After 3 weeks anchored off Noumea we still haven't found a good weather window to sail for New Zealand. It is still a little early as many boats don't leave until well into November, but others have left. We like nice comfortable passages with no breakages and as little drama as possible, so we continue to wait. We are however getting some very nice weather around New Caledonia, so we decided to haul anchor and explore a few of the nearby islets.

Our first objective was Amedee Island about 12 miles south of Noumea on the edge of the fringing reef. There is a beautiful old lighthouse here that was placed in 1862 and is still working. The lighthouse was prefabricated in Paris, disassembled then set up here and is the tallest metal lighthouse in the world. At night it was kind of cool watching the big lighthouse do its thing. The little island and surrounding reef is a nature preserve that seems very popular with the sea turtles, which were quite abundant in the clear water under and around the boat. The turtles were not at all shy and could be approached quite closely. Unfortunately, the sea snakes were also quite abundant and not too shy. The snakes were all over the beach and one swam round and round the boat looking for a way to board. On the upside, there was a geocache here!

Next stop was Maeitre Island which has a big resort and is only 3 miles from Noumea. It is also quite popular with the yachties and since we arrived on Saturday, there was at least 30 boats here. Still it's a big anchorage with lots of mooring balls and room to anchor. I took advantage of the clear water to scrub all the growth off our anchor chain accumulated after our 3 weeks in Noumea. I don't think we've ever been on the hook in one place that long before. Anyway, we hiked all over Maeitre finding several more geocaches in the process.

After Maeitre, we moved up to Baie de Citron which is on a large public beach in the suburbs of Noumea. Although we anchored well off the designated swimming area, it turns out the water skiers use this area at the crack of dawn and started ripping back and forth past our boat at 0500 local... We originally picked this spot because it is less than a mile from another small resort island called Ile aux Canard (Duck Island), which is also a nature preserve, also has geocaches and was also littered with pink tourists. They do have an underwater snorkeling trail with a nice variety of corals and some big fish. Sadly, we were skunked on the cache.

We are now anchored back in Noumea, again watching for a weather window; possibly this weekend if the forecasts hold together. Last night we were below watching a movie when Wendy heard something rubbing against the boat right outside the window. I went on deck to discover 3 blacked out rubber boats full of blacked out French soldiers clinging to our transoms. Unsure what this situation called for I opened loudly with: "Whaddup y'all?" From the dark came: "You American?" I replied: "Yup". The dark answered: "Sorry" and they just drifted away into the night... God bless America. Happy that I hadn't had to go hand-to-hand with a dozen Marines we went back to our popcorn.

There is a strong French Navy presence here with several frigates and helicopters and we see the men training at various exercises during the day. I suppose these guys may have been practicing their nighttime stealth approach on the anchored yachts. Or maybe they just smelled the popcorn...