Our first week in Australia was dedicated almost wholly to the arrival festivities of the Bundaberg Cruising Yacht Club's annual Port2Port Rally. The BCYC was formed in 2000 specifically for the purpose of sponsoring this rally to attract Pacific cruising boats to the Port of Bundaberg, which is situated up the Burnett River off Hervey Bay in Queensland at 24*45.58S 152*23.28E. This year the rally drew some forty boats, departing from two ports in Vanuatu and two in New Caledonia.

Port Bundaberg is an enticing arrival port because, unlike many Australian ports whose approaches can be complicated by shifting river bars, the approach up the Burnett River, leading in from the protected waters of Hervey Bay, is manageable in virtually all conditions, including, as we saw, at night. It is also far enough north that yachts coming from the tropics cross in the Coral Sea, north of the unpredictable weather generated by the Tasman Sea to the south. This had weighed on our minds because a boat we had met and socialized with in Vuda Point had been lost a few months ago in bad weather a mere 150 nm outside of Brisbane. Of course, the Coral Sea route was not without its hazards. One rally boat, Hot Ice, hit a reef and had to be abandoned. Fortunately for it's crew, they were on one of the radio nets at the time, and rescue was organized expeditiously.

Aboard Tackless II, we had very mixed feelings about doing another rally, since sailing to any kind of schedule can only mean trouble, as we were reminded in our trip from Port Vila to Noumea last month. However, the Port2Port Rally takes a slightly different approach. Participants are urged to TRY to arrive within a three-day window prior to the start of the rally parties, leaving departure time up to each individual boat. The organizers provide a tremendous amount of clear, useful information by email prior to departure, run an excellent radio sked twice a day from the 18th to the 29th, but don't collect entry fees until you actually arrive. Therefore, if you don't like the weather, you simply don't come! This year most Port2Port boats left over a span of eight or ten days!

Tackless II was called from the quarantine anchorage to the quarantine dock mid-morning. This gave us plenty of time to spiff up the boat…rather like cleaning for the housekeeper! Customs and immigration were mere formalities since we had applied for visas online in advance and also had printed out the customs papers from the Internet and pre-filled them out. It is quarantine that is the big deal in Australia. Modern day Australia is paying heavily for the past introduction of foreign species – both ignorantly and inadvertently – that have wreaked havoc with its fragile ecosystem (read Jared Diamond's book Collapse.) We are not allowed to bring in any fresh fruits or vegetables, meat, eggs, seeds, dried beans or related products and wood and fiber crafts from the islands are a concern as well. There was a lot of suspense about what we would be allowed to keep, but it proved wise just to wait and see (beyond the very obvious), because we were allowed to keep a lot of things I'd thought they would take. In our case the officers were more worked up by some bugs they found in a bag of slivered almonds, a fluttery character that they eventually identified as a harmless warehouse moth. All in all it was a very professional and courteous entry.

In the course of the following week there were: a spaghetti night, a BBQ night, a welcome breakfast sponsored by the Bundaberg Regional council, a curry night, and afternoon BBQ sponsored by the marina, a "Beer, Prawn and Oyster" night (the marina is associated with a seafood wholesaler), a pot luck evening, and finally a fancy End of Passage dinner with yummy hors d'oeuvres and free Dark and Stormy's (a rum cocktail famously made with the locally brewed Bundaberg rum…although, since the distillery failed to provide the rum, the evening's supply was actually made with Captain Morgan dark!...Yay! More on Bundabeg rum later.) Each of these events was more than affordable and took place around eleven huge round tables in a big tent set up on the marina lawn! The cruisers mixed and mingled (we all had name tags, bless 'em) and sorted out into subgroups of new and old friends.

We had around us quite the circle of friends from the past few seasons, including, Randy and Sheri of Procyon, Tom & Bette Lee of Quantum Leap, Robin and Duncan of Whisper (who actually crossed from Mexico when we did). Tricky and Jane of Lionheart, Jan and Lee of La Boheme, and this year's buddies, Jim and Paula of Avior, among many others.

The day after our arrival, Tom and Bette Lee, who had arrived early and rented a car, conducted us into Bundaberg for our first exposure to this very pleasant Queensland town. Lonely Planet describes Bundaberg as "a country town that feels oh-so two centuries ago." I don't know about that, but to us it felt just right. Down the center of town is a wide boulevard with lanes divided by a tree-shaded parking island and intersections had been attractively bricked. We learned later that there are plenty of modern shopping malls around, but despite them downtown still seemed plenty healthy.

Our primary stop was the Telstra Phone store where, like most of our pals, we got a local phone, a chip for my T-Mobile GSM phone, and a cellular broadband modem for the computer. We were quite grateful for the devalued Aussie $ when we got the total. But it sure has been money well spent, particularly the broadband modem which is so fast we can actually do video Skype!

The next day we met our yacht broker, Anita Farine, who was up from Scarborough to meet several clients. Yes, you read that correctly: Yacht Broker. It is something we have been considering almost from leaving Mexico, and in the end, with man, many mixed feelings, we have decided to put Tackless II on the market here in Australia. We have been repeatedly told there is a good market for our kind of boat here. The market was, of course, very strong up until a month ago, when the world economy went topsy-turvy and the Aussie dollar dropped from USD.95 to USD.60! This, of course, is good news for our living expenses here (especially as we all now only have half as much USDs!), but it is not good news for the boat market. If you'd like to see Tackless II's listing, you can find it at http://farine.net.au/sail/sb195/double.html . If you would like to BUY Tackless II, contact us directly ASAP at svtacklessii AT yahoo.com. (Address is written that way so spammers can scan it, but you know what to do!)

The other big highlight of the Rally week for us was the Monster Bilge Sale – the equivalent of a yard sale to landlubbers. Don and I wheeled up several cart loads of junk…er treasures…about half of which we actually sold. Can't say we made a whole lot of money, but bit by bit we are emptying out Tackless II's crammed lockers. I will say that we didn't BUY anything! Our other strategy for clearing the boat out involved several trips to the Post Office to send back some of the souvenirs we have collected.

Sunday morning, the rally organizers had arranged a bus to take us to the Shalom Vegetable market, held on the unusually named grounds of the Shalom Catholic High School! Don gave this trip a bye, which was a shame as there was a vendor specializing in macadamia and other nuts (which he would have enjoyed!), but I managed to load up two bags full of fresh produce on my own! On the way back, the bus driver took us on a side trip to Bagara, an up-and-coming seaside resort town just south of Bundy. Very pretty, but development is opting for "high rise" (6 or so stories) condos which will milk the real estate but fast defeat the charm.

On Monday we boarded another bus for a tour of Bundaberg's two great claims to fame, its Rum Distillery and its Ginger Beer Factory. We started at the Ginger Beer factory where is proudly brewed natural ginger beer, as well as sarsaparilla (root beer), a lemon-lime drink, an apple ale, a peach ale, and several others. Who knew this stuff was originally brewed like beer (and still is here!)? We got to taste all the products, including the diet versions, and all the ones we remember were very tasty, especially the ginger beer and sarsaparilla, of which we carted home a six-pack. Sadly, the diet versions did nothing for us.

We wish we could be as enthusiastic about the rum. Bundaberg rum, to a Caribbean-trained palate, is quite simply vile stuff! Our guide, the Port2Port volunteer Judy, must have encountered this before with cruisers arriving from the east, because she promoted more heavily their special liqueur – "only available from the factory." The factory tour itself was a little disappointing. In fact both factory tours were actually pseudo tours, cute little displays instead of the real thing. (The real thing can be had at the rum distillery, but it wasn't on our agenda. Perhaps because it calls for closed shoes and so few cruisers have any!) But it did also end up with free tastings. Each of us got a card entitling us to two tastes. I tried the new Bundaberg Red, in hopes it would be smoother. Better, but not a winner. We all tried the liqueur, which is a blend of rum, caramel, chocolate and licorice (I think, or cloves…something exotic), and it was good enough that almost every couple bought at least one bottle. Sadly, they don't offer tastes, free or otherwise, of their two more expensive products that MIGHT have been better tasting. But then, who needs an expensive rum!

After the tours, the bus dropped us all first at Bunnings, a Home Depot-type hardware outlet, and then at a grocery store, which we pretty well besieged. Cruisers who have been in the islands for a few months kind of lose all sense of proportion when exposed to first-world markets like this. So it is probably a good thing that they didn't take us to the Woolworths, which in Australia is a huge mega-market (we went there later with friends!), because they would never have got us all out again!

Between the soda six-packs, the booze cartons and the grocery bags, the return bus was pretty loaded, but this driver, like Sunday's driver, wanted to give us a little something extra so he drove us to the lookout atop the "Hummock." The Hummock is the closest thing Bundaberg has to a hill. Visually, it is a pimple on the very gently rolling flat cane fields, fields that look like a cross between Indiana and Fiji…in other words tidy mid-west farm fields with sugar cane and palm trees! Historically, the Hummock is actually a very ancient volcano, responsible for all the rich soil hereabouts, and as you might guess is densely built up with houses in search of the only "view" in town!

The Port2Port week finally wound down on Tuesday and boats began taking off. Avior, back in their home cruising grounds, took off early for a rendezvous with friends at Lady Musgrave, a coral atoll about 100kms north that is the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef. Quantum Leap headed out for Mooloolaba, which is our eventual destination, where they will store the boa and head home. Procyon, who plans to explore as far south as Tasmania over the summer, got a jump on us by sailing south on Tuesday for the Sandy Straits where they have ended up exploring up the Mary River. It doesn't take long for the gang to disperse!

Saddled with two more paid-for days in the marina, we hung on a bit longer. Our reward was a ride up the Burnett River with Tricky and Jane aboard Lionheart. Rivers are quintessential Aussie experiences. This one wound about four miles inland through mangroves and cane fields to the Midtown Marina and mooring field right in the heart of Bundaberg proper before being blocked by a bride and railroad trestle. Tricky did a great job following the beacons up the river course. That it was a tricky route was attested to by our passing one of the rally boats stuck fast in a shoal area! (We sent the marina guys back for them!) With Lionheart moored bow and stern in the middle of the river, Tricky and Jane will do their own dispersing, taking off for a week visiting Tricky's brother in Rockhampton, about three hours north. Tricky and Jane (or "the kids" as we call them!) plan to go back to work for several years to beef up a world cruising kitty. It had looked like they might be based with us in Mooloolaba as Tricky may become a catamaran sale agent, but recently it's been sounding more like Brisbane will be where they tie up.

Tuesday, the day we rode on Lionheart was a very big day in Australia. Yes, yes, it was a very big day in the US as well, only the elections wouldn't even get going for several hours yet. But here in Australia, Tuesday the 4th was Melbourne Cup Day! Melbourne Cup Day is said to rank second in importance to Christmas on the Aussie calendar, and while it is not actually a holiday, "no one works." Instead they dress up, including fancy hats, and find themselves a Melbourne Cup Party. Presumably, in Melbourne they actually go to the Melbourne Cup! What is the Melbourne cup? It is a horse race on par with the Kentucky Derby.

We did not actually get to a party, but we did lunch at a pub in town that was making a deal of the race. We had to eat on the sidewalk as all the tables were reserved, but Don and I did nip in at race time to watch the race itself. It loses just a little when you have no clue which horse is which, but it was a huge field, maybe eighteen or twenty! And the track was grass! With such a huge field, the race was very exciting (seemed long, too!) and the finish came down to the leader being caught by a charging grey. It was a nose to nose photo finish, and I sure saw nothing to distinguish which was the winner! Wow. It almost makes up for not having seen a kangaroo yet. (We've been walking early; I guess we need to walk late!)

The American elections dominated hearts and minds and TV sets on Wednesday. Duncan and Robin of Whisper staked out a table for the day in Baltimore's, the very nice restaurant at the marina, and watched the returns come in over a long bottle of white wine. We checked in on Yahoo now and again, and stuck our noses into Baltimore's each time we passed. By early afternoon, it was a done deal, so we had Duncan and Robin to Tackless for a evening celebration to toast our new president -- CONGRATULATIONS, OBAMA! And congratulations America, on making a choice for change!

So, here we are. It is Thursday evening, the 6th of November. We have backed off the dock and are anchored not too far from where we were our first night. Tomorrow, we start our trip south through Hervey Bay and the Sandy Straits., a sinuous braid of sand banks and navigable channels squeezed between Frasier Island and the Queensland coast. Piled around me are charts, the Beacon to Beacon guidebook, Alan Lucas' Coral Coast Cruising Guide, lists of way points and bearings, and routes on two electronic charting programs. Leaving a marina is always traumatic!

Labels: Rally Experiences

Ouvea, the northernmost atoll in New Caledonia's Loyalty Islands is a gorgeous spot. Uplifted limestone creates a long thin frame of land on the atoll's east side, while two strands of small islets and reefs known as the Pleiades trail away to the west from the northern and southern tips to loosely enclose the lagoon. The ICA fleet is anchored off the southernmost island of the eastern strip, an island called Ile Mouli, along a curving white sand beach with bright turquoise water in the foreground and in the background a pretty red-roofed church poking up through a grove tall conical pines. It is surely one of the most beautiful, most inviting beaches we have seen in years, but, damn!... it's chilly! Brisk winds and temperatures in the low seventies make it sweatshirt and double-blanket weather for these two captains!

On Monday morning the sky dawned a clear blue, and the wind a more moderate 15 knots. Around us was a total of maybe fifty boats, including our fleet plus a group from the CNC Yacht Club in Noumea (who are officially hosting us). The officials of customs, immigration and quarantine flew in mid-morning, and the skippers assembled ashore to do paperwork under thatched palapas. It was the quarantine officials that had everyone shaking in their boots. New Caledonia has regulations against foreign fruit and vegetables, and even to a degree on meat and dairy. Evidently it is always suspenseful waiting to see what they will take away and what they will allow us to keep. Most of us had purchased Vanuatu beef (excellent and cheap) and paid for a special certificate of export that should pass muster with quarantine. But would it? Most of us also had a stash of vacuum-sealed New Zealand cheeses that we weren't entirely sure were legal. Plus, we were supposed to throw out all our fresh food –including garlic and onions -- twenty miles out, but inevitably there were things we forgot. Were we smugglers if we held on to that last head of garlic, a few onions, and that bit of broccoli?

All in all, things went pretty well. The quarantine officer who visited the boats by dinghy took a few things but left us stuff that would reasonably be eaten within the next few meals. Only fruit and vegetables were discussed. There was no mention of meat or cheese. Generally speaking I would say the whole anchorage heaved a hearty sigh of relief when all was said and done. We celebrated that evening with a potluck cocktail party on the beach where the closest things to vegetables were jars of salsa and olives.

The next day, the local village hosted all the cruisers to a midday feast. A huge buffet table was set with dozens of dishes under one of the beachside palapas (don't actually know what they are called here, but it's just a thatch canopy.) There were speeches and gifts by Gilbert, the leader of the CNC group, speeches and gifts by John, the ICA leader, and speeches of acceptance and welcome by the local chief. The gifts, for those curious, were several T-shirts, a bolt of fabric, and a wad of money from each group.

Many of the dishes had been baked in the earth ovens we have seen from the Marquesas, to Easter Island to Samoa, to Tonga, to Fiji, to Vanuatu. However, all those boring starches seemed to perk up here through the addition of some spice! Trust the French to bring flavor to the South Pacific's generally bland cuisine. In addition to the starches there was grilled fish, poisson cru, roast pig and roast goat, plus French bread and about five different slaws and salads. There was even dessert, canned fruit served in coconut crème with a stalk of sugar cane. Generally it was a pretty satisfying repast.

On Wednesday, most of the fleet mustered ashore at 9am for an island tour. Although the Loyalties are part of New Caledonia and therefore of France, the people here are the original indigenous people known as Kanaks. In the Loyalties, the Kanaks live a relatively "custom" lifestyle. Houses are the traditional round huts with tall conical roofs, and the chief's "grand case" is surrounded by a fence made of huge tree trunks. But the French presence is very obvious to outsiders in the paved roads and utility poles carrying electricity into the traditional homes.

Our tour got off to a late start when one of the busses due to transport our large group didn't show. The organizer, a young business woman named Melinda hustled up a few private vehicles to carry the balance (in one cast in plastic chairs in the back of a pickup), but we were running so late, -- especially after the drivers made the mistake of stopping at the local "supermarket" where the cruisers snarfed up snacks like we hadn't seen food in days -- that one of the major stops on the tour – the coconut oil and soap factory – was already closed, much to the disappointment of several of the cruisers. The next stop was the Blue Holes of Hanawa. The first hole was a light blue pool some 100-150' in diameter in the middle of the limestone several hundred feet in from the ocean. The hole was evidently connected to the sea as bread thrown onto its surface attracted some good sized fish. The next stop, another hole, was said to be a turtle sanctuary, but I'm not sure anyone actually saw any turtles. From there we drove to the north end of the island to a visit the handsome Catholic Church in St. Joseph. With its cool blue vaults, stations of the cross and stained glass windows, it made us nostalgic for Mexico (where my sister Jo is currently touring the lovely churches in the Puebla area.)

After the church we tried the soap factory again, but although the workers had promised Melinda to reopen after their lunch, there was no sign of them. So it was on to the vanilla plantation. This was an interesting endeavor by a family where a substantial number of vanilla vines are being trained up racks girdling the trunks of shade trees in a patch of forest. Of course, it is early spring as far as the vanilla plants are concerned so all we saw were the first flowers starting to open. Evidently the flowers here must be hand pollinated, painstaking work, because attempts to interest local bees in doing the job have so far failed. It takes eight months for the pollinated flower to produce a bean, and then the beans must be dried for three months. We were incredulous that so far at least the plantation does not ship any of their vanilla off island, but that tourists buy up most of their product. Keep in mind that most of Ouvea's tourists stay in homestay "gites" (clusters of homestay guest huts) and there is only one "resort"! (We later learned that Ouvea is visited several times a month by a cruise ship, which must help!.) The two ladies in charge of the plantation did have packets of vanilla beans to sell, small jars of ground vanilla, and a larger jar of "vanilla and coconut jam".

The most impressive site on our tour was "Les Falaises de Lekiny" or the Lekiny Cliffs. Where Mouli meets the main island via a small bridge, the lagoon pushes though into a shallow interior lagoon backed by a tall limestone cliffs pocked with caves, undercuts and stalagmites. It was a striking stretch of landscape for an otherwise flat, scrubby island.

To close out the day we stopped for some pictures from the Mouli Bridge and then ran down to the southern end of the island where we stood on the shore of the pass we had entered just days before by boat. I don't know. There was something ultimately ridiculous about sixty pale-skinned yachties disgorging from busses onto a tiny stretch of limestone beach. In fact, I suppose generally, it was an underwhelming tour. A long day in vans and busses running up and down paved roads bordered largely by bush. Melinda says the population of the atoll is around 3,000 (with another three thousand of her people living in Noumea), but there is not much sense of the inhabitants .

Actually, there was one other stop that told us rather more than anything else about Ouvea's Kanak residents. It was an elaborate memorial remembering 19 rebels who were killed by French paratroopers in 1988 after the rebels took some gendarmes hostage as part of a "muscular mobilization campaign" in the Kanak movement for independence. We are told there are several different versions of what happened that day, but clearly the French government was determined to nip in the bud any uprising. For us, it is a reminder that you can't take things on their superficial value. It is easy to think the Kanaks in the Loyalties have a good deal, with a certain degree of autonomy, social support from the French government for education, medical, and infrastructure services, and some kind of stipend that affords them cars and cell phones and imported foods. But I guess a good deal cannot entirely gloss over the fact that the Kanaks have for many decades been treated by the French as second class citizens in their own country.

Not sure exactly what our next plans in New Cal are. A few boats sailed out from Ouvea the evening after the tour. Some are leaving first thing Thursday. Others are talking about Friday. Some plan to sail to Noumea "over the top" of Grand Terre while others plan to head south via the other Loyalties and the famously beautiful Ile de Pins. I guess we'll know what we're doing when we've done it, but I suspect Don plans to spend tomorrow tinkering more on the engine!

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Labels: New Caledonia, Rally Experiences, Road trips

This leg of the ICA Rally has exemplified for us the plusses and minuses of traveling with a rally group. Although many of the participating boats have been with the rally on its complete circuit from New Zealand to Tonga to Fiji to Vanuatu, many more signed up for this leg only to take advantage of the special check-in the organizers had arranged to take place in Ouvea, the northernmost of New Caledonia's eastern string of islands known as the Loyalties. . Normally, full check-ins for New Caledonia are available only in Noumea, on the West side of Grand Terre, the main island. Although partial check-in can be done on Lifou Island in the Loyalties, boats then are expected to proceed on to Noumea within one week. This makes spending any time in the Loyalty Islands all but impossible. Because the ICA had arranged to bring the Noumea officials to us, participating boats would be able to take all the time they want to get to Noumea. The result was that the rally group swelled from the twenty coming from Fiji to thirty-five! Thirty five crews make for quite a crowd.

Pre-departure activities in Vanuatu were fairly well organized, particularly the duty-free fueling of so many boats, the customs and immigration formalities, and of course the parties. Right after the first "muster", we had a big group dinner at The Flaming Bull steakhouse. This teetered on the brink of disaster since it took all of three hours for everyone to get served. BUT, the evening was redeemed because every one of the dinners came exactly as ordered and were downright delicious. Two nights later, Tusker Beer, one of the rally's main sponsors, hosted a potluck barbecue at the Vanuatu Yacht Club, providing free beer, which with cruisers always sets the mood. It was a particularly nice evening, because people wore name tags and mingled, so we got to actually meet a lot people who previously had only been names on a list. And then, for the final checkout Friday morning, Tusker also arranged for the best patisserie in Port Vila to cater a variety of fresh French pastries along with divine expresso coffee. Not a bad way of doing things.

All these conveniences of a rally, however, are offset by the fact that a rally must keep a schedule, and THAT violates the cardinal rule of cruising. Our trip from Fiji to Tanna was a happy fluke in that the schedule matched a perfect weather window. The schedule for the short trip from Vila to Ouvea, however, did not.

A Not so Nice Passage

We left at four thirty Friday afternoon, setting sail into light winds and a nice sunset. The first twenty hours were idyllic enough: ten to fourteen knots just forward of the beam, almost no sea, and a moon near full. That's when the word "trough" that I'd heard on the weather report finally penetrated, as a recollection burbled up through my murky mind of a previous lovely full moon night passage in Venezuela that went wrong as a trough rolled over us. Well, sure enough, mid-afternoon on Saturday, things went to hell in a hand basket.

First the wind died away completely. So on comes Perky and we were motoring away in company with another boat in the rally, when -- burp -- the engine died and we were left making no way in no wind while the other boat walked away We were stunned by the engine quitting again, as we were quite sure we had found the root problem when we discovered that the fuel tank vent was blocked. Not only was it clear we hadn't found the whole problem, but it was the first time the engine had quit with any load on! The good news is, Don got it reprimed and restarted in record time, but the suspense of it quitting again weighed heavily on us.

Then, as we passed through the frontal boundary, the wind came in on us in a fury. From zero to 25+ in moments it seemed like, and the seas went from flat to short and steep. Yuck-OH! Fortunately, we'd had a heads-up on the wind, and had put in our second reef early and raised our trusty staysail. We went from a languid six knots boat speed down to barely three, thanks to the wind being hard on the nose and the seas knocking back any momentum The old girl was heeled way over and the seas regularly sluiced the whole boat. Thank goodness for our enclosure. How people in open boats do this is beyond us.

We got a third reef in the main before dark and braced ourselves for a long miserable night. There was a lot of talk -- aboard T2 and on the radio -- of heaving to. Apparently, the anemometers on the Kiwi boats are calibrated differently than ours as there also was a lot of talk about 30, 35, even 40 knot gusts. Ours never claimed more than 25-27, but perhaps it is ours that is out of calibration, because let me say simply...it was nasty.

Fortunately a few hours into it things eased just enough that the boat at least started making some way. It was not remotely fun or comfortable, but it was, as we say, doable. For one of the few times ever, my stomach was queasy, probably thanks to the salami sandwiches we'd had for lunch when things were calm. What was I thinking!? There was no interest in dinner, and we took turns sleeping on the leeward side of the cockpit. Along about four am, we sailed out of the rain and cloud into clear skies with stars and a fat old orange moon setting between a lingering cloud strip and the horizon. The wind still was honking a brisk 18-22, but we were between Ouvea and Lifou islands, so the seas were more reasonable and we were moving right a long. At sunrise we set a scrap of headsail and the boat speed jumped from 4.5 to 7+ knots. We turned in through Ouvea's Pass de Coetlogon at about 10am on the 14th , and had the anchor down off the Mouli beach by 10:45. It was time for a hot meal and a long nap.

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Labels: Rally Experiences

Festival at Southwest Bay

If there was ever a place to see the effect that physical geography can have on the development of culture, Vanuatu is the place. Because of steep terrain, villages here have evolved independently of one another, developing different languages and different customs. Even today, with airstrips and cell towers and public education, geography still has its influence. Southwest Bay on the island of Malakula has an airstrip at the village of Wintua, but no roads and no vehicles. It just happens to lie on the "wrong" side of Malakula, off the beaten path of cruising sailboats trying to fit as many "name" anchorages in as possible so few cruisers find their way in. And yet it is about as idyllic an anchorage as any cruiser could hope for – spacious yet well protected from the majority of winds (N-E-S-SW!), no swell, great holding, some decent snorkeling and diving and several friendly villages. There's even a modern Kiwi farm offering fresh eggs for sale, as well as occasionally local meat, fresh fish, chickens (!!live!!) plus the have a burn bit for trash!

It seems that several weeks ago, Luc and Jackie of the yacht Sloepmouche (cruisers who have paused here in Vanuatu the past two years) sailed into Southwest Bay. Over chats with local chiefs it transpired that the villagers would do just about anything to increase visitor traffic to the bay. Indeed last year one of the villages undertook to put on a program for a small cruise ship that made several visits. The villagers went away for some training and put together a relatively polished presentation. Then the cruise ship didn't come anymore. So Luc, who is an active contributor to the SSCA Bulletins, undertook to coordinate a cruiser festival here in conjunction with the chiefs. The three villages planned a three-day event, and Luc got the word out over the coconut telegraph, with the result that some thirty-four boats assembled for the event!

I'm sure others may have been put off by the idea of such a crowd, but in fact, the anchorage could easily hold three times as many boats. We are all swinging free with plenty of room between neighbors. And while the critical mass of cruising boats and their crews has been a revelation for the locals, it's also been quite a social occasion for the yachties themelves, many of whom haven't crossed paths in years.

The three villages involved in the event are Lembinwen, Lapo, and Tenstick. The festival began at Lembinwen, a large village on the bank where a salt water river flowing briskly from a huge tidal lagoon meets the bay. Central to the day was the dedication and opening of the Southwest Bay Yacht Club. The "yacht club" phenomenon is found all though Vanuatu. In traditional places where areas, buildings and pathways hold all sorts of traditional restrictions and taboos (particularly with respect to outsiders and women), having a building where yachties can gather to mingle with the locals without inadvertently treading on those traditions has been a successful compromise. Lembinwen was keen to have one and built the thatch hut in a matter of weeks.

But it could not happen without a lot of pomp and ceremony. The yachties were greeted on the beach with drinking coconuts and hibiscus flowers for each lady. There was a receiving line and a string band (evidently every village has their own) and an emcee with a megaphone. We learned later that the megaphone is a regular part of village life, a way for the chief to "send out" messages to the village, a tropical town crier, if you will. In the hands of Charlie, Lembinwen's emcee for the day, it was a non-stop white noise as he shifted back and forth between languages and panned his voice this way or that to target various groups of yachties or villagers in a relatively vain effort to herd us all along …vain of course because he was completely incomprehensible! There was a flag-raising on the beach, a banner held up by adorable children we needed to walk under, and speeches from a thatch dais by several chiefs, who were terrified at addressing a crowd of white foreigners in English if the trembling paper holding the composed speech was any indication! There was even a white ribbon on the door of the new yacht club that had to be cut with scissors at yet another flag raising.

Considering that this was Lembinwen's first such event, they did a very fine job. They had a whole series of demonstrations of village life planned; climbing coconut trees for nuts, cutting said nuts open for drink or meat, cooking a pudding of coconut and plantain in tubes of bamboo of a fire, starting that fire without matches, and of course weaving useful carryalls out of pond fronds. They also gave a cursory demonstration of how their outrigger canoes are constructed, and a shy fellow showed the traditional sand-drawing, where images are created without ever lifting the finger. We had a nice lunch of beef stirfry, taro, and a fancy bread and banana concoction, which surely used every plate in the village's possession, and then we all climbed up a hill (where hand-rails had been lashed helpfully to the path-side trees) to watch a ladies' grade-taking dance.

Unfortunately, what explanation of the dance Charlie and the megaphone provided was not clear enough that many of us appreciated what we were seeing. It is only after coming back to the boat and reviewing my Lonely Planet did I start to get a clue. Grade-taking, usually associated with men only, is a process whereby individuals increase status within the community. According to the Lonely Planet, the men "earn respect by publicly disposing of their wealth in a series of elaborate ceremonies"…"accompanied by the ritual killing of pigs." What they are after from the pigs are the boar's tusks, which take six to seven years to grow, so one has to own a lot of pigs that reach maturity to collect the required number of tusks to reach "high levels of society." It seems that the southern Malekula women are the only Vanuatu women to take grades.

What was perhaps slightly uncomfortable was that the ladies danced topless. It is an odd jump to make from women in Mother Hubbards (the smock-like dress introduced by missionaries) to the same women in grass skirts and vines. These are not the nubile virgins most of the men were hoping to see, but matronly figures, to put it kindly, and the dance was a fairly monotonous chant and tread around a "house" made of saplings, which the ladies eventually entered and then pushed down for the finale, a symbolism lost on us.

After the dance, about half the cruisers opted for the lagoon tour – a fast trip in a line of dinghies through the huge estuary up the river.

The next day was pretty much a rerun, except that presented by the villagers of Lapo, the ones who had trained for the cruise ship, every phase was more coordinated and more polished. Instead of flowers for our ears we had leis (which work better for white people!),
there were straws for our drinking coconuts, the benches at the beautifully landscaped dance ground had backs to them (!!!!), the lunch was somewhat more elaborate, and the guy on the megaphone was much easier to understand. As we landed our dinghies on their beautiful beach, we were parceled into groups of ten and given a guide for the day. The guides were more effective than Charlie's amplified directions had been, but even so I am quite sure the guides found cruisers much more challenging to "herd" than the cruise ship passengers had been!

The two big differences in the day were the village tour and the dancing. Lapo (pronounced LaBO) is the Swiss village of southwest Bay. The thatch huts climb the steep hillside along a path that switches back and forth up through dense jungly forest. The houses, though still stick and thatch, seemed larger and more westernized in style, with porches and windows, some with screens and others even with glass, motivated, I presume, by the gorgeous vistas and the cool breezes. One little cluster had three tombs in the front, (rather Samoan style), there was a nice little Presbyterian church, and deliberate effort at landscaping with flowers and shrubs along the paths was evident everywhere. Near the top of the villages was a waterfall with a Jacuzzi like pool for kava drinking.

As for the dancing, this time it was men's dances and the men were in Kastom-dress.
Unlike the "participatory' dances we saw in Tanna (and here I consult Lonely Planet again), the two dances we saw in Lapo were "impersonation" dances where the men "pretend to be an ancestor or legendary figure" which allows the use of elaborate masks or headdresses.
Below they wear little more than penis sheaths and decorations of leaves, including colorful tufts from their backsides like rooster tails. Unlike the women, the men were easier on the eye, revealing fitter more muscular flesh. (We were told that one reason the men don't run to fat like the ladies is that kava – in these villages restricted to men's consumption – is an appetite suppressant!). Also the men's dance was accompanied by the drumming of a set of three elaborate tamtam (carved wooden slit-drums), which was very stirring.
The costumes and headdresses were truly memorable (different in each dance), but the dance steps themselves were the same for both dances, a handful of slow deliberate steps, then a flurry of fast double-timers when the drum beat sped up.
The art, of course, is doing it while keeping the headdresses upright.

Of course, just as we were all sitting there thinking the dance steps were rather unexciting, we were invited to come out and join the dancers. It wasn't so easy…and that's without headdresses!

All in all another nice day.

The third day of the festival was a more relaxed opportunity to visit the small hamlet of Tenstick, located on the westernmost point of the bay and named for the haystack islet just offshore. It seems in WWII the pilots based at Espirito Santo paid the villagers "ten sticks" – or ten cigarettes – to use the islet for target practice. Here the main attraction was to be snorkeling and diving, but the good weather that had blessed the first two days of the festival failed, and the morning was beset with a chilly drizzle. As you might guess, most of the cruisers, overdosed on village visits from the previous two days, opted to stay home. On Tackless II this captain was feeling a bit under the weather as we had celebrated Don's big SIX-OH the night before (more on that later). But when someone announced on the radio that perhaps these villagers had gone to more preparation than we'd been led to expect, we, like several others, clambered into our dinghies to pay our respects.

The Tenstickers had their own string band, their own hibiscus flowers and drinking coconuts to offer (these with straws of "cabbage stems"!), a table of snacks to try, and some crafts and shells to sell. Both men and women were on the beach to greet us, and sat around to chat. Don and David (the Runaway Bay crew had caught up with us in time for the BiG SIX-OH dinner) had a tour with the chief, and David invited the chief to visit our boats in the morning (Damn, gotta cleanup AGAIN!) Afterwards we took our snorkel gear to check out the reefs around Tenstick Islet, and were sufficiently impressed with the clear water and reef landscape to plan a scuba dive tomorrow.

If you are wondering what the villagers got for their efforts, it is common to ask a fee. After all, these traditions, reefs and National Geographic opportunities are all these people have to market. On the first day, Lembinwen asked only for gifts of our discretion (and they collected quit a heap!); at Lapo they asked the equivalent of $30 a head (a bit dear), and at Tenstick $3 bought us access to the reef.

Don's BIG six-OH!

August 13th came around again this year, and it was mighty nice of the folks of Southwest Bay to throw this big party for Don, cause i'd been wondering waht special thing I could to celebrate. It was our friends Randy and Sherri of Procyon that alerted us to it as a perfect place to meet up for the occasion, and very fine that our "newest best friends" David and Chrissie of Runaway Bay put the push on to get here in time. Other than the events of the festival, Don's big day started with sat phone calls home as well as well-wishing by email, and ended with a big dinner for six in Tacky Two's cockpit. Randy and Sherri contributed a sinful chocolate cake and a split of champagne, Dave and Chrissie a lovely fruit compote and yam fritters, while I strove to provide cheeseburgers in paradise…which, believe me, in Paradise is no easy feat. My homemade buns, such a success in Tonga two years ago, were a bit of a flop, and the burgers, down-sized twice before grilling to fit the buns ended up more like White Castles' infamous sliders. Damn, I shoulda thought to grill onions!!!! My potato salad, however, was more successful, thanks to Chrissie's bringing us provisions from Port Vila.

Although we miss being close enough to home that the family could make a big fuss over us for milestones like these, the cruising way has its virtues: celebration by like-minded souls in like situations with similar thoughts of where we are in life and what we want from what remains us.

15-18 August 2008 – ‘Tween Time

Southwest Bay was the kind of place one could hang on the hook indefinitely, especially with the ability to restock beef, fish, eggs as well as lemons and limes from the Kiwi Farm. On the Friday after the hoopla of the festival died down and as the fleet started to disperse, we did manage to fit a scuba dive in on the reef on the west side of the pass between Tenstick’s islet and village. Don and David actually opted to sit on the surface and schmooze about boat systems while Chrissie, a newly certified diver, and I went for a very nice dive through a system of caverns and pinnacles, my favorite kind of landscape. Hard to believe Chrissie was a newbie!

In the afternoon, Don and I went ashore to collect a sarong I had purchased from a woman named Marklynn at the Tenstick do the day before. We found her house as she’d described, the last compound on Lembinwen village’s west end. She and her husband Silon made us welcome in the family’s main building, a structure of cement and stone up two feet, topped by the traditional vertical stick walls, and an absolutely beautiful thatch roof. The building housed an open space probably 25’x40’, and inside was almost nothing! Against one wall in the corner was a bench with some cooking pans, and the sarong I was picking up was pinned to the wall above it. Their son Anthony, a handsome young man as yet unmarried, is one of the musicians in the village string band, so of course we had to buy a copy of their just-released CD (produced very professionally by a Peace Corp worker.) Later when Marklynn went to get a gift for me (my very own, very pink Mother Hubbard dress…so I “could have a proper dress!), she went into a smaller hut nearby, so we deduce each member of the family as their own sleeping hut.

Aside from the new and spacious compound, Silon and Marklyn are distinguished by keeping pets. In a stone and cement pool built into the sand, Silon keeps five turtles – four hawksbill and one green turtle – that he says he has raised from babies. Keeping turtles for four years takes a lot of work. They feed the turtles rice and change the water every day, and Silon claims they take the turtles out in the sea for swims. He says he keeps them to teach the community children that turtles are protected now and not to be caught or shot for food. He also has a flying fox in a cage, which he acquired when one of the boys shot the mother with a slingshot and the baby was found tucked under her wing. All the animals seemed happy and clean and friendly with the family.

On our way out, Silon led us on a tour through Lembinwen village. Even though we had spent a day there for the festival, we actually had not seen much of it. Wandering around unattended is not encouraged. It turned out to be quite densely built up (no wonder Silon moved to the suburbs!). We saw two of the three churches (Presbyterian, SDA and CDC…I know what SDA is, but not CDC!), an actual open air stage for the band and other village events, a volleyball court, the primary school, the chief in his undershorts and well, you know….village life.

The next morning we took advantage of the light winds and motored back around the south end of Malekula to the Maskelyne islands at Malekula’s SE corner. This was a change of plan. Originally, I’d thought we’d sail with Runaway Bay north up to Luganville on Espirito Santo, where the US military base was during WWII and where there are several spectacular wreck dives (the USS President Coolidge, a 654-foot former luxury liner that was serving as a troop ship when she struck a friendly mine and sank, and the infamous Million Dollar Point, where the US navy dumped thousands of tons of equipment after the war.) However the Coolidge is a deep dive which I am avoiding these days, and Don was lukewarm about diving on his own, and with the weather report predicting strong easterlies coming in within the week, we were concerned about getting pinned in up there when we would need to get back southeast to Efate. So, instead we decided to proceed with Procyon and other friends over to Ambrym Island for a famous Rom dance festival

The Maskelyne Islands are a pretty little group of seven islets and extensive reef areas. We tucked in to a super protected anchorage behind the coral-fringed islet of Awea (S16*31’.9; E169*41.’2) with a bunch of friends, and quite honestly, never put the dinghy down. With two festivals behind us and another to go, we were perfectly happy just to sit on our boat and do as little as possible. Of course, that didn’t stop people from visiting us. Marjetka, the Slovenian single-hander, and her wonder dog Cherie were there and came and spent an afternoon visiting, as did Randy and Sherri of Procyon. Also we had a few visitors that came by canoe, most memorably Martin and his five-year-old son Thatcher! We enjoyed chatting with Martin, and although he had nothing to trade, we ended up making him a gift of some reading glasses which he sorely desired.

On Monday morning, the wind picked up to a respectable 15 knots and the entire anchorage emptied out in a steady stream and set sail for the NW tip of Ambrym Island about 46 miles away. As the fleet sailed out, we had to give way to the local canoes, now alll equipped with sails!

Since Ambrym is Vanuatu’s other big active volcano, we were concerned about picking up ash and fumes as we sailed by its leeward side, but fortunately for us the main impact was some locally-generated wind patterns switching the southeasterlies abruptly to northwesterlies! Still we had another great sail and settled into the relatively open roadstead off Nebul village known as Rodd’s anchorage (S16*06’.5; E168*.07’.7).

Labels: Diving, Hiking, Rally Experiences, Traditional Festivals, Vanuatu

I cannot tell a lie. The officials were late. But considering is was they that had to come the hour and a half across the island in the back of a pickup truck and not us, we could hardly complain. It gave us the time ashore to explore the little village at Port Resolution.

Unlike most villages we have seen from the Marquesas to Fiji, in this one the houses are all traditionally constructed of woven sticks and thatch roofs. I can't tell you how right this feels, compared to raw rectangles of wood, tin or concrete. The houses appeared to be clustered in family groups, and everything was neat and tidy, albeit with pigs running hither and thither. The only western style construction appeared to be around the primary school, but we didn't get a chance to look in.

We did spend quite a bit of time in their 'cultural center", a separate bure with "exhibits" and laminated placards pertaining to specific traditions, customs and ceremonies. There even was a reproduction of an oil painting of "the only first hand witness of a cannibal ceremony". I suspect a Peace Corps contribution to the effort. We were told there is an American lady living in the village, but we did not cross paths.

When they did arrive, the officials were fairly organized. There was even a representative from the bank to change our "hard currencies" (US and Aussie $) into vatu. Vatu are one of those currencies where $1000 vatu equals a dollar. Hard to get your head around.

We had a relaxed afternoon in preparation for muster at 4pm to climb into three pickup trucks for the trip to Mt. Yasur. Although there were only six ICA Rally boats (note the one with steering problems achieved a fix and caught up with us all), there were another eight or so boats in the anchorage who joined the tour, so the trucks were pretty well packed with about ten people sitting on benches around each of the truck beds. The "roads" are mountain tracks with some very large holes. These trucks are the only transportation these villages have!

What can I say about Mt. Yasur. It was pretty incredible. It rises from the mountainside in a neat ash cone from a burned area of lava rock. The trucks drive as close as 150 meters, and the brave-of-heart climb the rest of the way up a soft black-sand path to the rim. Let me hasten to say this is the upper rim. They used to let people descend to the lower inner rim until a Japanese lady was incinerated in an instant by a molten blast!
Believe us, the upper rim was spectacular enough. With the wind from the southeast, most of the smoke was blown away from us and the experience was curiously devoid of sulphur smell. There were evidently two main vents. The left hand one put on most of the fireworks, blasting red hot molten boulders from its glowing core 200+ feet skyward at regular explosive intervals. The vent to the right, however, specialized in freight train sound effects and towering columns of roiling black smoke.

We stayed until after dark and captured a great deal of the show on camera and video. It is powerful and mesmerizing, and that's at activity level two. (No one's allowed up if the level rises to four or higher.) One can readily understand how the mountain figures as a powerful deity in the "kastom" beliefs.

Speaking of "kastom", (Vanuatu has hundred of languages that developed in the isolated villages. Bislama, a sort of pigeon English, in the national shared vernacular. Many islanders do, however, speaker either English or French as well.) …the very next morning we were ashore at 7:30 am to climb back into our trucks for a ride to a 'nearby" village to attend a "circumcision festival." Stanley, our yachtie liaison at Port Resolution, was very excited for us, because this was not a tourist show, but a real event – indeed one of the traditional events we'd read about in the cultural center.

The nearby village, said to be in walking distance, was a 45 minute ride by truck. Presumably, there is a shorter footpath, because Stanleys wife Mariam did appear under her own footpower! The yachties and a few tourists from a hotel were seated on a rise looking over the ceremonial ground, packed dirt, where there were five piles of what most of us took to be umus or earthen ovens. We were right as it turned out later, but the first stage of the ceremony was for the five families of the boys to start laying on piles of gifts: first perhaps a dozen woven pandanus mats, then dozens of sulu-length strips of colorful fabric (spread one at a time!), then blankets, then more mats and a bundle of pandanus baskets, all this for EACH pile. Each clan group congregated in a separate corner of the ceremony area.



The men wore sulus, often matching within the clan, motley T-shirts, occasional crocs (Chinese rip-offs) and the odd feather in their hair. The women were far more decorated. They wore layers of grass skirts, a sarong around their tops, garlands of plastic flowers and Christmas tinsel around their necks and multiple feathers and other decorations in their hair. Obviously, even "kastom" attire has been influenced by the modern world.

After all the last baskets were balanced on the piles, in came the livestock. This was pretty hard for most of the Westerners to take. Each family provided pigs, goats or cows. The pigs were brought in squealing, hung by their feet from poles, and then stunned by a blow with a club. (This brought vividly to our minds the reproduction we'd seen in the cultural center!) The cows and goats were, mercifully, slaughtered dispatched out of our view, and then dragged on to the 'stage" by teams of men. The young Welsh girl next to me wept silently through the whole process.

Only now was the stage set for the boys to come out of the bush. Traditionally, the circumcisions were done by bamboo scalpel without anesthetics. Nowadays, we were told, they do it in the hospital "so the boys don't have to have the pain." No mention was made of the more hygienic conditions! Then the boys are sent away from their mothers "out into the bush" where they are in the care of men who supervise the healing and provide manly instructions. The ceremony we were attending was for their return from the bush.

The boys when they finally appeared were dressed up fancy like their mothers. They were paraded through the piles with their male relatives shrouding and protecting them. The boys looked very young and small and overwhelmed by all the hoopla. There followed much kastom dance, chanting harmony by the men to a rhythm stamped by their bare feet in the dirt. (Crocs were kicked aside for this!) The women circled the men bouncing like kangaroos and contributing their high harmonies. Clearly their legs are in better shape than ours!

When the dancing was over, the boys had disappeared again, and now began the dismantling of the piles they had worked so hard to build, each pile given to the mother's family who had come from distant villages. (When women are married off, they move to their husband's village. For this ceremony, the wives families traveled to be on hand.) At the bottom, under the piles of leaves did, in the end, appear umu earth ovens from which were extracted packets of cooked pork and laplap, a traditional dish easiest described at a flat, starchy pudding baked in leaves. One of these packets was delivered to the cruisers, who despite their aversion to the slaughter techniques, weren't too hesitant about chowing down! (Even the Welsh girl had some pork!)

At this point the ceremony broke so that all the food stuff could be prepped and put to cook for the big feast and dance that night…actually the main event. As the cruisers dispersed to the trucks, we were told we'd be welcome back that night, that the doings would mostly likely last from sunset to sunup. I think a German and Dutch family did go back, but most of us returned to our boats, anxious about a forecast wind shift and plans to move on in the morning.

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Labels: Hiking, Mt. Yasur, Rally Experiences, Tanna, Traditional Festivals, Vanuatu, volcano

We are safely anchor down in Port Resolution, a picturesque notch in the windward side of Tanna Island. With the exception of a slight roll, it is a nice place to be, as long as the winds don't back any farther north than east. Fortunately, the weather report calls for a week of so'easterlies.

We have not been ashore yet, but shore has come out to us by way of dugout canoes with floating outriggers made from tree branches. Tawa, our first visitor, traded us a cooked lobster for 4 D cell batteries. Tom, coming later in the afternoon, sought a few litres of diesel for his father's generator for which he gaves us papaya, christophene, and a huge bunch of spring onions straight from the garden! This is the way of Vanuatu, a long strand of mountainous islands where villages developed in isolation from one another and villagers today still live very simply. Visting yachts come prepared to trade useful items for fresh produce because it is one of the few ways the locals can acquire these things.

In the evening our rally leaders, Dave and Andrea of the yacht Diomedea (Wonder what it means? I asked. It's the species name for albatross!) had the whole rally group over for sundowners to celebrate our arrival. I think the original plan was to assemble at the "yacht club," picturesquely situated on a bluff overlooking the anchorage, but it was discovered that the five cases of beer, delivered by Tusker Beer, one of the rally sponsers, had been consumed by the villagers! So the evening was potluck with the remains of stores from Fiji, and it was a nice group of people -- mostly all accented folk from NZ, Australia and Great Britain! As darkness feel, the volcano inlnd from the anchorage belched fire and turned the skyline red.

We have a busy day ahead today. The customs and immigration officials from Lenakel, the main town on Tanna (but with an untenable anchorage) are due at the Yacht Club at 9am (possibly with another five cases of beer!), and then at 4pm we assemble for the truck ride up to the volcano. this is the BIG ATTRACTION of Tanna, the world's most accessible, active volcano. One can drive to within 150 meters of the rim and walk the last bit. This is said to be an exciting and thrilling experience.

Labels: Rally Experiences, Vanuatu

What a simply grand passage we have had! We are less than ten miles out from Port Resolution, Tanna Island,Vanutu, and we have done the trip -- on which previously we would have figured four days -- in several hours less than three days! It is as if Mother Nature knew we needed an antidote to our boatyard blues, and sent us close to perfect conditions for what essentially has been our shake down sail. With the exception of the twenty hours we had to motor (and, of course, the only reason we HAD to motor was not to lag behind the other guys in the rally....who were motoring), we have been sailing a brisk seven knots in 15 knots of wind right off the beam. The weather has been sunny during the days and mostly clear at night, with the awesome firmament of the southern sky overhead, and even the seas have been relatively regular.

Tackless II herself feels joyful. In the past, when the knot log has ventured up to seven knots, the wind has been howling and the ride has been agitated. But this whole trip, the inside of the boat has been quiet. Few creaks or groans, and the motion has been relatively smooth and steady, plus we have happily carried more sail than has been our habit Both of us have slept soundly on our off watches, and we have managed to eat quite well. It's almost like sailing a whole new boat.

So,miracle of miracles, we may finally come around to feeling good about our investment of time in the yard and our investment of dollars with Baobab Marine.

Update to follow on landfall in Tanna.

Labels: Passages, Rally Experiences

The light winds hung around for about 24 hours, although the last six hours or so it picked up to a nice gentle ten knots, which, with full main and genoa, drive Tacky along right nicely. We shut down the engine and enjoyed a good dinner and got in our first round of sleep. But shortly after midnight, things got busy! The wind popped up as we approached some seemingly small, blackish clouds, and Don had to haul me back out of bed to take a reef in the main, set the staysail and furl the big headsail. Since then we have rollicked along making about seven knots under shortened sail. Guess that bottom job was worth doing!

After I went back to bed, I guess I missed a little excitement. One of the boats up ahead of us in our group of six experienced a steering failure, and had to bear off under emergency tiller away from Tanna to Port Vila on Efate, the only place in Vanuatu where technical assistance can be had. Since they were ahead of us, Don hadn't expected to see them, so was right surprised when a bot'as bow lights appeared on the horizon. This brings our group down to five.

So at 0800, we have 178 miles to go, over half way. Apologies about the GPS stamp; apparently the small GPS I was interfacing conflicts with my iridium modem. So I will do this by hand.

At 0800, Tackless II was at 18*50S; 172*32E, on a course of 244*M, making 7 knots. The wind is 17 knots from the SE, seas 3-5', sky is clear, Barometer is 1011, and temperature has warmed up to 82*

Labels: Passages, Rally Experiences

Well, it's a done deal. We are history as far as Fiji is concerned. At 10am sharp the twenty or so boats participating in the Island Cruising Association rally, along with a few sightseers, left Musket Cove in a ragged line, two abreast. As we cleared the outer reef about an hour later, some thirteen boats bore off due west heading for Asanvari on Maewo Island while six of us kept straight on a course of 244 degrees heading for the more southern island of Tanna. The seventh boat in our group had to turn back to Vuda due to mechanical problems. Hey! It wasn't us.

Nor, shall we mention, were we the last boat in line! With a brisk 15 knots off our beam, we set a record 12 hours making a steady 7+ knots. Thank you Willie for our new bottom!

Unfortunately, the wind died off around midnight, and so did our great progress. Around 0200, we furled the genoa, turned the enigne on , and sheeted the main to center to stop the sails from flogging, and we have been proceding that way since. Sigh. It was grand while it lasted. At least the batteries are all topped up, the sky is clear, the stars are bright, and the crew is good.

I think I've turned on the function to stamp the emails with our lat/long. someone let me know. But just in case, at 0530 Fiji time, Tackless II was at S 18*12'; E175*12', Wind SE 6 knots, sky clear.

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Labels: Musket Cove, Passages, Rally Experiences