The peace and quiet of Baie Uie
Position 22:20.64S 166:45.10E Date 1155 (UTC +11) Tuesday 21 October 2014 Distance run – 20.9nm over the ground, 20.7nm through the water Time from Noumea –3hrs 40mins Noumea to Baie Uie And the wind was on the nose so it was a motor bash, fortunately with a mainly favourable current. Our destination was to return to Baie Prony but enough as enough and we decided to overnight in Baie Uie. The bonus at the end was that we had a large sheltered bay, at least from the prevailing south easterly winds, all to ourselves. Unusually our first attempt at anchoring in only 5 metres of water was unsuccessful and we happily dragged. The second attempt held firm and did not move, perhaps we landed on a patch of thick weed, once moving however it was not going to reset on its own. The surface of the hills are made up of a semi-hard orange mud rock that proved easy to surface mine and also very susceptible to erosion and land slip. It is difficult to know what are old mine workings and what is nature. There was even a river to explore in the dinghy. The colour derived from the soil taints everything Caduceus is there, in the centre well off the entrance to the river The anchor took a great deal of cleaning off when it came up covered in glutinous orange mud. |