Two roads - chartering in New Caledonia

Looking for a new charter destination? AY Editor, Barry Henson, provides the low down on chartering in New Caledonia.

Sailors are an intensely individualistic breed. The very fact that we chose the beauty and dangers of the sea over a safe life on land speaks volumes about the things we value: self-reliance, the beauty of nature, getting off the beaten track and exploring new cultures.

Sadly, that four-letter word ‘work’ means that our explorations are often limited to the distance we can sail to and back within our four weeks of annual holidays, which, given an average speed of 6 knots, isn’t far.

If you’re like me and you dream about cruising the islands and atolls of the South Pacific, the solution to this ‘dream rich, time poor’ dilemma is to charter.

Recently a French charter company, Dreamyachtcharter.com, opened up a base in New Caledonia and they invited several Australian journalists, myself included, to join a charter from the Isle of Pines so we could familiarise ourselves and our readers with this destination.

So here, Dear Readers, is my honest warts and all evaluation of chartering in New Caledonia.

There before lunch

Sitting as we do at the end of the Pacific it’s easy for Australians to think of the Pacific Islands as a long way away, but New Caledonia is at ‘our end’ of the Pacific, which means you can leave Sydney in the morning and two and a half hours later you’re landing in Noumea in time for lunch.   Not bad.  Flights run daily from major Australian east coast cities.   

A bit of culture and croissants

New Caledonia has a small (only 245,000) but diverse population made up of 43% native Kanaks (a Melanesian people), 37% French and the remainder are a mixture of Wallisans, Polynesians, Indonesians, Melanesians, Europeans, Asians and Caldoches (New Caledonian born from French convict descendants).

The second largest of the South Pacific’s islands behind New Zealand, New Caledonia has one of the largest lagoons in the world with over 24,000 square kilometres of water inside a 1,600 kilometre outer reef.  They have a wealth of interesting destinations including: the famous Isle of Pines, the Loyalty Islands, the main island (which is surrounded by the reef) and several outlying islands.

Back in the 1980s and ‘90s, a strong Kanak separatist movement developed and there was a bit of argy-bargy between the locals and the French.  As a result the French made concessions to the Kanaks, in the form of the Noumea Accord, giving them a larger say in the running of the country and they’ve been getting on reasonably well since.

It’s important for the visitor to understand that Kanak tribes administer their own lands.  What this means in practice is that if you want to visit a Kanak village or visit one of their islands, you need to follow their customs.  You introduce yourself and make your request via ‘la coutume’, a ceremonial exchange of small gifts.  The gifts themselves are insignificant, for example standard gifts you might give a chief in exchange for being allowed to camp on their lands would be a pack of cigarettes and a thousand francs (about $12 Aus).  For the Kanak the gifts are incidental, the most important aspect of the ceremony is that you’re showing respect for their culture and their rights.

While the official language is French, the Kanaks speak both French and their own Kanak languages, and just about everybody involved with tourism has a basic understanding of English.  As you would anywhere, it pays to learn a few basic words of the local language, such as g’day and thank you.  In French it’s bon jour and merci, and in Kanak it’s bozou and olaytay.  I tried out my few words of Kanak on the locals and they never failed to elicit a smile.

Liberte is French for freedom

Over the years I’ve chartered yachts in a wide range of destinations, from the Whitsundays to Tahiti, from Tonga to Sydney Harbour. One of the things I learned along the way was that Australian and French charter companies have very different approaches to chartering.

Australian charter companies generally have a fairly structured approach to chartering.  When you charter a yacht in the Whitsundays you’re expected to radio in each morning, listen to the weather, advise the base of your plans for the day including where you plan to stay for the evening.  The base will generally accept your plan, but depending on conditions they may suggest or even require a change.   It’s a fairly structured approach to chartering that allows even novice sailors to charter successfully.

The French have a very different approach.  In New Caledonia, once they establish that you can handle the boat and navigate to the necessary standard, they establish the limits of where you’re allowed to go, suggest a general cruising plan so you see the best places, then they tell you ‘Have a great time.  We’ll call you if there is any bad weather on the way and you call us if you need anything, otherwise the next we’ll hear from you is at the end of your charter’.  In other words, the French system gives you a lot more ‘liberte’ or freedom to go where you want and do what you want.  The base monitors your location via a GPS tracking system.

Dream Yachts will also allow you to cruise significantly farther with their vessels.  Whereas the Whitsunday cruising area is fairly limited in size, you can charter a Dream Yachts boat to cruise to the Isle of Pines (14 hours away) or the Loyalty Islands (20-22 hours away) or even to Vanuatu (2 days away).

Reef, reef and more reef

New Caledonia has been blessed with an enormous reef system. The Caledonia lagoon is over 24,000 square kilometres in area encompassed by 1,600 kilometres of reef, that offers some of the best trade wind sailing, snorkeling, scuba diving and fishing in the world. Navigating in this area, however, is not for the inexperienced or faint-hearted.   There are innumerable reefs and low lying islands, and sections of the lagoon are not terribly well charted.

While the increased freedom and range is exciting, it’s important to recognise that navigation in these waters is extremely challenging even with a chart plotter, made even more so by the fact that for much of the year the trade winds blow from the south-east at 20-25 knots.

Bare boating here is generally done by locals. Most overseas charterers opt for a skippered charter.

Bareboat or skippered

I’ve always done bareboat charters as I felt that having a stranger on board would feel intrusive.  Well, I’m here to tell you that I’m a convert!  Dream Yachts supplied us with a skipper, Oliver Morvan, and a hostess/cook, Claudia Recht.  Oliver and Claudia are both genial and talented sailors with years of experience sailing these waters. Together these two took all the stress and hard work out of the charter. They were pleasant company and their local knowledge was invaluable. Not to mention that Claudia’s cooking was fabulous!

Our trip

While Dream Yachts is located in Noumea, we took deliver of our yacht, a Dufour 455, at Kuto Bay in the Isle of Pines. The Isle of Pines is a beautiful island named by Cook for its Kauri pines.

Day one - afternoon

After squaring our gear away we went for a walk and had a swim around Kanumera rock, a mushroom shaped sandstone island in Kanumera bay.  Kanumera bay means ‘little smiling bay’ and the scenery here is breathtaking.

Claudia whipped up a dinner of antipasto and home-made pizza with the most delicious crust I’ve ever tasted. By the way, when I say ‘home-made’ I mean home-made, she was a baker in a previous life and the breads that come out of her oven were to die for.

Day two

After breakie we headed off early to Ile de Brosse, or Brush Island, so named because it looks like a hair brush.  We spent the morning snorkeling and to be honest I was very disappointed.   The corals were few and far between and the sea life was pretty average.   

The one thing we did see was a sea snake. New Caledonia is known for sea snakes and while these animals are some of the most venomous snakes in the world, their teeth are quite small and are located far back in their mouths so the only way they can bite you is for you to literally stick your finger in their mouth (not advised).   Anyway, one slithered out of the water heading straight toward us (did I mention that they’re also quite curious?).  With a cavalier smile, Kevin Green, AY’s previous editor, reached down and grabbed the sea snake by the tail.  Looking very Steve Irwinesque, Kevin held the snake at arms length while I shot the insurance photos and pondered what I would tell his wife.

After lunch the trade winds filled to their normal 20-25 knots, so we decided to head off to our next destination, Ile Ua, within the Caledonian lagoon.  After a brief sail through Passe de Mu out to the open ocean, we gybed and eased sheets.  

New Caledonia gets south-east trade winds for a good part of the year and in October and November they can be quite fresh.  For most of our trip we had consistent 20-25 knot south-east winds night and day.   This is perfect sailing weather.  We covered the 39 nautical miles to the island in just under four and a half hours.

One of the benefits of having a skipper on board was that we were able to take advantage of some short cuts that aren’t available to bare boaters.  In our case Oliver took us through a small pass that saved us a couple of hours.  The unmarked pass between the Tiendi and Tironhua reefs is only a couple hundred metres wide and I definitely wouldn’t have been game to attempt it without Oliver on board.

After an invigorating sail we dropped the hook just off Ile Ua two hours before sunset. Ile Ua is one of the ‘five islands’, a remote area of the reef named for its five islands: Ua, Kouare, Uatio, Uaterembi and Gi.

Shortly after we dropped the hook Claudia appeared from below, perfectly groomed and smiling, not at all looking like she had just spent two hours slaving over a hot stove while we had the time of our lives surfing waves and threading passes, and announced dinner was ready.  For dinner we had garlic prawns with a cantaloupe, bleu cheese and pineapple salad, a few bottles of Bordeaux and home-made fruit cake for dessert. Hmmm….what happened to beans on toast?

Day three

The next morning we took the dinghy to Ua with our snorkeling gear.  After the poor corals at Ile Brosse I was prepared for the worst, but Ua was totally different.  The reef was in pristine condition.  I’m a diver and a marine aquarium keeper and this was one of the best reefs I’ve ever seen.   From staghorn corals to brain corals, from fan corals to leather fingers, the corals were in great condition and there were kilometres of them.  The fish life was excellent with lots of clown fish, wrasse, angel fish, moorish idols, leather jackets, goatfish and grouper, just to name a few.  The coral dropped off fairly steeply and had I not had trouble clearing my ears I’m sure I would have seen some black tip reef sharks and turtles in the deeper waters.

Had we done nothing else the snorkeling at Ua would have been worth the trip.  If you’re a diver, make sure you tell your charter company that you want dive equipment and a compressor, it will cost a bit extra, but it’s well worth it.

After drying out and stuffing ourselves with a fabulous seafood loaf with a crispy cheese topping, we upped anchor and set off for our last location, Ile Maitre, a resort and marine reserve just off Noumea.  With a four and a half hour sail ahead of us the winds picked and we surfed our way to Noumea, doing over 8 knots for most of the way with a top speed of 10.5 knots!

If you only have the day in Noumea and you want to go snorkeling, Ile Maitre is the place you go.  Surrounded by reefs this marine reserve is also home to L’Escapade Resort, one of those Polynesian Bure over-the-water type resorts.  An over-water Bure will set you back about $615 a night.  A bit rich for my blood, but apparently it’s quite popular with Japanese honeymooners.

Claudia outdid herself with garlic and cheese bread puffs, New Zealand lamb fillets and steamed vegetables.  As we finished the last of the wine, life was looking pretty good.

Day four

All good things come to an end and this morning was the end of our trip.  Under genoa only we reached across the bay into Noumea harbour and Port de Sud Marina.

Things you should know

This was a great trip and I can highly recommend New Caledonia as a charter destination.  With over 1,600 kilometres of reef, trade-winds and great diving, New Caledonia is well worth a visit. Given the navigational challenges I recommend you consider spending the extra $200 bucks a day to hire a skipper and, if you’re up for a bit of luxury, $150 a day for the cook/hostess. Shared between a few friends, the extra expense is well worth it.

The best times of year for sailors to visit New Caledonia are October/November and May/June.  Winds tend to be a bit lighter in the winter.

Dream Yachts New Caledonia currently has four boats in their fleet: a monohull and three multihulls.  Prices start at approximately $700 per day.  The typical charter is 5-7 days.  Dream Yachts are in the process of expanding their fleet with plans to add three to five multihulls next year.  One of the more interesting things they’re considering offering is cabin charters on luxury yachts; you can hire a cabin, rather than the entire boat, on a fully crewed 70-80 foot luxury multihull.  Their website is www.dreamyachtcharter.com.

Dream Yacht Charters and New Caledonia Tourism paid for our travel, accommodation and charter expenses.