French Civilization and Leaving for Australia - Noumea, Grand Terre, New Caledonia
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Fri 16 Oct 2009 22:50
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22:16.600S 166:26.408E
Monday, October 12th, we left the busy anchorage at
Uere Island and motored the few miles to Noumea and Port Moselle Marina.
Ahhh.....marina life. This is the first time since New Zealand that we've
been tied up in a 'proper' marina. 'Proper' meaning floating docks with
individual fingers for each boat and no Med-mooring necessary
(Med-moor: dropping the anchor and backing up to a single dock shared by
all in trailer park style). This is the life. Lots of power and a
water spigot almost all to ourselves. We splurged and took 4 minute
showers instead of the usual 3. Great luxury. New this year is
decent wifi on the boat, so that's a huge plus. Amazing how all of our
favorite stomping grounds (Musket Cove, Fiji, Port Vila, Vanuatu and now Noumea)
have added good wifi within the past year. You wouldn't think such
progress could be made in the South Pacific.
Noumea is about three times the size of Port Vila,
but it feels more like ten times. It's got that big city feel with lots of
traffic (not just vans and ni-Van trucks, but normal cars, a heavy percentage of
which are Mercedes), traffic lights (first time we've seen them since New
Zealand), graffiti and that lingering sewage smell that seeps out of the gutters
and hangs in the air around the marina on a still night. It's not really a
beautiful city (you might have noticed there are no pictures below), but it is
jam packed with French culture, which can be fun if you have a lot of
money. French food, French wine, French cheeses, French bread, French
pastries, French chocolate, French fashion, French theater. We've watched
the value of the dollar shrink as the US stock market climbs. Why can't
the two ever seem to get together? Either our future looks bright based on
the market or our present looks bright based on a high dollar value, but never
the two shall meet. So we are feeling good about future retirement years
while we spend $10 for a container of ice cream. But it's French ice
cream, so it's really good.
We've been here five days and plan to leave
tomorrow (Saturday, October 17th) for Brisbane, Australia. We've split our
time in Noumea between getting ourselves and the boat ready for the
trip and enjoying as much of the French culture as we felt we could
afford. That and socializing with all the boaters we've met along the way
this year that are now congregating in Noumea in preparation for their exodus to
either New Zealand or Australia for the cyclone season. The Port Moselle
Marina is extremely large and has one dock designated for visitors
only. We can walk the entire length of the visitor's dock (45 slips),
and almost every boat is one we know well or have at least seen in one port or
anchorage during our travels this year and last. And this doesn't count
the other forty visiting yachts that are anchored in the harbor and also
familiar to us. I know I've said it before, but the cruising boating
world is very small. The same boats just keep cruising around and
around. You'd think we'd all be dizzy by now.
Things are looking good for our trip to
Australia. We won't be traveling with a rally, but there are so many boats
heading that way this time of year that we will be sailing in the vicinity of at
least six other boats. We will keep in touch with most of
them once/day on the long range radio (SSB), so it'll be a
mini-rally. We also hired a weather guy out of Australia to advise us via
email daily. He sent us his resume and after reading it we felt
embarrassed that he will be taking time out of his day to update our
measly weather for us. He has worked as a meteorologist for many years and
is currently working on his PhD in the area. He has acted as 'weather
strategist' for many prestigious sailing races and participated in a few
himself. We are pretty sure he can handle our weather needs. The
trip to Brisbane is almost due west so when the southeast trade winds kick
in like they are supposed to 24 hours after we leave, we should have
good wind on the beam - which means we will sail fast and heel only a
little bit. All good because if we heel to the right more than a
little bit, frozen casseroles fly out of the microwave when I attempt to heat
them up. That and the toilet seat cover smashes into my back causing
me to become a toilet sandwich. Very annoying. Don says a fair
amount of heel is good for sleeping. I say I'd rather sacrifice sleep for
problem-free microwaving and pain-free peeing.
If all goes according to the plan, we should
arrive in Brisbane by early afternoon next Thursday (October 22nd). This
is the longest sail we've done since.....since that massive 17-day leg from the
Galapagos to the Marquesas back in March of 2008 (not counting the trips to
and from New Zealand because we stopped at Norfolk Island on the way down and
the Minerva reefs on the way up). Nothing like a five day sailing trip to
get the alcohol out of our system and lose the excess weight
gained from overindulgence in French culture.
More from the high seas on Sunday (your
Saturday).
Anne
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