Where now, skipper?

This is like a last gasper, the blog entry you write when you're embarking on a long-haul knowing that your habit is going to cause you a fair bit of grief. Frankly, I'm surprised at how tetchy I've been getting when the link with the online world is down, even when I understand the reasons why. Wasn't I the one who was going to sea with a library of high-brow books and Scrabble for a change of pace? Ah yes, but the unspoken assumption behind this arcane position was that it would be underpinned by fast and reliable internet access. I had to be dreaming..


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Lagoon sailing, under genoa and reefed main, en route to Ilot Amadee and leaving behind us the cloud-attracting mountain spine of the main island.


We've been floating around in the lagoon these past few days, never more than 12 nautical miles from the Big Smoke of Noumea. The seas have been calm, the trade winds fair (don't lose me here). How easy for those little signals to zip across the water, I'd find myself thinking. So why don't they? Well, it's all a question of dollars, I imagine. Just as, for obvious reasons, little Kukka is not equipped with all the communications bells and whistles that some of the bigger, more glamorous boats tied up on the same pontoon carry (Te Okupu, a high-end charter catamaran from Auckland, pops up on my screen as having its own wireless network), so small Pacific island nations make do with fewer, and slower, technology options. Duh. Cruising 101.


We have decided to clear out of Noumea tomorrow - that is, make the rounds of the customs and  immigration offices and the capitaine du port and, finally, organise to buy duty-free diesel. On Saturday, all going well, we'll head out to the open sea again, bound for Vanuatu. It's not that we've got anything against New Caledonia. Far from it. The place is tailor-made for holidaying. We anchored off Ilot Maitre, a speck of land surrounded by a vast coral reef, only three miles from Noumea. The cute pseudo-thatched huts strung out over the water (below) belong to a resort.

Though the water at this time of year is cool (I gave my new full-length wet suit its first outing), there's nothing so idyllic as floating among and over multicoloured fish within easy reach of your very own boat. The situation was a little different at Ilot Amedee, another dot in the lagoon, with reputedly great snorkel and dive spots. Here, we were close to the opening in the reef which protects much of the southern part of New Caledonia's Grande Terre (main island). Ilot Amedee is famous for its beautiful lighthouse, which guides sailors (ourselves included) into the lagoon with its amazingly powerful beam. The French do like a tower, and this one, commissioned under Napoleon III (who remembers him?) and built in Paris in 1862, bolts together like a giant meccano set peppercorn grinder, so elegant and superior.

Back to the water though.We'd had a wonderful sail down to Amadee in the morning, and by the time we'd walked around the island, the day had gone off the boil. Tomorrow we'll go snorkelling, I thought. After breakfast, remembering that Shauna had told me that sea turtles like paw paw skin, I began to throw the peelings of half a paw paw overboard. There was a sudden and violent commotion beside the boat. Instead of a gentle turtle, I had a cluster (I thought eight or nine) of smallish sharks fighting for the vege scraps, as well as a couple of ordinary fish, big 'uns. Needless to say, I peeled the rest of the paw paw for photographic effect. The result is here for you to ponder. I didn't ponder long. Snorkelling was definitely off.

The full moon rose behind the lighthouse, and on an unusually still night, this was a place for romance. If hearing the surf break on the reef nearby did somewhat ruffle our peace of mind, that's because we're still new to the tropics where all that pretty coral has a distinctly dark side. In the picture below, Shauna and John, like the very thorough cruisers that they are, are out in their dinghy with their portable depth sounder, testing for coral bommies (as outgrowths of coral on the sea floor are called) which may cause them grief when Destiny swings on, in this case, her mooring. And their boat is steel! What were the plastic boat people doing?