BigTex, New Caledonia is East of North-Eastern Australia, just inside the Tropic of Capricorn. It's a French colony, and not many people speak English, but everybody seems to speak Central Pacific Francs! You can see from the photos that there was cloud around most of the time, but being the Tropics, it didn't matter - it was all very pleasant. Below is a small map and itinerary of the same basic trip that we made, from a recent Pacific Sky brochure (an Aussie dollar is about 55c US, BTW):
By the way, what is the difference between a channel and a passage? Or an inlet and a fjord? Or Ying and Yang?That's the answer to the question everybody's asking. The Woodbine Whatever-it-is was discovered by a Captain Woodbine who was looking for safe anchorage for a night - he saw this gap between hills with water in the middle and thought it must be a harbour. He followed it in and found it was a passage between two land masses - a shortcut - everybody before him must have gone around the bottom island.