Wednesday 10th October

Noumea
New Caledonia

22 17.173 S
166 26.266 E

Another day of waiting, the weather window is a bit slow in appearing so meanwhile we sit and wait. I wandered over to the market in the middle of the morning, had a good browse around the arts stalls – not too much that I wanted but there were a couple of nice carvings that I might have to go back for. The real purpose of the market outing was to purchase a few vegetables to make up some meals for our forth coming trip. I had gone through the cans of meat trying to decide how I could use them and came up with a couple of meal ideas which needed vegetables to complete them. I rounded up the few items that I needed and carted them back to the boat. Gerry spent the morning renewing contacts for work – he just can’t wait to get back into a job. Once I got back to the boat I set about making up the meals and packing them into containers. Having finished most of them Gerry suggested that we wall across the road to McDonalds for lunch; unfortunately there is nowhere else close to eat – any alternative would have been good but Maccas it was. We managed to hit it in rush hour – good only for the fact that the food was fresh and hot! We discussed where we thought we had seen a patisserie nearby and decided to take a walk to see if we could find it in order to buy something nice, sweet and sticky for dessert. One block over we found the place – it was the devils lair! Full of bakery goods both savoury and sweet and tempting enough to make you empty your wallet. We oohed and aahed for a bit and finally settled on just one small dessert each, figuring that the walk to the place would counteract the calories we were going to consume. Back at the boat we immediately stuffed our faces with the delectable offerings – it was worth every bite! I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing off the cooking for the trip, at least now we have a few less cans and a few prepared meals. Gerry cycled over to pay for the sail and bimini repairs at 16.00hrs, the sail maker then dropped the repaired items back to the boat on her way home. Around the same time as the sail was being delivered there was a huge wailing of fire engines and we noticed smoke pouring from a building across the road from the dock, near to the sail maker’s loft. It turned out that a rubber factory had caught light and thick black smoke poured into the sky for the next hour or two; the factory was right next door to a petrol station and there were plenty of concerns that the fire would spread and get out of control, luckily it was contained and caused no further damage. Gerry replaced the bimini and then needed help to put the jib back on, luckily there was no wind and we soon had the thing back where it belongs. I had just about had enough of cooking by the time it was dinner time so we went ashore to the marina restaurant and had a very nice dinner there. Inside the restaurant there is an extremely large shark’s jaw on display; the actual jaw is plaster cast but it has fossilized teeth correctly set into it from a Carcharodon megalodon – a type of shark that used to swim in the waters off of New Caledonia many years ago. The teeth have been recovered from the seabed during dredging operations and having seen it I was reminded of the movie Jaws – not so fictional after all! Camera at the ready I took a couple of shots to show you. Following dinner we headed back to the boat for the night. Another day of waiting over with.