Noumea: Tjibaou Cultural Center

Noumea: Noumea Aquarium

We had wonderful memories of our last visit in 2000 to L’aquarium des lagons. The aquarium has been significantly upgraded and remodeled – all to good effect. We have enjoyed several other saltwater aquaria – in New Zealand and Australia. This one remains our favorite.

Sea water is supplied directly from the adjacent Baie des Citrons, the location of Noumea’s very popular swimming beach. And where Adagio has happily anchored for a few nights when the wind was more in the east and north. There is really only room for one boat tucked up in the NE corner.

The exhibits are brilliantly designed and all lit by natural sunlight – except for those requiring special lighting, such as the ultraviolet light required to show off the fluorescent corals.

Do spend some time exploring the aquarium website – it is very informative.

Noumea: Sunsets at Baie de l'Orphelinat

Occasionally, a sunset will knock our socks off, and we had one like this while ADAGIO was at anchor in the Baie de l’Orphelinat. We became amazed at just how huge the sky is, and how many colors of light there are, as we found ourselves below a 360 degree hemisphere of changing marvel.

The fire began at the western horizon, and before long the largest, billowy clouds were aflame as well. Behind all of this splendor, the blue sky peeked boldly through. Invariably, at this moment, a group of Polynesian outrigger canoes glided silently across the water. Pretty soon the fire was licking the shiny windows of our boat, and the colors began to appear on the water as if the paint was melting down from the sky.

Towards the end, the highest clouds in the sky, that we had not previously noticed, became streaks of bright, glowing embers. The billowy clouds became vivid, three dimensional forms, silhouetted before the glowing coals. Because the surface of the sea was rippled, the sky colors blended together on its surface into a warm rose liquid, streaked with darker cloud reflections. .

The eastern horizon was showing off its enormous areas of glowing pink and gold and brilliant blue. In the east grey clouds were silhouetted before a golden sky, but the clouds in the west were rose colored shapes against the grey, blue, pink and golden sky. The lower clouds became billowy blobs while the high level clouds were intricacies of lace and ruffles. We were unable to predict what the sky would be like from minute to minute. The Grande Finale was a blood-red and golden sky and sea.

Ile des Pins: Convict ruins and Hike up Pic Nga

The sights to see in the Isle of Pines is an assortment of great natural beauty, Kunie buildings of both traditional and modern designs, and ruins from the colonial era when France transported political prisoners to New Caledonia for incarceration. We walked west from Kuto Bay to the convict ruins, where numerous crumbling buildings were becoming overgrown by garden and native plants. As we learned in Australia, the transportation of prisoners from Europe to islands of the South Pacific was an unimaginable undertaking. It would have been akin to today’s earthlings sending our prisoners to the moon.

Ile des Pins: Kunie dance performance at Kuto

Whenever a cruise ship comes to the Isle of Pines, there is a grand welcoming of the passengers, and folk-dance performances. We had always missed seeing the dancers during our earlier visits, so we were looking forward to this one. Earlier in the season, the High Chief had banned cruise ships due to the danger of passengers bringing the flu virus to the island. This was the first cruise ship to arrive this season. The male dancers had painted their bodies with white paint, often representing the human skeleton. Costumes were made of dried ferns, pandanus leaves, grasses and coconut fronds. Dancers were accompanied by men beating on tall drums, and singing women in lovely flowered dresses. The grassy “stage” was set directly in front of where ADAGIO was anchored, forming a lovely backdrop for the show.

Ile des Pins: Walk from Vao to Kanumera Bay

Andrew, Ian and Dorothy grabbed a lift to the farmers market in Vao from our friend Cleo. We shopped for produce, toured the town of Vao, then walked back to Kuto Bay. Along the way we saw a lot of local color. Walking through the forest of Bugny trees along the shores of Kanumera Bay was a hilight.

The Visitors’ Center in Vao displays a photo gallery on their walls showing elders of the town, recent acitivities and events and arts and crafts made by the locals. The church was furnished with hand carved wooden religious objects. The seat of government is called the Mairie. From the road we watched farmers preparing their fields for the traditional planting of yams. Enormous columnaris pines graced our way, and Kanumera Bay cooled our feet. Back aboard ADAGIO, the guys helped Steve repair the broken turning block.

S/V KYOGLE: tsunami dispatch from Nuitoputapu, Tonga

Brian Taylor’s first hand report was forwarded to us by Jane and Michel DeRidder on S/V MAGIC DRAGON, with this prolog:

We met New Zealander Brian Taylor in Vava’u Tonga a few years back where he goes even more often than we did. He is welcomed wherever he travels as he is a musician – piano. This last cruise of his through Samoa and Tonga is more exciting than usual. Whale, earthquake, tsunami, you name it, not to mention Apia at the time of changeover from right hand drive to left hand drive. What a lot of help yachts bring to stricken islanders as you will see…

From: brian taylor Sent: Saturday, October 10, 2009 7:03 AM Subject: KYOGLE

Hi All a !!!bit of an update on the last month or so. Rita and I sailed up to Samoa from Tonga and this was quite uneventful apart from a whale “exploding” alongside the yacht…it was just enjoying itself by leaping out of the water. The resultant splash was so big and close that I heard it above the engine noise…and I am fairly deaf!

We spent a few weeks in Apia..doing the touristy things…Aggie Greys…Robert Louis Stevensons house and grave, touring the island and watching the changeover from right hand drive to left hand drive.. No accidents were reported with the change over and the one incident of someone travelling the wrong way in Apia ,was very loudly corrected with about 20 horns being blown and much laughter….turned out that the offender was a policeman!

Rita left to return to Perth and I visited Savii and stayed at a harbour called Assau.Much drama when entering the harbour as the passage through the reef is very clear only if you approach it from one particular angle . I checked out the passage for about ten minutes before heading in.Wrong!! I managed to abort the manouver with about 20 meters from ending up on the reef. I called up the other yacht in the harbour and received some help in finding the pass and came in without any futher problems. The other yacht had taken 3 probing attempts to enter so was quite sympathetic to my situation ! So whenever other yachts were trying to find the entrance I would take my dingy out and make out that I was a guide dog.

Left Assau the day before the big force 8 earthquake and tsunami, and headed for Nuitoputapu in the northern Tongan group.I was approx 100/ 150 miles from the earthquake centre and the effect on Kyogle was a bit scary. She started shaking as if you were driving a car with all the wheels about to fall off. I assumed that I had major trouble with my transmission system so stopped the engine and stopped the prop shaft from turning… still shaking…checked the sails to see if they were flapping madly…. No problems there. The shaking stops and then restarts for a short while longer. I was talking on my long range radio a few minutes later and was then advised that a tsunamii warning was in force.

Carried on sailing to Nuitoputapu where two other yachts were in the lagoon.The water in the lagoon was very dirty with many large trees floating about. Using my binos I could not see very much on shore.. more like things were missing… there was a car in the water and a house about half a mile off the shore. The next morning I went ashore to some pretty heavy devistation. The village where the wharf is, was completely empty as the houses had been swept away. The force of the wave was huge..leveling even cycloneproof? reinforced concrete block structures.The second village was on higher ground and was relatively free of damage and the third village where the main government offices are/were was badly damaged…they could not even find the government offices! The Treasury safe was found later on ..sitting on the reef ! The money inside did not need laundering but it did need drying.

So we now have three yachts in the lagoon ….and these provided the only communications with the outside world with our HF radios and one sat phone..all other land based communication was drowned.The yacht Tortuga (Wellington yacht) did all of the liason work…brilliant effort. Panacea(Swedish yacht) had the sat phone..great invention really. Both these guys got to work on the water system(bore pump repair) and I joined them when not fixing water logged outboards.We provided whatever we could in the way of bedding clothing food and in my case becaused I could pump out my main fuel tank…100 odd litres of diesel fuel.

It was good to have a NZ Airforce Orion aircraft circle us and we were able to make contact with them and pass back info and requests for water pump parts to the NZ government. Those boys(and girls) in the Orions do a tremendous job. Another yacht arrives (Red Herring ) also from Wellington. I had sailed with its skipper from Wellington to Tonga some 15 years earlier. He quickly got into repairing generator sets.

Prior to Red Herrings arrival, he had seen a smoke flare on the volcano island about 5 miles off Nuitoputapu so he had diverted and was directed around that island to a sort of landing area . they notice a bouy in the water and made to tie up to it…..turns out it was a bouy ok ,but there was a man attached to it… he had used the bouy as a float and had swum out passed the reef . Niko was the man and he had previously taken his 25 foot boat over to the volcano to warn the 3 or 4 families .The tsunami hit the islands just after he arrved . The passing yacht was his only way back home to Nuitoputapu as his boat was in two pieces ..up in the trees !

I later took Niko and one other islander back to the volcano island to collect the outboard motor off his wrecked boat . This was a bit tricky… I towed my dingy behind Kyogle and when we got close to the volcao islands reef Niko took the dingy and headed for shore .. I noticed that he was doing circles outside of the reef opening but could not pay that much attention to what was going on as I had to keep Kyogle safe. Well after a while Niko shoots through a gap in the reef amongst a lot of white water and returns 20 mins later with 3 more islanders who need to go back to Nuitoputapu. He then returns to shore and I was able to see how see what was actually going on with his landing. ….. Ok. he shoots through the gap in the reef and as he approaches the shore two men wade go into into the breaking waves and hold my very best dingy between them to stop it from being crashed onto beach. The transfer of people/bags/ and finally the 40 hp outboard is then acheved and the two men holding the dingy in place release it and out the gap she shoots.

On the last transfer, one of the men who was holding the dingy in the surf, also wanted to come back to Nuitoputapu so he had to swim out passed the reef where Niko picked him up for the transfer back to Kyogle.

That same day a Tongan Navy vessel arrived ,the airport was cleared of rubbish and a small plane was able to land with medical help . There were very few injuries thank goodness but 8 people lost their lives which is quite a sizable number …the island only has about 1000 inhabitants of which some three hunded are /were without housing. Tents food supplies and water was brought in by the navy ship. A few days after, the other Tonga Naval vessel and the French navy had a warship from Tahiti at the island ,yachties in Vavau had donated sent up by plane about half a tonne of food a futher 6 yachts had arrrived with supplies …… the immediate needs were being met fairly well . So the three Kiwi and one Swedish yacht left for Vavau and we are now on moorings here and have access to email again !!!

Panacea took some interesting photos during the wave action… Tortuga fending off/ dodging a house in the lagoon…this was the floating house I mentioned above..I will send the pictures later to those of you with a nautical frame of mind.

The amazing thing was the wave was about 4 meters high as it crossed the reef and the yachts in the lagoon had let out all available chain and indeed Tortuga was trying to motor forward as well…. both yachts survived but with some damage to anchoring points on the yachts.

Thats about it for while. Brian

The Pixar movies: Rank 'em!

At Armchair Commentary. Here is David Horiuchi’s ranking:

The first two Toy Story movies are playing in 3-D theaters. Up is coming out on DVD and Blu-ray pretty soon. So heck, why not take a shot at ranking all the Pixar movies? Well, maybe because the Pixar movies are so uniformly good that judging them against each other becomes really, really hard? Seriously, it’s hard to beat their combination of great storytelling, visual brilliance, inspired voice casting, and emotional resonance, and there are a number of them that I would consider among my favorite movies of all time. It’s easier to rank the Star Trek movies, since only four (now five) really matter, and the rest kind of fill out the list. Or the Harry Potter movies because there are so few of them. But we’re not here to take the easy way out! Here’s my personal ranking (just the feature films, not the shorts, because that would be even harder), subject to change at any time, or till Toy Story 3 comes out. –David

1. The Incredibles: I love, love, love this movie and have seen it more times than I can count. And if I ran across it on TV right now, I’d watch it again. It helps that I’m a superhero fan, but it’s a perfect combination of action, humor, and poignancy.
2. Monsters Inc.: I love this one too–a great concept and an absolute blast to watch. Billy Crystal and John Goodman have great rapport, and “Kitty!” has become one of those magical movie words.
3. Toy Story: Our introduction to the wonder of Pixar, and a way of seeing toys that we really hadn’t seen before but will never forget.
4. Up: I may be ranking this one a bit high because it’s the one I’ve most recently seen, but the early part of the movie was totally unexpected and magical for me, and by itself worthy of a high ranking on this list. Keyword: “Squirrel!”
5. Finding Nemo: A really outstanding film that could probably be ranked higher, but I’ve never loved this one as much as, say, its predecessor, Monsters Inc. It is fabulous to watch and a lot of fun, though. Keyword: “Mine.”
6. Wall-E: Might be at a bit of a disadvantage because it’s the only one I didn’t see in theaters, but it’s a real charmer (and like Up, almost two totally different movies). Key random musical moment: “Put on Your Sunday Clothes.”
7. Ratatouille: Another really fun film that could be ranked higher for its eye-catching depiction of food and France. Rats in the kitchen, though… Ick.
8. Toy Story 2: Yeah, it’s one of the best sequels of all time. Yeah, I ranked it this low. Yeah, I feel bad about it.
9. A Bug’s Life: Pixar’s second film is a remake of the Japanese classic Seven Samurai, and again, on any other list (or any other day) it would rank highly.
10. Cars: This was my easiest selection of the list because it’s the only Pixar film that disappointed me. It’s their own fault for raising the own bar so high–I said to a friend, “It’s good, but it’s no Pixar film”–but it didn’t really feel like their hearts were in it. It’s also the only one (other than Up) I’ve seen only once. I’d probably enjoy it if I saw it again, but I don’t think it would climb up the list.

Ile des Pins: Tsunami alert – 3

We sent this “all clear” at 08 Oct 1351 NCT:

Well, alert cancelled. We have re-anchored in Kuto Bay, and reconnected to the iNet wifi (we have a 2-month subscription). We have a somewhat better wireless signal than before we bailed out of the anchorage. Another catamaran took our spot (bad manners) so we found an alternative just to the NW of the hotel Kou Bugny. The new spot seems to be closer to different iNet antenna.

We seemed to be the only yacht with Inmarsat-C. We received a single URGENT catgegory EGC at UTC 2009/10/08 00:40:47 that said the following:

PAN PAN

RCC AUSTRALIA 080037Z OCT 2009 AUSSAR 2009/6984

CANCEL MY 072334 UTC OCT 2009 URGENCY MESSAGE.

TSUNAMI WARNING CANCELLED.

which we rebroadcast on VHF noting that the EGC was ambiguous as to the scope of the cancellation (Queensland waters or the region?). About 1120 another yacht reported on VHF that they had returned to Kuto Bay as though to anchor but were signalled by gendarmes on the beach to “stay out”. But a few minutes later we hear a relayed report that Radio Noumea had issued a cancellation. We were the yacht furthest out in deep water, so were almost the last back in Kuto Bay.

We just found a map showing the quake locations.

Several of the bulletins found on the net mentioned “sirens in New Caledonia”. We were thinking – “they should have tsunami sirens here” instead of basically a word of mouth alert scheme. Evidently Noumea has sirens, but definitely no sirens here in Isle des Pins.

Cheers,

Steve & Dorothy

Ile des Pins: Tsunami alert – 2

We sent this bulletin out 08 Oct 1058 NCT:

Not to alarm you – but wanted to inform that the gendarmes raced around this morning with an alert that either or earthquake or tsunami had struck Vanuata (north of us) and all boats should clear out of the bay ASAP. The estimated time of arrival of the tsunami in Newcal is 1100 to 1110. Ten minutes from now.

We have done that, now out in depths of 25 meters or more – as of 1055 NCT, 2355 UTC.

On 16 we just heard a bulletin from another cruiser that the “Loyalty Islands have been evacuated”. That’s part of Newcal to the east of us.

Will update when we have something to report…

Cheers, Steve & Dorothy