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 Usually
mornings are quiet in Prony Bay. Occasionally we hear the song of a
solitary bird, but mainly there is silence. Today was different.
At precisely 6:20 a.m. a loud bang roused me out of my bunk to see what was
happening on deck. I had never heard such a loud noise coming from the
forward deck and could not imagine what could possibly be responsible for
the racket that interrupted my morning slumber.
Perhaps we had dragged anchor and run into some rocks. Maybe something fell
off the mast and hit the deck. Whatever it was, I was not expecting
something good.
I quickly hopped out of the bunk, went through the galley, up the stairs
into the salon, out into the cockpit and moved forward on deck. When I saw
the front part of the catamaran, I was surprised to see a one meter long
mackerel lying on the starboard trampoline. The mackerel was flopping
around violently trying to escape, but to no avail. The trampoline was
flexible and the large fish could not gain sufficient leverage to flip
himself off the trampoline and back into the water.
 As I
drew closer, I saw dark stains where the Spanish Mackerel landed on deck
just behind the trampoline. As he flopped around, his body would
occasionally strike thumping and banging blows against the hull next to the
trampoline.
About one-hundred feet away, another boat, Tyche, also heard the noise of
the fish hitting the deck. They had gotten up at sunrise and were sitting
in their cockpit enjoying the morning quiet. They could not see our
trampoline or front deck to tell what was going on, but they could tell by
the noise that something big had happened. They wondered if there had been
an accident of some sort on Exit Only.
I shouted to Ted on Tyche and told him that we had a one meter long Spanish
Mackerel flopping around on the trampoline. At first he didn't believe me.
He thought it was a joke because yesterday he had promised to clean any fish
that I caught. He even came over to Exit Only with his filleting knife the
previous afternoon to tease me because I had not caught any fish.
All of the flopping and commotion must have finally convinced him that the
mackerel really did exist because he got into his dingy and rowed over to
our boat. When he came to the bow of Exit Only and saw the large mackerel,
he could hardly believe his eyes. He was as surprised as we were.
It was fortunate that the mackerel landed on the deck and trampoline where
it did. At the time of the mackerel kamikaze attack, I was lying in my bunk
with the hatch open over my head. If the mackerel had landed six feet to
the left, he could have come right down the open hatch into my bunk. The
thought of that fish flopping around on my bunk snapping its rows of sharp
teeth sends chills up and down my spine. I would have departed my bunk at
the speed of light.
 For those who have
trouble believing this fish story, take a look at the mackerel lying on the
trampoline after it stopped flopping around and expired. You can also see
me holding it up by the tail and there is a picture of me in feeding frenzy
with the mackerel in my hands.
Ted, the former disbeliever, was now fully convinced that I did indeed have
a mackerel and true to his word, he put the fish in his dingy and took it to
shore where he cleaned it.
I did not have a scale on which to weigh the fish. I estimate the weight to
be between ten and fifteen pounds. There was plenty of meat for both Tyche
and Exit Only. When we cruise with Tyche, I catch the fish, Ted cleans it,
and we split the meat between our two boats.
At this point, we were a little perplexed as to whether we should eat the
fish. The large fish found in New Caledonian waters sometimes have
ciguatera which is a type of fish toxin that can kill you if you eat fish
affected by it. Ciguatera is tasteless and there is no way to tell whether
the fish has the toxin until you eat it. We needed to find out if it was
safe to eat the meat. We used our Iridium satellite phone to call a friend
in Noumea and asked if it was safe to eat the kamikaze mackerel. He said it
was safe. So we had a mackerel feast for lunch and none of us got sick
In the South Pacific you sometimes see large fish jump ten to fifteen feet
into the air and then land back in the water. It's rare to be near fish
when they do their aerial acrobatics. It's even rarer for one of them to
jump and land on your boat, unless they are the garden variety flying fish
that hit your deck on offshore passages. Those small flying fish are
usually six to twelve inches long and weigh a fraction of a pound.
 I have been
waiting for a kamikaze attack by another Spanish Mackerel. Unfortunately,
no others have been willing to oblige by landing on our trampolines. If we
are going to have another mackerel dinner, we will have to catch him on a
fishing line.
If you don't believe this story, you are not alone. Many yachties who hear
it think we are putting them on. Truth often is stranger than fiction. But
this story is not fiction. It's true and it tasted good.
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The first visitors to meet up with us in New Caledonia
were Simon and Anita from Auckland, New Zealand. We had sailed in their
company across the Pacific Ocean in 1995 when they were on their fifty foot
yacht, Quest. They had already sailed around the world one and a half times
on their own yachts and they were veteran sailors who understand the sea.
 They arrived in
Noumea with a good supply of "survival rations" which is another word for
Whittaker's Peanut Slab and Almond Slab candy bars. These rations were
meant to be used for nourishment on hikes as we bashed our way through the
jungles of New Caledonia. You can see the broad smile on my face as I hold
the giant candy bars.
We had been hoping for a week of beautiful weather during their visit.
After they arrived in New Caledonia, we stayed the first night in Noumea on
Exit Only giving them time to rest up and hopefully have better weather the
next day. When we got up the next morning, the sky was overcast and windy.
It looked as if it was going to be a rough day in the exposed waters of the
southern lagoon.
In the harbor we raised our mainsail and motorsailed out to see what awaited
us. It did not take long to discover that the wind was blowing between
twenty to thirty knots out of the southeast which was exactly the direction
we wanted to sail. We pushed the throttles up on both engines and
motorsailed the twelve miles out to Amedee Lighthouse hoping that out there
we would get a better angle on the wind. We slammed our way to windward for
several hours and passed a couple of other yachts that also were being
pummeled by the contrary wind and seas.
At the lighthouse, things were no better. We hoped that by going on a
starboard tack we would have a close reach to the Canal of Woodin after we
passed the lighthouse and turned east. Unfortunately, our hopes were in
vain. We had to beat to windward for the next twenty miles. It was a
difficult sail with an endless supply of salt water and spray coming over
the bow and into the cockpit. We pushed the boat hard and I have never seen
so much water in the cockpit in nine years of sailing Exit Only.
After beating to windward for thirty miles, we finally entered the Canal of
Woodin and turned south into Bay de Maa. This moderately deep bay had
high hills to the south and east that blocked the twenty to thirty knot
winds in which we had been sailing. We put down the anchor in twenty-five
feet of water about a hundred meters from shore. The anchor set easily on
the first attempt and we were glad to be in a safe anchorage where we could
clean off the salt and dry out. We had a quiet evening sharing the bay with
five other yachts. Two of the yachts were Westsail 32s which is the same
design that I owned when I lived in Puerto Rico.
The next morning we left the anchorage early to try to go through Canal
Woodin before the wind came up. We motorsailed and tacked for an hour until
we turned north into Prony Bay. Just as we rounded the reef at the entrance
of Prony, a fish took our lure and Simon reeled in a nice yellow fin tuna.
We had six more miles to sail up to the Bay de Carenage in the northern
reaches of Prony Bay. Once there, Simon cleaned the tuna and we ate it for
lunch. In the afternoon, we explored the old hot springs at the east end of
the Carenage. The overcast sky remained with us for the rest of the day.
In Prony Bay, I inspected the yacht and discovered that while we were
beating to windward, we had broken five eyebolts that hold the starboard
trampoline in place. When you break stainless steel eyebolts, you know that
you have been sailing in challenging conditions.
The next day we planned to go hiking, but rain came down the entire day.
Prony Bay has excellent hiking trails. Unfortunately the trails are made
of slippery red clay and hiking in pouring rain is not a good idea.
As the evening came on, we noticed that the wind was increasing. We didn't
have a weather report but we were not concerned because we were in what is
considered to be a hurricane hole and felt we were well-protected from bad
weather. We were wrong.
 By nine in
the evening, the wind was up to thirty-five knots in the gusts and I was
beginning to wonder if we would have problems during the night, especially
if the wind increased. I turned on the radar so that I could visualize the
shore and also see Tyche which was anchored about fifty meters to the north
of our position.
The wind continued to gust over thirty knots and Exit Only pulled hard on
her anchor. About half an hour later, Donna looked at the radar screen and
saw that we had dragged anchor away from the rocky shore and we were headed
for the large sandbanks to the west. We looked at the radar screen and
confirmed that she was right. We stuck our heads outside and tried to find
Tyche and were shocked to see that Tyche was a long ways off and we had
dragged anchor for several hundred feet. We looked at the depth sounder and
instead of being in twenty feet of water, we were only in ten feet, then
eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and then zero feet under the
keel. Wow. We were almost aground on the sandbank. If it had not been
high tide and if there had not been flooding of the bay by torrential rains,
we would have been aground. I started the engines and quickly motored off
the sandbanks before the boat became stuck in the muck. Simon went forward
and used the windlass to pull up the anchor.
The wind was blowing thirty-five to forty knots and it took both engines to
push the boat to windward and into deep water. We were fortunate to not be
aground. It was quite dark and we used radar to get back to our former
position where we could anchor again. We put down the anchor and set it by
backing down with the engines in reverse. So far so good.
It became apparent that this was going to be a long night. We decided to
leave the engines running so that they would be instantly available if
needed. Within the hour, wind gusts of forty-one knots hit us and again we
started dragging our anchor toward the sandbanks. Fortunately, this time we
detected the dragging quickly. We took immediate action, pulled up the
anchor and motored into the wind as we reassessed our situation.
We had to decide where to drop the anchor so that it would not drag a third
time. The strongest wind was out of the southeast and there was a headland
that blocked the wind if we went close to shore. If we anchored within
fifty feet of shore, we would have better protection from the wind, as long
as it did not shift to the south or west and push us on the rocks. We
motored as close to the shore as we safely could and dropped the anchor. We
backed down on the anchor and set it in the clay seabed.
In this location we were very close to Tyche as well as to the rocky shore.
We needed to have someone awake all night to make sure that we did not
collide with Tyche or get blown onto the rocks. Fortunately, we never got
southerly or westerly winds so we were never blown dangerously close to
shore.
The wind eddies coming over the hill pushed our boat slowly toward shore,
but when we were thirty or forty feet away, the boat would stop moving.
Then we would drift toward Tyche. The boat spent the whole night drifting
in the gusty wind. Each of us on the yacht took our turns at watching the
boat drift toward Tyche, toward the rocks and then toward the sandbar. We
also watched the radar to see that we were not dragging anchor.
 During all of these
events, there were torrential rains. It was raining so hard that you could
not hear the engine running over the noise of the rain hitting the decks. I
have never heard such loud rain. Even Simon in his bunk could not hear the
engines running and the engine compartment was directly under his bunk.
That night I got two hours of sleep. I don't know how much sleep everyone
else got. By morning, the wind was below thirty knots and the rain
continued to pour down. The Avon dingy was half-filled with water. Later,
we found out that nine inches of rain had fallen that night. The pictures
show that the water in the bay had turned red from the mud that had washed
from the streams into the bay.
 The next day, we
motored in the dingy over to the west arm of the Bay de Carenage and talked
with the yacht Tranquility. They had been up all night dragging anchor and
had to run their engines in forward gear until four in the morning to stop
further dragging. One other yacht in the bay had dragged anchor numerous
times and spent the night repeatedly anchoring and running their engine to
keep from being washed ashore.
This storm puzzled us because there were no warnings that a storm of that
magnitude was in the area. It turned out that in Noumea, the winds were
over sixty knots. If it had reached sixty-four knots, the storm would have
been classified as a cyclone. Boats in Noumea dragged their anchors and
sailors had a sleepless night. One yacht was blown ashore in the Loyalty
Islands which are a part of New Caledonia.
In the same storm, a fifty-two foot yacht was blown onto the reef and
destroyed in Port Resolution in Vanuatu.
 After the storm was
over, it took a couple of days for the rain to diminish. We eventually came
back to Noumea and Simon rented a car that we used to tour the island and
see the storm damage. There was massive flash flooding along many of the
rivers that drain into the sea. Debris clogged the streams under the
bridges and retaining walls were washed away. There had been tornados
associated with the storm as well.
Back in Noumea, we saw a large yacht come into the marina with a broken
headstay and its genoa in shreds. During the storm, they had wrapped a wire
halyard around their headstay which made it impossible to furl the
headsail. The genoa flogged itself until it was in shreds. The massive
vibrations in the headstay created by the flogging sail caused the headstay
clevis pin to fail and they lost their headstay. The only thing that kept
them from being dismasted was the inner forestay for the staysail. They
also lost their anchor and chain while they rested at anchor during the bad
weather.
The weather service had not taken this storm seriously and yachts therefore
had not made any preparations to protect themselves. The weather bureau did
not give this storm a name. A few more knots of wind would have classified
this storm as a cyclone and it would have become a named storm.
I have decided that I am going to call this near cyclone by a name. Usually
the weather bureau gets to give storms a name. This time it's my turn. I am
naming it 'Cyclone Anonymous'.
We were fortunate that we had Simon and Anita on the yacht when the severe
weather caught up with us. Their experience and help made a big
difference. We might have had a much worse time of it with a bad outcome if
they had not been there to help.
Lesson Learned: Just because we are anchored in a well-protected
anchorage does not mean that we cannot have problems if unusually severe
weather develops. Although it's not cyclone season, the weather pattern
this year has been turbulent and we must expect the unexpected. In
particular, it's important to download weather faxes every day when we are
out cruising in remote bays to make sure that we know about the weather
coming our way. The maritime mobile radio ham nets and cruising nets also
give daily weather reports. Some cruisers make studying weather into a
hobby and are a good source of information to keep us from getting caught
unawares. Preparation is the key to survival when living aboard a cruising
yacht. When we know that bad weather is on the way, we can take precautions
that push the odds of survival in our favor.
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 Within
two blocks of the marina in Noumea, there is an American War Memorial built
by the people of New Caledonia. This beautiful memorial is prominently
located downtown for all to see.
Although American and French diplomatic relations wax and wane, the people
of New Caledonia have a permanently warm place in their heart for America.
The reason is simple. Prior to World War II, the Kanaks were treated poorly
by the French government. They did not have citizenship and their rights
were abridged by colonial rules and regulations promulgated in Paris. They
were not even second class citizens.
When the Americans came to New Caledonia in World War II, all of that
changed. The Kanaks were treated fairly by the U.S. forces. During the
war, New Caledonia was effectively taken over by the U.S. military. That
period is called the "American Phase" in the Noumea Museum. Over one
million United States troops passed through New Caledonia during the Second
World War.
After the war, the French could not turn back the hand of time and treat the
Kanaks as they had before the war. The Kanaks were given French citizenship
and eventually were given the same rights and privileges as French nationals
elsewhere in the world. The Kanaks have never forgotten what their American
friends did for them during the war. They showed their gratitude with the
war memorial.
New Caledonia was critical to the defense of the south west Pacific. It was
the last line of defense for Australia and ships from here fought in the
Battle of the Coral Sea. If the Japanese had won that battle and occupied
New Caledonia, then Australia would have been next.
The Australians had drawn a line east to west across Australia called the
Brisbane line. If the battle of the Coral Sea was lost by the allies, the
Aussies planned to defend the half of Australia that was south of Brisbane.
The Japanese could take the inhospitable northern half of Australia, but
they would get a real fight for the southern half.
The allies won the Battle of the Coral Sea and New Caledonia was saved from
Japanese occupation. Australians kept their country. Kanaks were given
their freedom. Americans were given a war memorial. |
