Elizabeth reef – sharks – fishing – ocean passage - Noumea

I had three final shopping trips, with my backpack, to stock up on bread and milk etc. All hideously expensive… I wanted to buy Lavazza ground coffee, for example. We usually pay between $9-12 for a double pack; on Lord Howe it was $15.95 for a single pack… The biggest shop – well I won’t name it, but it has a name which indicates bliss. But…it was not so blissful, as a shopping experience. Two women work there; a plump young blonde girl, quite friendly, and a VERY grumpy older woman, with a European accent and a Very Bad Attitude. She and the young girl – maybe I will call them Cressida and Griselda spend all of their working day squabbling. And Griselda extends this exasperation nd annoyance to her customers. She sighs deeply and rolls her eyes when asked, for example, where the sausages are. “Sausages! And more sausages!” while pointing with a stabby finger at the freezer. So imagine my amazement when I went there on the last day, with Steve. Griselda twinkled away at us and waxed lyrical about life at sea. “It must be so beautiful, waking up in the morning to golden sunlight on the water. And so lovely at night, with slivery moonlight on the water!” On and on! We left the shop on a wave of love and delight. So when I realised I had forgotten something, I went back in very confidently, smiling and saying, “Hi, I’m back!” “Hmmmph!” was the stern reply… What had happened to our lyrical friendship?? I can only conclude that she was very taken by Steve, who is a very handsome man. Without Steve, I was just any old nuisance-y customer…

We left beautiful Lord Howe Island around three in the afternoon. Our bikes, which had been left on shore, unlocked, with helmets dangling from the handlebars, on various bike racks, were folded and put away on their very own bunk once again. We had been assured that the bikes would be safe; after all, it is a very small island – who would take them, and where would they hide them??

We were heading for Elizabeth Reef, which is way out in the ocean, north of Lord Howe. Our lovely waitress at Humpty Micks café on the island had shuddered when I had told her where we were going. “Yes you will find it very beautiful, but I would never go swimming there…it is VERY sharky!” We arrived at the reef in time for breakfast, and sat on the deck eating bacon and eggs very happily, admiring the beauty and splendour around us. It is so strange, to come upon a little oasis of calm in the middle of the wild wide ocean. A beautiful little golden sandbar, a wide ring of coral, crystal clear calm water. Gorgeous! And look, approaching the boat, how cute, a dear little shark, only about one metre long. Pete and I got all togged up ready to go snorkeling. He wore his new silver and black wetsuit; I was resplendent in bright orange bathers and my new bright pink flippers and mask. Splish splash into the water…we hadn’t swum away from the boat when Nick and Steve shouted, “More sharks!” I am ashamed to say there was an unseemly scramble for the ladder and I used poor Pete as a sort of platform to get to the steps… The sharks weren’t big, really, maybe one and a half metres, but there were a lot of them, and they had big sharp teeth…

Steve and Nick were very keen to catch fish. Pete and I mocked them unkindly for their lack of success for a very short time and then…fish! More than you could jump over, said Pete. Very beautiful fish, including a giant silver trevally. They were just delighted and our freezer now has about ten gourmet serves of lovely reef fish. The sharks enjoyed all of this very much too and came right up to the boat. We threw the fish remains in and created a very gratifying feeding frenzy. “Well,” said Pete, “Now would probably be a good time for us to go swimming because the sharks are all FULL.” But…we didn’t set so much as a toe in the crystal clear water… Not quite correct; Pete and Nick took the tender out to a coral outcrop, and Nick went for a brief snorkel in the shallow water. He said it was very disappointing; the coral is mostly dead, or bleached. Too sad…

It was a long haul from the reef to New Caledonia. I lost all track of time, but it probably took five days and four nights. We were on four hour rosters:
2 hours on the helm
2 hours on the couch
4 hours in bed
I had shifts on the helm which began at 8pm and 4am. Pete was on before me, and it was his irksome task to wake me. The last morning I heard him laughing at the foot of the bed. He said, “You always look so startled and horrified when I wake you up!” And indeed I FELT startled and horrified!

It was poor Steve’s turn to be ill… We all felt so sorry for him as he trudged wearily off to his bed with a large bucket under his arm… He was a true hero; didn’t complain one bit, did all of his shifts stoically and competently. Fortunately he came good after only a few days of nastiness.
And yesterday we arrived in Noumea, very pleased with ourselves indeed! We had crossed a big stretch of ocean and had arrived in a new country! We are tied up at a lovely marina just near the food markets. We had been told that there would be a lot of paper work and officialdom to greet us, and indeed our whole afternoon was spent with poor Pete filling in form after form.

First came the Immigration team, then Quarantine, then Customs. Nick and Steve were very surprised to hear that I could speak French. This was actually very helpful; not all of the officials swarming over the boat spoke English, and it made everything a bit easier if I could translate. “Are you sure they understand what you are saying?” asked Nick, sceptically. My large, stern Immigration friend, Valerie, said, “Tell him that your French is EXCELLENT!” (She lied but never mind!) She asked where we had been – they need to know everything, for their files – and asked if there had been sharks at Elizabeth Reef. I told her about them and asked if there were sharks in New Caledonia. “Yes, lots!” she said. “Big ones and small ones. Some for every taste!”

Yannick was our Quarantine official. He was so very apologetic as he left the boat with two large bags full of our fresh supplies – goodbye lemons, pumpkins from Pete’s garden, garlic, everything. But he left our fish in the freezer – I was very sad to think that these lovely fish might have died for nothing.

Customs were a bit less friendly than Immigration and Quarantine. They were deeply suspicious and looked at us with narrowed eyes. But…they didn’t do a full boat-search, with sniffer dogs. Ian, in the boat next to ours, says it is all totally random – some boats don’t get a visit from Customs at all, while others get every cavity explored. We got a medium level investigation, which was fine.

I went for a walk around town, looking for a computer shop. I wanted to buy a connection for the internet, but…no luck. The café at the end of the marina has free WiFi so I will go there in a while and see if I can get things up and running.

This cafe is called...Le Bout Du Monde (the end of the world...)