The
Moonshiner
Wed 1 Nov 2023 10:19
22 28.106S 166 27.526E
Amedee, New Caledonia
We have enjoyed just over a week in New Caledonia, short but sweet. Noumea was a busy but small city, very French in attitude with scattered colonial relics interspersed between flashy new builds. Daily cruise ships arrive in the main port and there’s a constant hum of traffic. Quite the contrast to Vanuatu where we didn’t see a single car the entire time we were there.
No luck with the outboard so we were chained to a marina whilst sitting out poor forecasts that never came to fruition. We decided to get off the boat for the weekend and hired a van to explore the west coast and do some mountain biking around the world heritage coastline up in Bourail. We hired e-bikes and covered some 60km of amazing trail overlooking the coast. Mostly easy riding but we eventually found some serious off piste single track steep stuff which shaved some skin off my bony prominences!
We checked in to an Airbnb on the beach and happened to be there for the best surf forecast of the year. Ben got out on the foil for some
Prone foiling, along with half of Noumea, whilst Ryan and I went for a run along the beautiful coastline.
We checked out of Noumea on Monday and sailed out to Isle Amedee which is a small island with one of the worlds tallest light houses on marking the western reef. We’d met a few other boats in Noumea waiting for a weather window to cross to Oz who all came out to anchor off Amedee and await the weather.
You can visit the light house and climb to the top for an amazing view over the reef. The lighthouse was built in Paris out of steel panels and then shipped to New Caledonia in 1865.
Tomorrow we will depart for Australia, our last leg of the trip. It’s 850NM but it’s a fairly light forecast so it’ll take us 6-7 days. There is a group of 3 of us leaving together all heading for Coffs Harbour….the race is on!