The morning we left Noumea, our neighbour on "Nicole", Kurt Carlos the Spaniard gave us the rundown on a few anchorages down this way. It was interesting, since some of his experience was quite different to what one reads in the cruising guides. One thing he did tell us was not to miss Ilot Casy. So here we are. Ilot Casy is a small islet towards the Western edge of Baie du Prony. It runs roughly North-South and so provides good protection at anchor from the SE winds. We arrived here yesterday after a short, brisk downwind sail from Rade de l'Est. The trip was remarkable only for us hooking a very large something on the trolling line and then losing it after a battle - took our lure too! Ilot Casy is a total marine sanctuary - a bit like those similar areas of the Barrier Reef off Queensland. No fishing, no anchoring, no touching or taking anything marine. It is completely surrounded by a broad fringing coral reef, except for one small area which is where you can access the beach and islet. There are courtesy moorings here, and we picked one up about 100 metres off the beach. They seem in good repair - a local yacht was on another and we asked if the moorings were OK. He told us they are serviced regularly and are reliable. Well, we are still here this morning! We'll check it out in the water later. After getting everything tidied up after the sail, we went ashore to the beach. In fact, just ONE of the beaches, as we later found out. It is a lovely fine coral sand beach, yellow-white and clean. We were greeted by two huge dogs - really friendly and quite pleased to see us. There is an old hotel behind the beach which is no longer used as such, although the odd backpacker turns up and persuades the "gardien" (caretaker) to open a room. They have fresh water, a public phone and apparently can help with water transport to the town of Prony and onwards to Noumea in an emergency. The hotel buildings are older style hut or "bure" accommodations. Apparently places like this have lost out over the years to the Meridiens, Club Meds and Shangrilas of the trendier parts of New Caledonia. It's a bit sad but at least means that for the time being Casy will stay relatively pristine. There are several walking tracks on the islet, and we took one of them yesterday morning. This led around the Southern edge of the islet and onto the fringing reef. There was a vast bed of corals - various types, sizes and colours, with little striped Nemo-type fish and very big numbers of Beche de Mers. We will go back today at low tide to check it out more thoroughly. On the way there we took a little side track to the "Cimitiere" - the cemetary. Apparently some of the worst convicts from the penal days were sent to this islet as a disciplinary measure, and did a little farming and timber-getting. Later, some settlers had a little village where the old hotel now stands. It was poignant to read a couple of the headstones which detailed the deaths of several inhabitants from the same families in the same year - 1888 - presumably from some contagion or other. We noticed this morning that "Damarri" an OCC boat (Paul and Ute Jeffries from UK), whom we met in Port Moselle, came in overnight, so we'll catch up with them today. We'll probably stay here exploring for a couple of days: it's so quiet and pleasant and there are so many interesting things to see. We'll keep in touch.