02.11.2023

Another new country already!  Not really Escapade style to be moving so fast. 

But here are the red hills and pine clad shores of New Caledonia.

Our passage planning worked out perfectly and we arrived at the entrance to the Havannah Pass at 6am with the sun rising and the tide flushing us in.

We are entering the biggest reef-fringed lagoon in the world!

It is impeccably charted and marked.  Lighthouses, well-lit channel markers and cardinals all the way.  A bit of a culture shock arriving from Vanuatu.  

The contrasts between the two island nations are even more striking when you step ashore in Noumea.  One day we are voyaging through the palm thatched villages of darkest Melanesia, land of volcanoes, cyclones, earthquakes and (until surprisingly recently) headhunters.

Two days later we seem to have arrived in the South of France.

Noumea

Noumea is smart town built around the port and a central park square.  It has good restaurants, a great market for fresh local fish and produce, and a miniature Notre Dame up on the hill.

Many foreign yachts circumnavigating choose to sail past New Caledonia, it’s expensive, sharky and slightly off-course if you are following the classic route out of the Pacific, up through Vanuatu and the Solomons.

But for French boats it’s a natural stopover after a long Pacific crossing.

Slim women smoke cigarettes whilst walking their small dogs through the square. There’s no shortage of pastis or pétanque, and if you want to wash down your plat du jour with a vin de table and do a bit of shrugging, well there really is no finer place this side of Tahiti.

French is the main language spoken here.  On Escapade of course we take this in our stride.  Auriane is a French native, Dawn has a firm grasp of the grammar while Bryan and I can slip into a strongly accented Franglais at the drop of a chapeau.

Wait, sharky?

Yes Noumea does have a bit of a problem with people getting a bit… well, eaten by sharks. 

Whenever I have mentioned this part of our itinerary to anyone from Fiji to New Zealand I have been advised to ‘watch out for the fish’ or ‘don’t go in the water’.  Surely they are sensationalising a bit of a local issue?  Apparently not.  There are large scary signs everywhere warning ‘BAIGNADE INTERDITE’ and total bans on all watersports during the regular ’Shark hunting weeks’.  Yikes.  Bryan went straight to the kite shop and bought a ’Shark Band’ which apparently repels any attack with a powerful magnet worn on a wrist or ankle. Or all four if you’re really concerned.  Which you may be.  One 4m bull shark landed this year was found to contain two human hands.  From different people.

The good news (unless you live in Noumea) is that the attacks have all been in Noumea.

So it’s really those inner-city urban sharks you need to worry about.

I plan to be spending time in the pristine waters of that massive lagoon, where the sharks are much better behaved and there are no swimming bans.

Grande Terre

Is grande indeed, the main island is over 200 miles long with lots to explore by land and sea.

A mix of French and Pacific cultures blended with the indigenous Kanak tribes. 

The land is rich in minerals, whole mountain ranges made of nickel ore, thrown up by ancient volcanos.

We are lucky to have expert local knowledge to guide us, Christian and Sylvie have lived here for 35 years. When not practising medicine they are both windsurfing, foiling and sailing their catamaran ‘Placebo’. 

Their daughter is our friend Sarah who lives on Maui and will arrive here for a rare visit next week.

It’s windy!  This new El Niño season has ended a long period of light winds here.  Now the trades seem to be steady at 25kts day and night.

The locals are loving it.  Windsports are big in NC. ‘Le planche a voile’ is alive and well. The locals are racing longboards, wave sailing, wind foiling and winging.

We met Sarah at her old windsurf club, where kids are being coached in slalom and freestyle windsurfing. It’s clearly a great training ground.  Local hotshot Antoine was landing tricks I couldn’t even spell.  Sarah grew up with all this and is now a world champion. 

North of Noumea

16.11.23

The forecast looks like we can score some great windsurfing conditions up north.

We set off on Thursday to island-hop our way up the lagoon.

After two weeks here the trades have finally stopped blowing for a couple of days, so we enjoy tranquil empty anchorages, with Bryan perfecting his early morning squid jigging along the way.  

On Saturday morning we anchor in the beautiful sandy lagoon by Tenia island and dinghy over to surf the playful wave wrapping in through the pass.

That night we watched the sunset, anchored alone in the glassy transparent water. Smooth, tranquil, turquoise, so perfect. It won’t last…

The Tenia Sessions

I first read about Tenia many years ago. A perfect windsurfing wave, but inconveniently located on an outer reef pass, far from land.

To get there is a logistical exercise.  I think we could anchor Escapade just inside the pass, if it was calm.  But in windsurfable conditions the trades blow right across that spot, the fetch and chop would make it impossible. 

Even our beautiful lagoon anchorage by the Tenia island gets too rough, so we need to move Escapade to a sheltered bay two miles away.

But that puts us 4 miles downwind from the wave spot.  No way we’re going to windsurf back there in 25kts.  

So what we need is Jackaroo.

Marc lives nearby and Jackaroo is his 20’ aluminium powerboat that will take us and our gear to the pass.  He can also rescue us if (when) we break gear. 

We were very lucky to have Sarah and Christian to organise all of this for us. They have been coming up here to ride waves for decades.

On Sunday they arrive in the family catamaran “Placebo’, we all meet up to discuss the forecast, which is looking almost perfect.

We’re set for three days of long period swell, starting Monday with 2 metres @19 seconds.

20kt SE tradewinds and the neap tides will give us a safe depth over the reef most of the day.

Sarah’s briefing: Monday is the warm-up day, “get dialled in”,  Tuesday the swell peaks, “no mistakes”, Wednesday is the last of the swell, so go “all out”.

Those three days are a bit of a blur now.  Bumpy rides upwind with a boat full of us and our gear. Taking turns to rig and launch from Jackaroo.

The first morning we arrived to see a huge set peeling down the reef towards us.  The froth levels were pretty high, Bryan had to be physically restrained while Sarah rigged her sail and showed us the way.

Auriane and Dawn took turns to be photographer of the day, while Jackaroo bucked at her bumpy anchorage at the end of the reef.

The wave riding was sublime.  Big blue walls, perfect wind direction and a reasonably safe shoulder to head for in deep water.

The swell just pumped for 3 days and we all sailed until we could sail no more.

Everyone took a few swims, but the only sacrifice was Bryan’s favourite 4m wing which was eaten whole by a big blue monster.

It was a privilege to watch Sarah sail in these conditions, stylish and fearless, always on the bomb wave of any set. The bigger it gets the better she likes it.

Christian enjoyed a return to his favourite wave spot, windsurfing and foiling, sharing waves with his daughter.

Bryan put in the hours winging, getting deeper in to the pocket with every session, before switching to windsurfing gear for another way to play.

I can’t believe our luck. It’s late in the season for this wave to get so good.  More luck that our trip coincided with Sarah’s visit and it all came together.

It was pretty special, the only thing that would have made it better was if Sarah’s husband Casey could have been with us to get his share of the waves.  We missed you Casey! 

Most of the time we were alone there, except when local hero and PWA rider Antoine Albert arrived in a rib with his friends and put on a whole other show of power riding.

At the end of each day Marc would drive us back downwind to our waiting catamarans where we barely had the energy to eat before sleeping.

Southbound

The next problem with Tenia is that at some point you will probably want to leave and sail back to the south, in to the teeth of those tradewinds!

Christian advised an early departure so the windlass was rumbling at 04.40 one morning and we snuck south before the wind picked up for the day.

Our next stop was Mbe Kouen, where we spent a couple of days with flat water and steady breeze. Sylvie was winging around the anchorage with great style, and conditions were perfect for Dawn and Auriane’s wing training with coach Bryan.

Then it was time to return to Noumea, supplies were running low, Auriane was craving the boulangerie.

The Deer Hunter

27.11.23

Our new friend Marc is a man of many talents.  As well as running surf trips and fishing charters on Jackaroo, he and his wife run a cattle ranch up in the hills.

We were invited to stay in an old farm building and spend a few days up north.  Would we like to go hunting for wild deer?

Well Bryan is keen on firearms, and we were all ready to get off the boat and do something different for a while, so why not?

At 4.30am the first light of day is just appearing as a pink glow behind the mountains.  We are all up and hiking with Marc and his dog Nike.  

The huge full moon sits on a ridge line while the sky colours and brightens, a magical morning for us, partly just the sheer novelty of being in the hills after so much sea time.

Wild deer are a problem for ranchers here, damaging trees and munching prime pasture.

Marc and Nike are regularly patrolling the farm and the freezer is full of ‘cerf’. (venison).

But those cerf are wily and wary, despite us sneaking around in total silence(!) they can hear us and smell us and avoid getting shot.

The closest we got was a view of bounding bobtails as they scarpered out of range.

It was an epic hike through the high country, followed by a meat-free barbecue.

The terrain is wonderful, we went for a dip in the shallow river that runs through the land, protected by a bamboo forest.

Marc is a great host, if you’re ever out that way.

Cyclogenesis

01.12.23

Back on board our morning weather check demands more attention than usual. The forecasts show a new low pressure feature deepening and starting to spin.  It will be way up in the Soloman Islands but it could become another cyclone over the next week or so and then New Caledonia is a potential target.

We consult with our weather router John Martin whose advice is pretty clear: “Time to get out of Dodge”.

Looks like we’re sailing to Australia.

One last trip to the patisserie, a few hours scrubbing the hulls clean (for Australian bio-security), a long bike ride touring the offices of Customs, Immigration and the Capitannerie du Port.  We are cleared to leave.

So it’s au revoir and merci beaucoup to Christian, Sylvie and Sarah. Thanks for showing us around your beautiful lagoon and sharing those unforgettable waves.