October 12, 2019 Ile des Pins, New Caledonia

We had some rolling last night associated with high full moon tides, but we slept OK.

We were up early because today is scooter day! Before we left the boat we emptied the two 20L jerry jugs of diesel into the tank. It was trickier than it sounds because we wanted to make sure we didn’t spill it. We certainly don’t want it in this pristine water, but also it makes quite an ugly mess if you spill it on the boat. We were successful and didn’t spill a drop. We are back up to full according to the fuel gauge. Next trick will be figuring out how to fill the jerry jugs and get them back to the boat, but before we do that we need to go pick up our scooter.

We dinghied to shore and tied the dinghy to another tree. Then we walked about 2 miles to the campground where they rent scooters. Here are a couple of pictures from our walk.

And here are pictures of our scooter.

We were a little early but a few minutes after our arrival a lady came out and to complete the paperwork. Then we were off. I am always nervous then we start scootering and I’m continuously asking Rick to go slower, but eventually I get comfortable and relax. We wanted to go to the Saturday open air market in a small town, Vao, about 4 miles to pick up some vegetables. We easily found the market but we either arrived too late or they just don’t have much produce this time of year. Here are some pictures.

We left the market shortly after we arrived and headed north. We drove along the coast. It was beautiful. Here are some pictures.

We continued north until we reached Baie de Oro, home of the Meriden (very swanky) Hotel. We went into the hotel, Rick had a cup of coffee and we logged on to their wifi. The scenery was magnificent. It was low tide and the bay is very shallow, so you could walk across it with water only up to your knees. Lots of pines were visible on the other shore. I have learned that they are called columnar pines. Here are some pictures of the Meriden and the bay.

We talked to couple from Australia about traveling around the pacific islands. They talked about their sailing trip to the Whitsunday Islands, another place that’s definitely on our list of things to do.

We left the Meriden and headed back to our boat in Kuto. Along the way we stopped at two grocery stores to pick up some more provisions. Carrying two six packs of 1.5L bottles of water is tricky on a scooter, but we managed. There were lots of people in Kuto because another cruise ship had arrived this morning.

We had trouble starting the dinghy motor and we thought we had flooded it, so we rowed back to the boat. Once back at the boat we had some lunch and ran the engine to charge the batteries.

An hour later Rick tried to start the dinghy.  No go. He set about to fix it.  He worked on it for quite awhile, called the base for consultation, even got it running for about 5 minutes, but couldn’t fix it.

We had to go back in to take care of the scooter. The wind was coming from the land so rowing in was going to be near impossible, so we the skipper of a nearby boat.  He arrived in his dinghy and was happy to tow us in to shore. We took the two empty diesel jerry jugs with us. We drove the scooter to the gas station with me holding the jerry jugs on each hand, making it impossible to hold on to Rick! We filled up our jugs and Rick tied one onto the rack on the back of the scooter. I stayed at the gas station with the other one. He dropped it at the dinghy and then came back for another round. Once the diesel was delivered we went to the camping ground where we rented the scooter to see if we could park it on the beach near our boat and use it again tomorrow.  Denied!  We left it there and walked back to the dinghy. We will have to walk back to the campground tomorrow to pick it up again. We rowed the dinghy back to the boat.

Once back onboard we both took showers.  What a luxury in our water conservation mode!  It felt really good to be clean. Needless to say we are not rowing into town for dinner so it was dinner on board and an early bedtime.  We were beat. Another amazing sunset tonight.

A couple of random things about New Caledonia

1. The weather has been very nice. Day temps are in the mid 70s and night time temps are in the high 60s. It’s a nice temperature because it doesn’t feel too hot when you are ashore and it’s great sleeping weather.
2. There are very few bugs. So far I have gotten one mosquito bite. We have had a couple of flies on the boat, but they’re no big deal.