03 July 2007 Port Resolution, Tanna
After much repairing of leaky dinghies and sitting out storms and my cold, we finally got away from Noumea and headed for Vanuatu. At present we are pretty knackered, even though it was a short trip - they seem to be more tiring than the long ones, as you don't get into the routine of doing watches, so we only got a couple of hours decent sleep on the trip. I've decided it is punishment for having a boat instead of kids - it still ends up costing us heaps and giving us sleepless nights. Last night was particularly grueling, as we were supposed to get gentle breezes in the right direction to bring us to Port Resolution at daylight. However we ended up with very strong winds which meant we arrived early and had to heave to (park) off the island until light. The seas were quite big, so there was much crashy-banging and little sleeping, so that in part explains this morning's cock-up, where we headed in to where we thought the bay was - "how many peninsulas with volcanoes by them can there be on one island?" (answer: several) only to work out that the harbour was 10 miles south of us, and of course, we had a 30 knot southerly wind with big seas, so those sailors among you can imagine our joy at having to beat down the coast in that to pick our way in through the reefs to get to the anchorage. Two other mitigating factors/consolations were that a) the charts (maps) for this area are pretty much non-existent - you get a very old (100 years plus) drawing with bits of detail, but couched with warnings that the area hasn't been surveyed and that the harbour may be unusable due to silting/volcanic uplifting, and the electronic maps are no better, they just give big pink exclamation marks to tell you they have no idea what is there either and then just fill the bay in with a big green reef to deter you, so despite the fact that this is one of the most popular clearing ports for yachts in Vanuatu, you have to wing it and b) Neil from Ophia came over for a chat and said he'd just done the same thing and he was here last year!
Port Resolution, Tanna Island
The anchorage itself is starting to fill with yachts, all waiting for "Lucky
Thursday" when the customs agents come over from the other side of the island to
clear you in. If you want to be cleared other days, you have to charter the
local 4 wheel drive truck for a 2.5 hour (each way) trip to the main town,
Lenakel, at the cost of about NZ$30 each. Once this is done, we can start doing
the stuff Tanna is famous for - visiting the volcano (VERY active - as seen on
Survivor Vanuatu), kastom villages (traditional villages where they still wear
traditional clothes - see last year's namba explanation; I'm eager to see how
they are really worn so Bruce will have no excuse about not wearing his) and
Shark Bay where all the sharks congregate. OK, maybe not the last one, I'm still
phobic from seeing Jaws when I was a teen.
The volcano gave me the creeps last night when we were hove-to off the coast, as
the night was very overcast & rainy and the sky kept lighting up with bright
flashes. I thought it was lightening and stowed as much electronic gear as would
fit into the oven, as conventional wisdom says this will act as a Faraday Cage
and stop the lightening from frying your stuff, although I suspect they are more
likely to get fried by the boat-owner forgetting to take them out before firing
up the oven. However after a while I worked out it was the volcano flinging
stuff into the sky and this reflecting on the clouds. Very eerie! (PS: Later we
discovered it had been a lightening storm, just too rough to hear the thunder, I
guess) We also had an exciting ride through Havannah Pass, the main eastern reef
passage at New Cal. Although we timed it right for the tides, we had a 20 knot
wind behind us, so shot through, despite the waters being like a huge washing
machine. I've never seem Daemon do over 10 knots before (she's usually a 5-6
knot girl). And finally, I have discovered a cure for seasickness - totally
natural, no drugs required! The thing to do is get a head cold: it seems to gum
up all the panicky little sensors in your inner ear that send the "puke now"
signals to your stomach and I was fine for the trip, which pissed off the
somewhat queasy skipper.
04 July 2007
Things are very subdued here tonight, Crystal Dancer, an Aussie yacht we'd been in Noumea with, was wrecked on rocks a couple of miles south of the entrance to the bay here this morning around 6.00am. The skipper went to sleep at the wheel and they ran up on to the coast. There was an Aussie couple, their teenage granddaughter and a Canadian woman who was crewing for them - they are all OK apart from cuts & bruises, but the boat is a total loss.
Our first sight of Crystal Dancer on the rocks →
We had heard garbled messages full of static on the radio, but everyone thought
it was a foreign fishing boat (lot of it about) and ignored them - they had lost
the mast on the boat by then and couldn't transmit properly. They managed to get
ashore and walk to the village to raise the alarm. The first we heard of it was
when about 6 dinghy-loads of us headed in to make arrangements to clear Customs,
to be told all the chiefs were around at the wreck. HUH??? We all headed off
across country to see if we could help, about half an hour's walk through
villages & jungle, and then arrived at the scene to find it was a boat we knew,
Such a horrible feeling - you could just see everyone thinking "There but for
the grace of God...". There were literally hundreds of ni-Vans (locals) there
already, and they had the boat secured against the rocks and had formed a chain
gang to salvage what could be got off. We did what we could - the guys removed
the rig to see if we could re-float it at high tide, but the damage was too
great. They are still over there at present trying to salvage the engine &
genset. We carried all the stuff they wanted to keep back to the Yacht Club
(actually a grass hut with a tin roof) at Port Resolution and helped them sort
through it. It was heartbreaking. The couple are staying ashore tonight & we
have billeted the girls on boats.
A stiff drink is called for...
06 July 2007
We have just had the most amazing evening. Four boatloads of us caught the local transport (4 wheel drive ute with wooden bench seats in a cage on the back) and went up the local volcano, Mt Yasur. The ride up was great, although it may take some time for my spine/bum to recover, as the main highway is a track hacked out of the forest. You wind your way through huge banyon trees and bush and every now and again a small village will appear, with lots of waving kids and pigs scattering everywhere. One of the villages is a John Frum village, which is the local cargo cult, where they believe that John Frum (a god, originated in WW2, one theory being John From America) will appear in the village bearing goods & wealth for them. Others believe that is the purpose of visiting yachts.
The truck drops you off just before sunset about 150 meters from the rim of the
volcano, and you climb the last bit to stand on the edge of the rim of the
crater, looking down into this huge red glow, which is constantly sending up
sprays of lava bombs. The view is amazing, you can right out to sea, and to the
other islands around. Every few minutes the earth shakes, and there is a huge
boom and burning rocks the size of cars fly miles up into the air. Fortunately they were heading
the other way tonight, but you have to watch and be ready to run like hell if
any come your way. When it got dark it was absolutely spectacular with showers
of molten rock being thrown up into the air.
←Looking down the barrel of an active volcano - Mt Yasur, Tanna
Vanuatu Customs & Immigration formalities, Port Resolution Yacht Club →
The trip back to Port Resolution was in the dark, but the scents from the
tropical flowers was wonderful, and the sky was really bright with stars. We
dinghied back out to the boat through some of the largest brightest
phosphorescence I have ever seem - it was like being surrounded by sequins.
We finally got cleared in to the country today (not like air travel - we have
been wandering around the area since Tuesday) so are now legal. The guys are
still working on salvaging stuff from Crystal Dancer, a slow process. Eddie &
Judy (the owners) are leaving tomorrow to go back to Australia and have said we
can sell what we salvage and go thirds with them and the local village on any
proceeds. The locals have stripped a lot of the stuff, but there are a lot of
things they have no use for, such as liferafts and winches that we should be
able to sell on if we can get them off in time. We probably won't be able to get
much, but as they are walking away from an uninsured boat, I'd imagine anything
would be useful.
16 July 2007 Dillon's Bay, Erromango
We finally left Tanna after giving up attempts at getting
stuff from Crystal Dancer to sell - the locals had hold of it, and no-one else
was getting any. It was a crying shame, as a lot of the gear was rendered
useless as some villages had one part of an item, and another village had
another part, and they all hate each other with a passion, so would rather that
no-one made anything from it than co-operate & share some income. Apparently the
paramount chief died 5 years ago and his designated successor is too young and
is unmarried so can't take over the position yet, so in the power vacuum there
is a huge struggle for world domination going on amongst the sub-chiefs/wannabe
sub-chiefs - we were just waiting for war to break out! Despite that we made
some friends in the villages, and had a lunch put on for us to thank us for
helping them with the salvage. They also gave us a self-tailing winch, which
will come in handy for the mainsheet. We had hoped to negotiate with them for
the dinghy and outboard, as the owner had agreed to sell it to us, but they
wanted that for themselves.
Visiting the village was like going back in time - although we had to say grace
before lunch, they showed us the various nakamals, or gathering areas where the
men went to drink kava and to cast spells for good fishing weather or to bring
down curses on people they didn't like. Even the vege plantations had little
fetish bags tied to them to keep off evil spells and ensure a good harvest.
Well, we obviously hadn't pissed them off enough to warrant one of their bad
weather spells, as we had to motor-sail the 60 miles up to Erromango, the next
island. Erromango is known as "The Martyrs Island" (I really think the tourist
board should rethink that one) because of their extreme habit of eating
missionaries (and anyone else they could get their teeth into). In fact they
were known to pop down to Tanna for takeaways and then started a fast food
delivery system where they got the early traders to bring them Tannese in
exchange for sandalwood. After dealing with the Tannese over the wreck, I think
Bruce is keen to start one of these franchises!
Today was another of those days where you find yourself doing things you
wouldn't believe you'd be doing. This morning three dinghy-loads of yachties and
our guide Joe, the chief's son, set out to head a few miles along the coast to
where some ancient burial caves are located in the cliffs. We scrambled through
a bit of forest and then up a cliff to the first cave, which had been partially
blocked by a landslide. After Joe had a few words to the spirits of the
ancestors and told them that we were coming in and would be taking photos
(wonder what they made of THAT) we squeezed through the entrance and down into a
big cave which had piles of human bones & skulls everywhere. Apparently before
the landslide they were laid out as full skeletons, with husband and wife
embracing etc, but since the landslide they are still trying to sort them out.
There is a big stone slab which is where they apparently laid the terminally ill
to die, and painted hand prints on the cave wall. And bats.
The climb to the second skull cave →
After that there was another scramble up the cliff face, hanging on to the roots of a huge banyon tree (which seems to be holding the cliff together) to a cave which held the bones of some chiefs. This was undamaged and amazing - 4 intact skulls and a heap of bones in a shallow cave overlooking the sea. A very moving experience to sit up there and talk about the history of the area with Joe, surrounded by the bones of the old people. When we got back down, Joe said it was very unusual for women our age to be able to make that climb. We weren't quite sure whether to be pleased or not about that remark....
←Chief's skull cave, near Dillon's Bay, Erromango
Then we went snorkeling on the reef, then dinghied back to Dillon's Bay, and
skated and slipped over half a mile of muddy rocky river bed and yet more cliff
faces when Joe took us to see the rock where the missionary John Williams was
killed and cut up to be eaten. Apparently there used to be an outline of him
chipped into the rock, but this has weathered out. After that it was back to the
local guest house for a snack of bananas and a fresh passionfruit drink, then
back to the boat for a swim and to collapse!
Tomorrow we plan to leave for Vila after lunch and do an overnight sail to
arrive the next day. I'm a bit gun-shy as coming into Vila is where I broke my
ribs last trip! We'll probably spend a couple of weeks there, as that will be
our last bit of civilisation (bread, meat, hot showers! Mmmmmmnnnn!) for a few
months, and also because Independence Day is on 30 July, so the celebrations
should be fun.
13 August 2007 Lamen Bay, Epi Island
The Curse of Vila strikes again! This time it got Bruce not me. We spent Independence Day crewing on the catamaran Kassoumay in the local regatta and were coming in afterwards and Bruce went up to take the mainsail down. Forgetting it was a big flash cat not an elderly small yacht, he just flipped off the halyard brake, expecting that, as on our boat, force would be required to pull the sail down. Unfortunately big flash cats have systems designed for this and the sail falls down by itself. Unfortunately Bruce was holding the halyard at the time and got severe rope burns to both hands - very nasty. Fortunately the cat owner is a doctor and had a good supply of cold beers, so Bruce spent the rest of the afternoon with a cold beer in each fist trying to cool the burn, rotating them out as they got warm. Painkillers and single malt whiskey were administered and I had to pour Bruce back on to the boat afterwards.
Yachtie recovery position with boat "cold packs" →
It wasn't too much of a hardship staying in Vila
waiting for Bruce to heal, as we both like the place, but you do tend to spend
money, so it is good to be away from the temptation of the imported French food
section at the Au Bon Marche supermarket. Favourite Vila moments: 1)
talking to one of the local business people about why the boat from Tanna didn't
have the Crystal Dancer motor on it: "Oh, that's because about 300 of the Tanna
black magic guys chartered it to come up for the Independence Day celebrations."
and we aren't talking Team NZ supporters either - you wouldn't want to get too
insistent about getting your freight on that boat! We are heading to Malekula
and Ambryn shortly, which are the homes of the major black magic practitioners,
so that should be interesting. 2) "Honesty in Naming" award for local buses: the
main means of transport around Vila are minivans (no, not small ni-Vans) of
various states of repair which cruise the streets and take you anywhere in town
for about $1. These vans are the pride & joy of their drivers, and are often
extravagantly named, usually for tropical delights or for reggae culture (we
usually tried to avoid ones called "Ganga Express" or similar) but our favourite
was the "Sweaty Bus Service". I don't think I need to describe further...
We spent a few days in Havannah Harbour, our tomato infestation zone from last
year. Unfortunately it had been so rainy the tomatoes weren't ready, so we
missed out on those this year. It was also sad to see how the culture had
changed in just a year. Last year there were around 15-20 dugout canoes paddling
between Moso Island and their gardens on the mainland, all of who would stop for
a chat and to give/sell you veges, but this year there were only 2 or 3, the
rest of the locals now catch a ferry across. When I say "ferry", visualise a 16
foot tinny with 25 ni-Vans crammed into it. At least we didn't keep being hit up
for rides across the bay this year.
We had a great sail up from Havannah to Epi, averaging 7 knots for the trip. The first couple of hours between Efate and Emae was a white-knuckle sleigh-ride, with big swells from the side and winds of 25 knots. As Bruce says, sailing around Efate is not for the faint-hearted! As we got further north and into the lee of the Shepherd Islands, the swell was knocked out, and it was very pleasant. We stopped in Revolieu Bay for the night, then headed up to Lamen Bay, which is bit of a cruiser mecca, and even has a very low RCE*. There is a small basic resort (Paradise Sunset Bungalows) where you can get great 2 course meals (includes lobster) for $10 each.
← Atis Jack & family, Lamen Bay, Epi
We got befriended by one of the locals, Atis, and went to his family house for Sunday lunch yesterday. It was quite an adventure, as his house was right up in the hills behind the bay, with a bit of a hike to get there. Lunch was on a woven mat under trees outside and was a festival of carbohydrates: laplap (plantain bananas grated in layers of island cabbage (a local bush, no relation at all to cabbage) and cooked in an earth oven), baked taro, baked cassava, baked plantain/pumpkin mix, all topped by the local canned tuna, followed by banana pie and pawpaw slices. We had to waddle down the hill after that lot! We took a butter cake with lemon glaze for them, which went down a real treat. We had to write the recipe out for them and there was much discussion in the local language and the recipe was passed around everyone - we suspect there was awe at the ingredients, which would probably have been about 3 weeks food budget for the family. They are so generous, and have so little. There were only 4 plates, so Bruce & I had one each and the others took turns with the other two.
After a short nap while we digested the carbies, we went snorkeling and had an
amazing time playing with turtles. They feed on the bottom, and you can swim a
couple of feet above them as they head along, and they don't seem to mind at
all. There are hundreds of them here - they pop their heads up all over the
place, often only a couple of feet behind the boat. There is also a tame dugong
here which you can swim with, and we spotted him from the boat, but by the time
we got snorkeled and flippered up, we couldn't find him in the water. This
morning we had a bunch of little spinner dolphins around the boat.
*RCE = Rooster Chronometer Error, or the amount of time before actual dawn that
roosters start crowing. Here it is only about an hour, in Havannah they started
around 2am. I intend to start a charity ("Chookaid") which will supply island
roosters with alarm clocks so they know when dawn is, and can then start crowing
at a sensible hour. I am also going to start a "Knackfest", where the locals
will gather twice a year to ceremonially de-knacker the several gazillion scuzzy
dogs that infest the villages. I'm sure there will be tourism potential in that.
19 August 2007 Awai Island, Maskelynes, Malekula
We are currently anchored near Awai Island in the Maskelyne Island group at the bottom end of Malekula (S16'32", E167'46".2) sitting out a squally afternoon, and it is our own fault! How so? Well, the local cruising guide says that this is the place for the best sea-magic rocks. Huh? you may ask. Well, the locals have magic stones for all purposes - yam harvests, earthquakes, rain and so on, that the sorcerers use when they create magic and cast spells. (This is all a very strong part of their beliefs and somehow manages to co-exist with Christianity - the best explanation is in a book called The Shark God by Charles Montgomery, which talks about his travels in Vanuatu & the Solomons, even mentions some locals we have met) The magic stones from here are sort of a white quartz and are struck together to cause storms; useful for when your enemy has gone out in his canoe. We found a few when we were walking on the beach this afternoon and bought them back to the boat, and of course, you can guess the rest. Our calm sunny day went downhill from there... The stones are now well separated and individually wrapped to prevent striking. I'm imagining the locals ashore are all muttering "Rubbish man blong yacht i bagerup long stones blong magic!" or, translated, "Bloody yachties have been playing with the magic stones again!"
← Attack of the giant rooster! Lamen Bay
We had a great time in Lamen Bay in Epi, and on the last morning got to snorkel
with some dugongs, which was kind of cool. They are huge & graceful, and very
fast, but not the cutest of beasts. You would have had to have been at sea for a
VERY VERY long time to mistake them for a mermaid, as theory has it the old-time
sailors did. The Epi locals were very friendly, and we didn't get canoed* too
much. The canoes would scare the hell out of you sometimes though, as some of
them would sail past the back of the boat using huge palm fronds as sails, so,
glancing up from your book, it would seem you were suddenly being attacked by
giant roosters. (Hey, I wouldn't put anything past this place...)We had a good sail over to the Maskelynes and anchored off Sakau Island (a truly
lovely place which looked exactly like the village on Bruce's Hawaiian shirt),
where there is a NZ couple running a boatbuilding and seafaring school in the
village (population 20) ashore. We spent the night listening to our anchor chain
wind itself around coral heads and the next morning we moved in to a mooring
belonging to the village - the payment for this was for Bruce to fix the village
outboard motor, which he did. It was great fun to watch the local guys being
taught lifejacket skills: a bunch of them inched their way nervously out from
the beach and the look of delight when they realised the jackets made them float
was priceless. They then discovered the whistles on the jacket and it was all
on!
The main problem with that anchorage was the preponderance of canoe-borne
bludgers, not from the village ashore, they were great, but from the village
around the corner who were a bit peeved they weren't benefiting from being a
yacht anchorage. I'm perfectly happy to trade, and am willing to pay fair prices
(even Vila prices, which are much higher than local) but I do get a tad pissed
off by guys coming past and asking for rope, t shirts, petrol, cigarettes etc
with no attempt at trading for them. You do end up feeling guilty, as they have
so little, but we don't carry much aboard, and I don't think it does the local
culture much good to encourage that sort of cargo cult attitude to yachties. It
gets to the stage where you keep an eye out for approaching ni-Vans and the cry
of "Incoming, incoming! Dugout at 10 o'clock!" sends you scuttling below to
hide. Of course, 90% of them are great, they just want to chat or trade vegies &
fruit (got some great nautilus shells this afternoon, as well as pamplemousse,
eggs & pumpkin) but you can't tell until you are in conversation. Invoking the
name of the village chief seems to be very useful as a deterrent.
Sakau Village, Maskelyne Islands, Malekula →
We are currently ploughing our way through a whole stalk of very delicious
ladyfinger bananas we got in Epi. We have a daily quota to get through, which
increases as they ripen up. It is currently standing at about 25 each per day,
thanks to large amounts of breakfast fried bananas. We are having a similar
problem with pawpaws, which grow like weeds here, so every vegie trade ends up
with several gratis pawpaws being part of the deal.
* Canoe visits - they start with a gentle whistle, which gets closer & closer
and louder & louder, then you hear "Hallo, hallo" then a canoe thumps into the
side of the boat and several faces peer over the back/through the
portholes/above the rails. There is no escape. As the book I am reading says:
"Melanesians do not believe in solitude. they will rescue you from it when they
can." Very very true.
26 August 2007 Port Sandwich, Malekula
We have just been over to Ambrym island for the annual
kastom festival that is held there. It was absolutely amazing, a once in a
lifetime experience. There were 12 boats in the anchorage, which was pretty
spectacular in itself, being under the shadow of two very active volcanoes. As
it is very much off the beaten tourist track (no roads to that part of the
island, just walking tracks through the bush & gardens) there were only about 30
non ni-Vans attending, almost all yachties, far outnumbered by the local
dancers. Apparently having tourists come to pay to watch (about US$50 each for 3
days & worth every cent) is the only way they can afford to keep the old
ceremonies going, so it is a win-win situation.
To get to the natsaro where it was held we had to trek for over an hour each way
from the anchorage at Nobul to the hills up behind Olal, OK in the cool of the
morning, but not so great in the scorching sun later in the afternoon. The
villagers were great - they provided guides for us, not an easy job, as guiding
yachties is like herding cats! The natsaro is the sacred dancing area for the
surrounding villages and is sited in a clearing surrounded by tall trees and
large carved wooden tamtams which are ceremonial drums carved as stylised human
forms with huge moon-shaped eyes, and carved tree fern figures.
We all had front row seats on logs laid around the dancing area, so were right in the middle of all the action. All the dancers were wearing kastom dress, which for the guys was a namba, or a woven strip of pandanus leaf wrapped around the penis and tied up under a woven belt, which has a large colourful bunch of leaves stuffed down the back ("bum leaves") - very little is left to the imagination, but after 5 minutes of nervous eye contact only, you get used to it and it all seems absolutely natural. The women wear a grass skirt and necklaces of rolled fresh leaves, very cool and comfortable, as I discovered.
The first day had the standard kastom dancing we saw last year in Vila in the
morning, then in the afternoon they had a grade-taking ceremony, where men who
want to work their way up in status in the village have to kill pigs and give
them to the chief and then undergo various trials. They have several levels but
we were only permitted to see the first level. Fortunately we had been reading
up on the kastom rituals, as there was very little commentary on what was
happening, causing bit of a shock to the nervous of disposition/vegetarian
spectators when two guys clubbed a pig to death for our edification. After that
we were told by our guide that the guys would have to climb up to a platform
about 4 metres high and dance while the other dancers threw fruit at them to
remind them they were mortal. This was quite jaw-dropping - for "fruit", read
"coconuts"! So, there were these guys, dancing on a very precarious bamboo
platform by a huge tamtam, ducking coconuts being hurled at them.
Fruit dance of the new chiefs →
You could buy food at the festival, if you were into drinking coconuts and
laplap (chunks of pounded manioc & various meats cooked in leaves in an earth
oven). It was pretty good, and you could get a meal for 2 for NZ$2. I don't
think the chicken laplap sold too well - the chicken foot sticking out of the
side was a wee bit off-putting for most of us whiteys. I can recommend the
canned corn beef variety...
The second day was excellent as well, with some completely new types of dancing,
sand drawing (local art-form for leaving messages) and magic demonstrations (a
bit weak, but the influence of magic is high in the area - houses are fenced to
prevent people coming to put black magic on inhabitants and someone was supposed
to have just died from magic in Olal village*), and for me, the highlight of the
festival, the woman's fish-calling dance. This was the highlight because four of
us brave female yachties got to participate. At lunchtime the chief (Norbert,
the local high school principal - yes, I know, an unlikely name for a large
fierce-looking local) told the women we could go and visit the kastom area back
in the bush where the local women were. About 8 of us went, and we talked to the
women who had been dancing, and four of us tried on grass skirts. Then, before
you could say knife, we all had our tops off, our faces painted with pigment,
and were heading down to the natsaro to dance! According to the spectators
this lifted the women's performance, as they were no longer shy about being
topless in front of the visitors.**
←Women's Fish Calling dance. Hey, who are those pale people?
The third day was the climax, with the much-lauded rom dance being performed. This is an amazing spectacle with lots of dancers in usual traditional nambas and about a dozen guys in rom costume, which can best be described as very mobile haystacks with baboon masks. The costumes are made of dried banana leaves and are like huge top to toe leaf cloaks and the masks are carved and colourful, with big feather topknots. It went on for two hours and was just breathtaking. That night we arranged with one of the chiefs to have a kava session on the beach by the boats. Apart from a huge downpour, it was a great evening. After a 3 shell session, we weren't 100% the next day!***
We are currently anchored at Planter's Point in Port Sandwich on Malekula and
sweltering, as this is shark attack central - even the wharf has a big "shark
attack" sign painted on the side, so no swimming. But hey, we are only a 45
minute walk from a place with 3 electric lights!
* On the first day we told the chief we were worried about staying for Friday,
as the weather forecasts were for 30 knot northerly winds, and the anchorage is
completely exposed to the north. He told us not to worry, as their klebers
(sorcerers) could control the weather. Sure enough, the next days weather didn't
show any northerlies at all.
** Strangely enough, there was no outbreak of namba-wearing amongst the male
yachties.
*** I now know why most islands ban kava drinking for women - they need them
unaffected so they can feed the men & put them to bed afterwards.
Chief Norbert (left) and the rom dancers, Ambrym Arts Festival
2 September 2007 Asanvari Bay, Maewo
We are currently in Asanvari on Maewo Island hiding from
bad weather. I am now convinced dugongs are actually yachties who have stayed
too long up here and a) grown fins and become aquatic to deal with the rain in
this part of Vanuatu and b) eaten too many meals with the locals and developed
the figure through too much laplap.
We arrived yesterday after a bracing sail up from Bwatnapwe on Pentecost Island.
We left Bwatnapwe after a night of strong squalls and headed for Asanvari, a
reported yachtie cruising haven, with light winds. That all altered after we had
gone half a mile, with gusty squalls (is that a redundancy?) coming down off the
high hills and hitting us with 30-35 knots & rain, just for a bit of excitement.
It was a bit like heading back to Auckland after a windy weekend on the Gulf
(but warmer), but what I was dreading was the gap between the islands of
Pentecost & Maewo, as it is only about 4 miles wide, and shallows from 3000
metres deep to 100 metres in a very short space, meaning the wind would be
funnelling straight through there and the swells would be HUGE. However the wind
& sea gods must have heard my prayers and taken pity on me - the wind dropped to
15 - 20 knots and the swell was large but even & manageable. That was a relief!
Coming into the anchorage was slightly more exciting, as the charts for the area
are all pretty small scale and old, and the C Map electronic charts (like a map
that traces the movement of your boat over the map) was a joke. To put it
politely, the C Map for Pentecost was imaginative at best, but with Maewo I can
only assume that the chart creators had heard a rumour there was an island north
of Pentecost and it was shaped sort of like Pentecost, and they took it from
there. It is a vague outline with little in the way of definitive features or
depths, and in fact most of the coastline is shown as having impassable reefs
surrounding it ("If we put reefs all around it, no-one will go there and they
can't sue us if we are wrong!") including our current anchorage in Asanvari.
The sail from Sandwich to Pentecost started well, allowing for the washing
machine bit of sea between Ambrym & Malekula, but by the end it was pouring down
and starting to get dark, necessitating a radar-assisted entry. Fortunately we
had chosen Bwatnapwe as our destination, mainly because it was fairly accessible
in bad light, with only a couple a couple of reefs to dodge, so got in and
dropped anchor with no problems and not even any yelling. The next day we went
ashore to pay our respects to the chief and to give him a skipjack tuna we had
caught en route. He was so rapt he invited us for dinner, which was an
interesting experience. It was the usual starch-fest, but a very superior one,
because as well as having yam, taro, cassava & cassava laplap, we also had yam
laplap and tuluk (grated cassava filled with corned beef & island cabbage,
rolled in a banana leaf and steamed) and rice and noodles. Shame about the
missing potato or we could have gone for full house on the starch group. You
come away from table feeling as if you had swallowed the contents of a cement
mixer. It was like going back in time, as the village doesn't have electricity,
so we were all sitting on trestles at a long table (us & some of his family,
about a dozen of us all together) in a hut with thatched roof & walls & a coral
gravel floor, with a small kerosene lamp at each end of the table, and serving
of dishes done by torch light. Half way through the meal something small and
furry brushed past my ankle, causing me to pray they had a cat. (They did!)
The chief (Chief Alan) was a really interesting guy. He had studied in Australia
to qualify as a teacher of English as a second language, but since he had a
stroke, he runs a literacy programme for the older people in the village. We
left him some exercise books and pencils and some magazines for his classes. The
Listeners and Time Magazines should be useful, but I hate to think what they'll
make of Britney, Brangelina and Paris Hilton out here. That Nicole Ritchie just
needs a good feed of tuluk! (probably double her weight in one hit)
We got to Ansanvari to find a couple of my bosom buddies from the Ambrym Fish Dance here (Idunn on Blue Marlin & Christina on Christina) as well as the bunch from Diva. They had made arrangements to eat at the yacht club last night, so we raced in and booked too, and had a great night - fresh prawns, mmmmnnnnn!. Now, yacht club. Not what you are thinking, although this is a superior version of the local variant, eg: beer is cold, meals contain no laplap, the thatched roof is held up by dressed timber (not termite-decimated coconut trunks) and the floor is cement not dirt or coral. Flash! They even have a tv & dvd player, and a table tennis table! And electric lights, powered by a turbine on the waterfall that comes down into the bay. Civilisation! (However, the ingredients for the meal, apart from the prawns & veges were obtained by trading shells to yachts.) It is run by Chief Nelson & his son Nixon, and they do a very good job of it. We had a great talk with Nixon about life, the universe etc and his opinion of those crazy folk from Tanna who would kill you for money and had just sent a Solomon Islands student home in a box - dead! Bruce was nodding along to that one!
← Asanvari Waterfall
Asanvari is very beautiful (be nicer if it stopped raining & blowing) with the bay being in a hook on the bottom of the island and surrounded by high jungle-covered cliffs and white sand beaches, with a high waterfall falling down into the bay. Tomorrow will be an ashore exploring day, as today has been Sunday, so everyone in the village goes to church, which all us godless yachties have learned to avoid, after sitting through 3 hour services in some Pacific language. We had a boat cleaning day, taking advantage of the waterfall to go some washing done, and Bruce baked some very nice gingernuts. It is now time to go for a swim (I declined the opportunity in Pentecost when the chief assured me their sharks were friendly and very scared of people. Sorry, but not half as scared as I am of them.). All the kids (about 35 at last count) on Diva are over the side, so I reckon they'll be easier pickings than me
10 September 2007 Oyster Island, Peterson Bay,
Espiritu Santo
We have decided to take a holiday from cruising
and are now parked in this idyllic little spot in a totally sheltered bay, and
will probably spend a week or two here just relaxing. There are no canoes
coming out, a French restaurant with cold beers ashore, road access to
Luganville and no swell rolling in to roll the boat hideously all night. And of
course there is also the secondary reason that to get in we had to weave our way
through coral heads in a passage only a couple of meters wider than the boat
(whilst being guided by a friend in a dinghy) and if I don't make the choice to
buy the local resort & die here, I am really not looking forward to trying to
get out again.
Oyster Island, Peterson Bay, Espiritu Santo →
Well, if it makes you guys feel better, it is still raining here, we have had
about 2 fine days since I last wrote. There seems to be two seasons here - the
wet season & the rainy season. The whole boat is damp & starting to smell like
the togs you left in your schoolbag for a week when you were a kid, and the
pressures of being stuck in a small damp enclosed space with your loved one are
surfacing all around the bay. Yesterday we had an "interesting" anchoring
moment, when we were trying to fit into a tight spot between a large reef and a
large and expensive yacht that I really didn't want to ding. Bruce was up the
front & had dropped the anchor and I was backing up to dig it in, but didn't
like how close we were getting to the afore-mentioned large expensive yacht. I
expressed my concerns about the matter several times with increasing volume and
emphasis, but Bruce ignored me completely, causing me to give him a full & frank
description of his character as I saw it, before shouting "If you aren't going
to take any notice of me, you can sail the #%@*ing thing yourself!" and storming
below in a hissy fit. What I hadn't realised was that Bruce hadn't cleaned his
ears for ages and remained blissfully ignorant of all of this until he turned to
ask me to give it more throttle and found there was no-one there. The Brazilian
children on the next boat now think his first name is Fuckwit.
It does make me feel better to know we are not the only ones - a forlorn refugee
from one of the other boats was heading around the bay with a couple of beers
looking for company, saying plaintively "It's happy hour, but not on our boat!".
After my last entry from Asanvari, we headed over to Luganville to renew our
visas. The first part of the journey was a trip to Lolowai on Ambae Island
(S15'16'.9, E167'58".8), which was another beautiful spot with a nasty entry,
this one being a very shallow pass over the rim of the volcano crater that forms
the harbour. We had agreed to take a guy over to Lolowai to catch transport, as
there is no means of getting to Asanvari: no roads, airports etc. His mother had
died and he was back for the funeral, but had to get back to Malekula for work.
After agreeing to take him, we discovered his wife and 14 month old baby were
part of the deal (women & children don't count in Vanuatu, so why would you
bother mentioning them?) which made it a tight fit in the cockpit! Fortunately
it was only a three hour trip, as mother & babe were both horribly seasick. It
may sound glamorous catching a ride with a yacht, but when you are sailing
downwind in a big swell and rolling like a pig the reality is a bit different.
Leaving Asanvari with them was very moving, as part of the grieving ritual on
the island means that the whole village goes down to see them off, while weeping
and wailing loudly.
←
Luganville main drag. Yes, really.
We then headed on to Luganville (AKA Luganhole, town motto: "We make Vila look
like Paris") for a couple of days to stock up, renew our visas and get some
laundry done, but were quite happy to get away. I have always thought it was
unfair when people described Vila as a shithole, as it has a certain ramshackle
anarchic charm & lots of energy, but the only redeeming feature of Luganville is
cheap good quality beef. They grow beef for the Japanese market so it is good,
and we bought 4 pieces of sirloin steak and a fillet for about $13NZ. Oh yes,
and we snorkeled on Million Dollar Point, the place where, in a standoff after
the war, the American Army dumped mountains of food, drink, machinery, quonset
hut frames, trucks, guns etc etc etc into the sea when the government of the
time wouldn't pay more than 8c in the $ for them, hoping to get the stuff for
free as the US Army couldn't take it back with them. It is quite an amazing
snorkel, as a lot of it is in only a couple of meters below the surface, with
some above water at low tide. Some of the stuff close in can be a bit hard to
identify, as it was blown up to prevent looting but there is a lot of
identifiable things there. Heaps of coral & fish - we even found Nemo! During
our snorkel there was a thunderstorm, and the initial huge thunderclaps were a
little alarming when you were snorkeling in what is basically an ammunition
dump. Heads shot out of the water all over the place.
3 October 2007 Vureas Bay, Western Vanua Lava, Banks Islands
Well, we finally shifted our sunburned bums out of Oyster Island and braved the dreaded reef pass again. Bit white-knuckle, but no real problems (ie: I didn't cry). We had a great time relaxing there with a succession of friends old & new from other yachts, socialising, exploring the blue holes (up rivers to big freshwater basins with springs feeding up into them and amazing clear blue water - Santo is riddled with them), snorkeling and having picnics on the beach in a beach bar constructed by boat kids (shore kids build huts, boat kids build beach bars - ruined for life at an early age) where we were served by twin blonde topless Norwegian waitresses. However, they were only 8 years old...
Our next port was Hog Harbour, an unattractive name for a lovely place. It is
right beside Champagne Beach which is the local cruise boat mecca and the most
famous beach in Vanuatu. HOWEVER, they have been ruined by cruise boats and it
costs you $US10 to land the dinghy and walk on the beach, whereas you can park a
couple of hundred meters away at Hog Harbour on an almost as lovely beach for
free, and go ashore to the local resort (Lonnoc Bay Bungalows - very nice, try
for the honeymoon bungalow on the beach) where they get rid of your rubbish, let
you fill your water tanks and have showers all for free, and for a fee will do
your washing, provide meals & get you veges. Not a difficult choice. Bruce
however did have a best buddy (met on the back of a transport) at Champagne
Beach, so he went over to see him (& fix his solar panel) but managed to get
bitten by a pig dog (obviously hadn't got the news that eating people had gone
out of fashion). The bite wasn't bad and is healing cleanly, but I was slightly
alarmed a couple of days later to see him wandering the boat frothing at the
mouth, but then found that was just because he had got distracted while shaving
& forgot to wash off, nothing to do with rabies.
Oyster Island Beach Bar
After that it was a brief stop in Port Olry, which gets shocking press in the
travel books, but which was actually quite a pretty anchorage. From there it was
the hop up to the Banks Islands, where few other boats go, to our first
anchorage at Pwetevut on Gaua (AKA Santa Maria).
As we arrived in the bay in Pwetevut, a whole bunch of canoes arrived out
(apparently when they see sails on the horizon, there is much yelling on the
beach and launching of canoes) which caused a great sinking of hearts on Daemon,
as we thought it would be more water-borne beggars. However, this wasn't the
case, they were genuinely helpful and showed us where to anchor and offered us
help with anything we needed, a very pleasant change. There was an Aussie boat
in the bay we had met before (SubZero) and two "unusual" French craft. My theory
on French sailors is that the French Government holds a sanity test on its
citizens when they turn 25, and those that fail are given a yacht (or craft
resembling a yacht, or that may once have been a yacht) and issued with a map of
the Pacific (road map, naturally, a nautical chart would just be too un-French)
and sent forth. However they are great anarchic fun - suddenly, without quite
realising how, you end up with a French party happening on your boat.
← Colossol anchored in Pwetevut, Gaua,
Banks Islands
Manar Family string band welcome, Vureas Bay, Vanua Lava, Banks Islands →
After a few sleepless nights with the boat rolling like a pig in Pwetevut we decided to move on. Our initial plan was to head around the corner to Losalava, but the wind was on the nose & getting up, so we ran off to Vanua Lava island instead. On the way we caught a big wahoo (delicious fish) which we just managed to get on board before the sharks got it - it was only slightly chewed. It also managed to take a chunk out of Bruce: he's obviously tasty to the Vanuatu wildlife even if he is a bit scrawny) We were tossing up between Vureas Bay & Waterfall Bay 10 miles on as our destination, but as we came within 5 miles of Vureas, we had an experience that put the canoes of Pwetevut to shame. Some yachtie up there last year gave the people in Vureas Bay a VHF radio, and they hail passing yachts to get them to come in to anchor. Shocked the hell out of us! And not only do they call you in ("hello, sailor!"), they send people down to the beach to wave white sheets so you can find the anchorage OK, then send out canoes to guide you to the best anchoring spot! The Paramount Chief for the area, Chief Godfrey, then gets on the radio and invites you in for a welcome. Amazing! It works well for them as well, as supply boats only get up there every six months or so, so they like to trade with yachties. We have now cornered the world market in carved laplap knives, which is ironic, as I hope never to see laplap again. It relieved us of a few t shirts and some old tools, so it was of mutual benefit.
We went to look at the school and to give them some stationery we had on board from NZ and they were so pleased we were invited up for a feast for World Teachers Day on Friday afternoon. This evening we had a welcome "small meal" (ie: rice, no laplap) with Chief Godfrey and his family which was just humbling. The whole family stood in a group and sung us a welcome song (accompanied by guitar, drainpipe drum & string bass) and then gave us speeches of welcome and decorated us with hibiscus leis. It was a very special moment. I wish we had arrived up here sooner and could spend more time in the Banks Group.
← Sanlang School, Vetuboso, West Vanua Lava
Well I should sign off now as tomorrow we have a full day - we are scheduled to
visit their gardens, see the magic shark stone (brings out the shark to eat
enemies after tipping them out of your stolen canoe) and drink kava. Such is the
busy life of a sailor.
4 October 2007 Vureas Bay, Western Vanua Lava, Banks Islands
We got taken to the shark stone today by Paramount Chief Godfrey, and it was quite an experience. It doesn't look as if it has been shown to anyone else this season, as it was covered in head-high ferns and we had to machete a trail in to the area, then spend some time searching for it. As it is about 5 feet long and 2 feet wide, it isn't an easy thing to lose! We were repeatedly told we were very lucky to see it, and I think we only got to visit it because we had read about it in The Shark God book I have been raving about and they were pleased we knew about it and were interested.
← Paramount Chief Godfrey Manar and the shark stone
Apparently as well as eating your enemies, the shark acts as de facto
coastguard/lifeguard, so if any of the canoes go missing or a pikinini gets into
trouble in the sea the chief goes to the shark stone and strokes it with special
leaves and talks to it in a kastom way and it sends the shark out to find and
retrieve said canoe/pikinini. Probably quite useful, as we had several pikinini
floating past the boat today using lengths of bamboo as water wings. OSH would
have conniptions!
It is a great dichotomy here - they are very serious about the stone and the
kastom ways, we were told emphatically and repeatedly that the stone was still
alive and told of how sometimes you could see the shark in the bay, and how it
was very big & swims up and down the bay leaving a wake, and then you head back
to the village for a kava session, and prior to drinking you say grace and thank
Jesus for the day and the kava to drink. Christian, but not as we know it, Jim!
We also got to see the Chief's son, Jonastone, making traditional music, using a round rock in a stone basin. The chief dances and sings to it to relax after a hard day at the gardens.
Jonastone rocks! →
They are having an Arts Festival here next year & we are giving them some tips
and doing a poster for them, and hope to come back for it on our way to the
Solomons. This place is just so amazing - we have been adopted and included in
village life far more than anywhere else, I'll really miss them when we go.
9 October, Waterfall Bay, Western Vanua Lava, Banks Islands
Well, is this place lovely or what??? We are the
only boat in the bay - apparently they only have about 20 yachts visit each
year. The bay is deep and blue, surrounded by foliage covered cliffs (the damn
mile-a-minute plant the Americans planted during the war) and beside a towering
double waterfall which empties into a pool where you can bathe and try to swim
against the current to the bottom of the falls.
← Daemon at anchor in Waterfall Bay, Western Vanua Lava, Banks Islands
Double waterfall, Waterfall Bay →
There are 3 families here, all of whom appear to hate each other, so that gets a bit wearing at times. We have aligned ourselves with Paramount Chief Kerely and his wife Elizabeth, who seem the least grasping of the families. (But who can blame them? They have to walk 18km to get to town for supplies and the supply ship visits every 3-4 months, and when it did during our time there, it had run out of flour, rice and kerosene - trading with yachts is the best way to get much-needed supplies of clothes & staples) Kerely has a Yacht Club - ie: a thatched house where he serves meals. We had a good prawn dinner there at NZ$6 per head, and Kerely got us a lobster for 4 D batteries. We'll be back here next year as well.
17 October 2007 Vureas Bay, Vanua Lava
Well, that's it for this year. Yesterday we checked out with Customs & Immigration in Sola (on the other side of Vanua Lava) and had intended to depart that day, but the wind died and we were being blown in to shore so we motored around to Vureas Bay and anchored there for the night. The Manars we pleased to see us again, and came out to help us with the dinghy landing and launching when we went in to say goodbye to them. This was much appreciated as a large swell was running and the beach is very steep. The next day there was wind (quite a bit over the next few days actually) we raised the anchor & sailed away.
This is Vureas Bay beach on a quiet day - the surf really rolls in when there is a westerly swell, and then landing on the steep beach becomes an extreme sport.