to 24 hours. 

If we’d thought we could avoid them, we were dreaming. At first they kept their distance, ominous banks of cloud sliding up and down the near horizon as we ticked off the lovely capes and headlands leading up to and beyond Crowdy Head. We were doing battle with the current – the East Coast Australian Current, that is. Great when you’re going its way, terrible when you’re not. I was reading up on clouds in an excellent summary of a TAFE course on marine meteorology which Shauna lent me, and at one point the sky offered me a sampler of every cloud type from high to low (cirrus to cumulus). Within a few hours however we were down to one type of cloud only – dark grey ones, dumping rain and winds which swung around the clock. Even they couldn’t help us with the current though. At one point I saw the instruments read wind 25 knots and boat speed 3.2 knots. Depressing stuff. 

Oh well, it’s over now. Coastal sailing is no-one’s favorite, what with the current and the heavy duty shipping (our AIS system combined with the radar is a magic combination for combating shipping anxiety). We’ve got nothing on our plate today except for a walk into town. Yesterday’s exhaustion has passed, and being tied up to a pontoon with shore power and water on tap, plus a Laundromat along the boardwalk, still feels novel. Within in a day or two I’ll be getting marina claustrophobia, I know. I wonder what’s on at the movies in Coffs?