We last wrote from Baie Uie, about to leave for Ilot Casy to sit out an anticipated windy spell over the weekend. We weighed anchor from Uie, and left a little before "First Light". Some time later we had a call on the VHF from Bernie, saying their anchor had wrapped around a coral head and they couldn't get off. We motored back in and found that they had had the bad luck to anchor on a very large old Admiralty pattern anchor that some other vessel had long ago abandoned there, and which had grown a coating of coral. It looked like they would not be able to get this heavy old bit of hardware up, but after motoring around it a bit and putting some decent force into lifting it - we could hear their windlass straining - they got the amalgam of two anchors off the bottom. With John's help in the water they got a rope around the Admiralty anchor and managed to separate them. They tried to give the old anchor to some local fishermen but they couldn't get them interested, so they dumped it away from the main anchorage.
We sailed through Canal Woodin and had great tide assistance which added two knots to our speed. We came up at Ilot Casy and went ashore for a walk around the old deserted hotel in amongst the now-neglected but still pretty gardens and on the East side of the island where there is a white-sand beach and some interesting sub-tropical forest. The promised strong SE change was far more moderate than forecast so we up-anchored on Saturday morning and left for Ile des Pins. What followed was the best sail of the trip - we had 12 - 15 knots forward of the beam, swell less than a metre and full sun. With genoa, staysail and full main "Destiny" managed 6 to 7 knots all the way and we pulled into Baie de Kuto at Ile des Pins about 16:30. The anchorage is large and is fairly evenly of 4 or 5 metres depth throughout. There are a couple of large coral heads in the bay in the anchorage area but these are easily seen and avoided.
This is a delightful anchorage. There is good shelter from the prevailing SE breeze, the water is clean and turquoise in colour, and there is good holding on a sand bottom. The beach and island are the typical "Tropical Paradise" straight from Central Casting. Coconut palms, banana palms and colonial pines line a clean, shiny white and squeaky clean beach. The loudest sound most of the time is the swell breaking on the coral on the other side of a peninsula separating the anchorage from the weather on the other side. Anyone not happy with this should be thrown overboard.
So yesterday, Sunday, we walked to some old colonial prison ruins and did a bit of gentle hiking to look around. Nature has the upper hand here - everything green grows at a rate you can almost see while standing watching. Butterflies of marvellous colours are everywhere, and birds are prolific - especially some quite attractively-hued local finches which get around in great packs grazing the grasses for seeds. Walking along the roads the loudest sounds you hear are the multi-layered calls of numerous different bird species near and far. Later we had a snorkel in Baie de Kanumera on the other side of the peninsula - nice but not spectacular formations and fish, but quite warm water and totally deserted. A few black-tipped reef sharks linger in the anchorage and elsewhere looking for scraps and small prey, but these are no menace to humans and the water here is quite safe.
So today we are off ashore again, to find the Boulangerie which is a couple of km up the road, and we may walk the 6 km to Vao, the island's "capital village" to see what there is there.
It's going to be tough to drag ourselves away from this one!
We are putting some new pics up here as we have access to wireless internet courtesy of a small-scale up-market hotel at the end of the bay.
Bye for now from us!