Vanuatu (pt 1) Aug 19 2007

Hi everybody.I think we left you on arrival in Port Resolution (PR), Tanna--July 19, butI'm not sure as my computer crashed and I lost that email.Anyway, we arrived at about 8AM Thursday after slowing down to enter duringdaylight, and on Thursday as the G-men come over from the "capital",Lenakel, on that day only to check in yachts. Otherwise you have a $20 p/pback of the truck 2 1/2 hour ride over there to do it. As it turned out, wehad to go anyway as the quarantine guy didn't come and we all needed to getsome Vatu, the local currency---100 Vatu to the $. PR is really 3rd worldwith no stores, ATMs or anything except the yacht club which is a shed.We're talking grass huts and Peace Corps volunteers!! Anyway, we "sort of"checked in, met a few of the boats there and watched the rest of our armadafrom Fiji arrive.Next day bright and early we started off for Lenakel. The start time wasn'texactly fixed but it was for 8 or so, but the others were gesturing madlyfrom the bluffs to get going. Turned out they'd forgotten to change theirclocks--Vanuatu is an hour earlier than Fiji. Instead of over the river andthrough the woods, we went over the volcano and through the jungle to whatcan best be described as a backwater, but we got our cash, finished withquarantine and hit the local market where a giant palm fond basket ofMandarin oranges was $.50. Just as an aside, we had been led to believefrom the "literature" that Vanuatu was almost as expensive as Fr. Poly. Aucontraire, we have found for most things it's as good or better than Fiji.We just sort of hung out the rest of the day waiting to leave at 4 or so tovisit the volcano, Mount Yasur, the most accessible in the world--more onthat later. We also looked for Werry, one of the chief's sons whocoordinates things for yachties. We had an entire cabin full of stuff wehad brought up for the village as a favor for a friend of Rose's who is anhonorary chief and spends about 6 month a year on Tanna. We nneded thespace back and finally offloaded on Monday--island time, mon!Okay, the volcano was one of the coolest things we've ever done. You leavelate afternoon for a 45 minute ride to the base, followed by a 20 minutewalk up to the crater. As night falls you look down into the caldera withbrilliant lava pools and mini eruptions every few minutes. Best fireworksshow you've ever seen with lava spewed hundreds of feet into the air andloud booms. There's all sorts of seismic monitoring so one doesn't go upthere when there is a danger of a major eruption, but everyone has a storyof some poor bastard stuck up there running for his life. Our trip was notso eventful, but we have amazing photos and video of the eruptions.On Saturday we were all invited to the penis festival--yes, you read thatright. This is still very primitive and they circumsize the boys at 13 andsend them into seclusion for something like 3 weeks to heal. Afterwards,there is a big celebration and feast to welcome them to manhood. Some ofthe more traditional men still go around in "nambas", which are penissheathes made of banana leaves. There's also what they call the cargo culthere from World War II. It's the "Jon Frumm" movement, a return totraditonal values, and the Jon Frumm is a result of "John from America", andthey're waiting for his return with all the goodies the Americans broughthere back then. Vanuatu, then New Hebrides, was a major base during the warand which Michener wrote about in Tales of the South Pacific.Unfortunately, Saturday brought torrential rains and it was a long way up amuddy hill to get to the village, so we opted to stay aboard.Sunday was still sort of bad, but one of the boats organized "game day" andwe all went up to the yacht club and played games. The locals made some ofthe young boys bows and arrows and they went out on a boar hunt while we allplayed cards with a few beers. No boar, but they got a chicken and thelocal kids plucked it. As we planned to return to Tanna when Rose's friendarrived in September, we decided to take off Monday for Port Vila, about 130miles north. We unloaded our cargo and picked up a couple of passengers andleft around 10 or 11 Monday AM. When unloading, Rose ran into a woman,Margaret, who wanted a ride to PV to see her husband. Being the goodsamaritan, we agreed and then found her 1 year old, Andrew was also coming.Oh well. Actually as the trip evolved, we felt really bad as we had highwinds and seas, and, although astern so it wasn't bad for us, those two weresick the whole way up. As a Result, we're rethinking the idea of sailingback down into that. Once again, we slowed down to arrive at daylight.Just outside PV, Joey hooked something really big--he says a tuna since itdove. Bent the pole over double and we lost it. When we reeled in theline, the thing had bent the size 6 hook and thrown it.Coming in to PV is no problem and we were glad to be out of the seas. Theanchorage is deep and there is a big mooring field operated by YachtingWorld. We called them on the radio and they actually send out a boat tolead you in and assign your mooring. Turned out we were right in front offriends from Fiji. PV is really neat--small, but cosmopolitan--sort of anice RoadTown, but provincial all the same. The people are super friendlyand you can get just about anything there which was good as one of the highpressure hoses on the water maker blew. Amazingly, we got that replaced inabout 2 hours!!! This never happens and made our day. so we got squaredaway with a phone (country code 678 number 42289--it's small here so theydon't need as many digits), checked out the huge and good open air market,found cheap Chinese bootleg DVDs and hit the Au Bon Marche, a really goodsupermarket. FYI, Vanuatu, before independence in 1980, was co-adminsteredby the French and English so there are both influences here. I almostforgot, they having amazingly low duty free booze with which we'll load upwhen we check out!!! We're loving this place!!!It turns out independence day coincides with the Captain's birthday, so wecelebrated both. I made my favorite birthday dinner of Veal birds and thelovely Rose baked a chocolate cherry cake. We had a few friends over and,fortunately, did not need to drive anywhere!!!. The 31st was a slow day;the captain is either out of practice or getting too old for this!! Theyhave a cruisers net at 8:15 every morning and on Friday, they announced somedeal out at a horse riding place with fire dancing, etc and good burgers. Abunch of us went and had a ball. They have great beef here and a fromer probaseball player from Texas was cooking up burgers for $3!!. They had a firedance and then the woman who owns the place did a deal with one of thehorses involving jumping through a burning ring--you sort of had to bethere, sorry. Anyway, sometime in there--we spent about 2 weeks in PV,there's a knock on the hull and it's Mick, a friend of the Captain's fromTortola. For you BVI vets, he was captain on Tom Cat, then Lone Star.Turns out about the time we were leaving he picked up the captaincy on DouceFrance, which we noticed coming in and which is the largest private sailingcat in the world--40 meters!!! Mick and i reminisced a bit, but he had theowners coming in and was about to leave for New Caledonia. From there theygo to NZ or OZ, I forget, where he's getting off to pursue his lifeelsewhere.Back to the horse thing for a minute, we met Randy Repass' wife (he's thefounder of West Marine and off the boat for a week on business), and itturns out she's got the exact same thing as Rose, and now we're sure it'sLyme's disease. Kindred spirits and all that, but it confirmed oursuspicions that the docs in NZ were full of it and that Rose does have thisawful thing. They traded commiseration and detoxing tips and later, books,teas and all sorts of weird stuff to get rid of this. Rose has had a bit ofa relapse, so it was really nice to have someone in similar circumstances totalk to. You have got to figure Sally has had the best treatment anddiagnosis possible as Randy is rich as Croesus, but she's gotten the sameinfo. Just hang in there and build up your immune system, and it will taketime.We also saw a boat come in that looked just like a Voyage 58. Met the guyat a cruisers dinner--really a feast--at a Chinese joint, and it turns outhe had the last boat built with those molds before Voyage bought them. Wetraded Voyage, Tom & Deirdre Lubbe (owners of Voyage) stories. An older guywho's a reitred professor. When I got the water maker hose fixed, I alsomet a couple from the states who were on a homemade bright yellow boat thathad been cruising the Pacific for over 20 years. This guy was 75 and I onlyhope I look that good in 25 years when I'm his age--okay, so I'm now JackBenny. For those of you too young to understand the reference, ask yourparents or maybe your grand parents!!! About that time, some other friendswe've seen since the Marqueses pulled in, so we had a bit more socializingto do, including dinner at the Flaming Bull, a really good steak house.Without boring you with the details, customs here doesn't quite get it and,we had a helluva time getting some boat parts and mail released even thoughthey came in FedEx. Got it done though, and the weather turned a bit uglyso we just hung out for a few more days. While all that was going on, againwithout giving the long version, I managed to screw up the new computer andhad to do a system default restore which means it goes back to the way itcame out of the factory. Just today, I got the last of the new passwordsneeded to run a bunch of the software I needed to completely reload. Notthe end of the world as we had been having some boot up problems and thisrestart seems to have solved the problems.I know this is getting long again, but bear with us, we're getting up todate which is August 16th. Can't help it if a lot has been going on!!So--water maker fixed, boat parts received, nav software working, off we go,headed for the northen islands of the group. First stop, Havannah Bay just20 miles around the corner from PV and the staging area for the fleet beforethe battle of the Coral Sea which, by the way, destroyed the Japanese fleet,and marked the real beginning of the end for the Empire. Whoops. Put onthe autopilot as we left and the wheel just spun. Oh,oh, it was the onlything that hasn't broken and, after checking, we decided a spare was justtoo expensive to keep on board. Our little Vanuatu cruise could be donewithout it, but there's no way we're sailing to New Cal or Oz with handsteering. Right, and there is also no way there's a Raytheon guy around,and, oh, of course, it happens on a Satuday, so with the time changes anddate line we're looking at 3 days to talk to Raytheon in the states. Sentan email anyway, and got an automatic response that the guy was at aconference and out 'til Monday which is when we figured we'd hear anyway.Turns out we lucked out and got a conscientious employee who checks hisemail over the weekend. He gave us some trouble shooting advice--oops thisis getting too long. Anyway. It turns out it is the cheap rudder referenceunit and not the expensive computer and our pilot is old enough to bypassthis sensor, whereas newer units don't have that feature as the pilotdoesn't work as well without it. So we're back in business and can easilyreplace the part ourselves when we get it. Another major win!!!!Havannah Harbor is very nice, and there's a large (400 people) village onone of the nearby islands. Some local guys in dugout canoes came by ontheir way back from the village garden which is on the main island, and wetraded a can of tuna for some "real" tomatoes which were hard to come by inPV. They invited us over to the village and we went on Sunday. Met thechief who assigned on of his men to give us a guided tour which includedshowing us the sight of a WWII fighter plane that had crashed. Lots ofhistory here and very cool. We brought some lollies for the children andwere rewarded with a bunch of fresh fruit. Everyone is very friendly here.Spent a couple of days in Havannah, and left for Epi, about 60 miles north.Had a nice sail with fresh wind and following seas. The autopilot ain'tperfect, but it works. As we pulled in, we saw another boat we know fromFiji, as well as another from Tanna and PV. So that's where we are now.Mariner IV, owned by Dennis Tito, the guy who paid the Russians to go upinto space and also the boat thatfriends of ours are crew on pulled in asdid another boat with people we met in NZ. Rose is touring the localvegetable gardens up in the hills, and then we're off 20 miles or so to Malekula andup to Santo, a major US base during the war which is the 2nd city of Vanuatu. Last nightwe ate local food at the one restaurant on the island for $10 a head and itwas great. The bay is known for it's "dugongs", which most of us know as manatees. Saw a few of those and there are loads of turtles as well.CheersTim, Rose & Joe