Port Koube is a very large bay, almost totally enclosed, right in the middle of Ile Ouen. The only residents are sea eagles, herons, lots of other birds, fish, corals, and a wide variety of other sea creatures. Plus, from time to time, the occasional yacht. 

I don't know why they called it Port Koube; big ships rarely, if ever, come here and I don' think they ever did. But of course they could. It's big enough and deep enough for a medium sized ship and very well protected from winds of all directions.

There are only a couple of places where a small yacht can anchor. Most of the bay is either too deep or the bottom is a tangled mound of very fine branching coral; the kind of bottom where an anchor won't hold but will cause massive damage to the corals that live in this calm, protected environment.

This was the second time we surveyed the bay, looking for places where a yacht can safely drop the hook; looking with side-scan sonar for areas of smooth, coral free mud in less than 15 meters of water.

As before we only found two good locations for anchoring, one perfect for very strong west winds, the other excellent for east to south west winds and OK for any winds. We found some interesting snorkeling spots and places to go ashore and explore.

One good feature was a new mobile phone antenna providing full 3G coverage to the area. Made it easy to upload the image this morning.

For full details, depths and points of interest about Port Koube, see the The nautical guide to new caledonia.