13Aug2009, Luganville, Espiritu Santo
Well we have had a pretty interesting time in Luganville. It's a fascinating town. It's the second biggest population centre in Vanuatu, and in many senses it's the Northern capital. There are strong reminders of World War 2, and of the American presence at that time. Throughout the business district and in the surrounding areas one sees everywhere old military Quonset huts being used for anything from car repair shops to Scuba diving centres. Much of the harbour infrastructure is based on US foundations, and even superstructures, from 1942 - 1945.
Luganville is a typical Melanesian town - sleepy, dusty, dowdy and slowly deteriorating. Almost all the retail businesses are owned by ethnic Chinese from various parts of Asia; most of the service businesses such as the dive shops, the hotels and real estate offices are run by Aussies or Kiwis.
We are anchored off the Beachfront Resort - a moderate-priced hotel catering for a market slightly ritzier than backpackers but definitely not 5-star material. The management (Aussie) are very welcoming to yachties - they go out of their way to make us feel as if they value our presence. We are anchored about 75 metres off the brown sand beach in 6 metres of water, and when we go ashore the dinghy is very safe right in front of the resort. The staff are happy to do our laundry for 1000 vatu, and for 200 vatu we can deposit our accumulated garbage from the last week or more. We are a long walk from town, but as the taxi fare is only 200 vatu, we have been taking a cab; the cabs in Luganville are all very small Korean hatchbacks often decorated inside and out to suit the driver's personality - posters of Ronaldo cross-kicking a goal or of Bob Marley looking inspirational are stuck to the roof inside, and acrylic blue flames lick the outsides of the engine bay.
The Mecca for cruising yachtsmen here is the Natangora Café. This is a laid-back all-day coffee and meals joint - great lunches, good coffee, fresh local juices and a fair range of light Japanese food (the owners are Aussie and Japanese). The ambience is relaxed and most tables are outside on a broad verandah and under a big banyan tree. The staff are really friendly, especially Eri the cheerful Japanese maitresse d'. And best of all, as long as you are sitting in front of a box of sushi or a lovely fish pie, you have free fast wireless internet.
We have had a couple of days of diving on the Coolidge, covering the bow section, the promenade deck and the cargo holds. The holds were really fascinating - intact jeeps and 18-wheelers, stacked guns, cannon and aircraft drop-tanks, and some awesome sea-life including the very uncommon Fire Clam which has visible electric currents running between its shell edges in the dark.
Now we are (surprise!) awaiting appropriate weather to take us South again towards Port Vila. We'll be in touch in a couple of days.
Cheers from us!
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Comments [4]
Safe sailing
10Aug2009, Luganville
This morning we were picked up at the anchorage by the crew from Aquamarine Diving, and drove around to the area of coast where the SS President Coolidge sank in 1942 - a luxury cruise liner prior to WW2, she was taken over by the US Government as a troop transport. Through a misundersanding she entered Luganville Harbour right through the minefield which had been laid by the US to keep Japanese submarines out. The inevitable happened, and she struck 2 mines. The skipper had the presence of mind to steam her onto the reefs lining the nearby shore, giving the 5,000 men on board time to evacuate - only two lives were lost.
The wreck lies from about 21 metres where the bow is, sloping down off the reef to seaward - the stern lies in about 65 metres. We looked over the bow, foredeck and promenade decks today. Tomorrow we will enter the cargo holds. All this in a dive of only 36 metres depth!
There are all sorts of memorabilia on deck and below - guns, gas masks, china, cutlery, medical supplies, trucks, jeeps, ammunition, luxury light fittings, all the trappings of both military and civilian shipboard life. Really fascinating. Along with all this, lots of beautiful fish, and a very tame Moray eel nicknamed "Nessy". We'll be happily occupied with the Coolidge until we leave here and head South - which will be when the wind is right - at present this looks like early nextweek - but you never can tell.
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xxx
07Aug2009, Luganville
Following our last post, we stayed another day in Banam Bay. We managed a bit of overdue boat tidying and maintenance, then spent a few hours snorkelling on the reef which guards the entrance to the bay. There was a mixture of bright live coral and some older dead stuff, but a large variety of extremely colourful reef fish and some nice clams and stars. The locals had assured us that their bay has no sharks other than small reef sharks, and we found this to be the case. We dined with Mike and Lynn from "Wombat" and continued the Great Malekula Scrabble World Series, locked two-all at present.
Next day we headed North again, a longer leg this time, and made Port Stanley. This is a large harbour with several branches and numerous reefs and islets within it. We arrived mid-afternoon, and went ashore at Norsup on the promise of fresh bread. We asked where the baker was, and were greeted with blank stares and smiles. The penny dropped and John told them we "Cherched" the "Boulangerie", and were pointed vaguely South along the bay; Norsup was the French administrative capital for Malekula and remains determinedly Francophone. The legacy of the dual British-French condominium administration has been this crazy, inefficient situation where different towns, areas and even families in the same village speak French or English as their school language. But neither side gives way - national pride and colonial hubris have a lot to answer for!
We walked a way down, and couldn't find any bread. We visited a little shop and were pointed a different direction, then asked a couple of schoolgirls, who shyly giggled and seemed to think we were oddly amusing - finally we found a little "Magasin" which had a pile of fresh, crisp-crusted loaves as well as French-style baguettes. But Norsup Bay was far to rolly to be a comfortable anchorage overnight, and we moved around to Central Bay (despite the name it is way off at the edge of Port Stanley inside the fringing reef with nothing but coconuts, bananas and mangroves on every shore). However it was a blissfully calm anchorage - like parking the boat in your garage and closing the door. We were anchored there alongside "Finale", a Kiwi family we had met further South earlier in the piece, "Wombat", and a Dutch boat crewed by a single-hander Christophe. We had also met Christophe further South - his weather-fax programme on his laptop had crashed and John helped him re-install it: Christophe has ZERO English (we think his first tongue is Walloon), and the installation guide was in English, so the whole process was carried out in French, with John and Christophe doing their best to understand the instructions and each other!
So it was that yesterday we headed North again to Espiritu Santo Island, where we are now anchored. Luganville, where we are, is the capital of the island and the province. It is also the second largest town in Vanuatu (population near 15,000) after Port Vila. The harbour is huge - up to 100 US vessels anchored here at any time during WW2. We arrived about 17:00 yesterday and dropped anchor off the Beachfront Resort (the term "Resort" is used fairly loosely in Vanuatu). Here one can go ashore - there is a sign saying: "Welcome Yachties 2009". This is both encouraging (Us? Dirty, Tim-Tam starved, disreputable-looking sea-gypsies - WELCOME?? - justice finally!!) and at the same time worrisome ("welcome" probably means our it is our money that will be welcome!!). Oh well, after almost a month of Gold Star Days (GSD = no money spent) we figure we should participate in the economic recovery the rest of you are struggling with - so today it's ashore to cafes, a supermarket, dive shops and internet access. Hopefully some photos will pop up in the photo gallery (the link is at the top right on this page)
As Pauline Hanson might have said, if you are reading this you will know we have succeeded in our quest.
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04Aug2009, Banam Bay
From Awei Island we had a short downwind run to Banam Bay. This bay opens to the NNE and is relatively protected from the prevailing SE breezes and swell. There are three villages lining the bay - Banam itself, and two others which share the same chief and are closely tied together. The Kastom chief of these two is Chief Saitol - a very spry 84 year old who is as sharp as a tack. The villages are quite traditional and certainly very poor. We had a long walk with Saitol around the villages and their surrounds. He is a really likeable old guy who works hard at preserving the Kastom knowledge, dances and lore. He had a lot of interesting stories to tell about the Japanese, Australians and Americans in this region during WW2; he worked for the US during the war and has observed the whole period of joint British and French administration through to independence. His memory goes back to childhood recollections of his great-grandfather, who he says had 100 wives! The local kids have been delightful to be around - happy, playful and helpful to us without being intrusive or demanding - we have traded some t-shirts and stationery for a few pamplemousse and papaya, and have bought some pretty nautilus shells that they have found on the reefs and cleaned for sale. Yesterday Chief Saitol organised a traditional dance afternoon for us and two other yacht crews. The men danced in Small Nambas, the Kastom clothing of this area (tribes are often either Small Nambas or Big Nambas - the Namba is the banana-leaf penis sheath) and we saw various dances relating to courtship, amusement and to chiefly progression through the "Grades" of seniority. Then the women danced in skirts made from dried and delaminated leaves from various local plants. The women are not permitted into the men's dance area at any time. To enable the white women amongst us to enter the chief's area and watch the men dancing, Saitol had to kill and cook a pig prior to the dancing in order to prevent any bad event occurring in the village due to women entering a Tabu area. Although the dancing was serious and of significance, and explained to us by one of the Chief's sons, the men obviously enjoyed it a lot and had great fun during the performance. A full day and a sound sleep, with some wonderful memories; our next post will probably be from Luganville - we are told there are a couple of places there with internet access so hopefully we can put up some photos from the last few weeks. We had planned to return to Noumea from Port Vila at the end of the month, and then head towards either Brisbane or Coffs Harbour, but we heard on Radio Australia yesterday that there has been some unrest in New Caledonia, including Noumea - we hope this will prove to be transient but will be listening to see how it pans out. Cheers to all in cold Sydney!
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01Aug2009, Awei Island, Maskelyne Group
Thursday night, Independence Day in Vanuatu, we went ashore for a traditional pig roast. The women prepared the animal after the men killed and gutted it, and it was buried in a pit in the ground beneath pre-heated porous volcanic rocks which act like a combination of heat beads and oven, and layers of palm leaves and wood charcoal. Some hours later it was ready to eat, and we had terrific meal with other yachties and the locals, with the pork (thankfully really cooked through, and no after-effects next morning!), pelagic fish and local vegetables. The next day we walked off the meal with a hike inland to the Epi Island's hospital. Andy, "almost a doctor", deals with everything from ringworm and scabies, to minor injuries from bush knives, through to deliveries and major trauma as best he can. Skin disease, especially infectious disease, represents a significant part of the case load here. Little equipment and few drugs. Fungal infections are treated with salicylic acid and iodine, scabies with sulphur applications, malaria cases are given chloroquine when it is available (the islanders tend to use mosquito nets for fishing with and bring them in to the house at night, holes and all, to keep the mosquitos at bay!). Some well-intentioned donor sent an autoclave two years ago for instrument sterilisation, but failed to ask if there is regular electricity to run it (there isn't) so Andy uses the kitchen's pressure cooker to clean instruments while the autoclave sits out on the verandah, unable to be used! While we can help a little with what we can carry with us from home, one gets a feeling of the overwhelming enormity of what is needed here, and how futile a few packages of antibiotics and dressings really are. Nonetheless, it does help a bit, and they are certainly grateful - embarrassingly so. We are pushing north to Luganville on Espiritu Santo Island by degrees - there we plan to scuba dive on the wreck of the USS President Coolidge, wrecked on the reef during WW2. This area, central and north Vanuatu, is replete with relics and memorabilia of the Pacific War. Just as in northern France the locals here have strong feelings of gratitude and cultural memory towards Australia, New Zealand and the US for what they did in expelling Japanese troops in 1943 and 1944. Our current location is tucked in behind Awei Island, a beautiful and isolated anchorage with no swell and light breezes - we're meeting the locals today and hopefully be moving on soon so as to be in Luganville by week's end. We are here with our friends Mike and Lynn on "Wmbat of Sydney". Here in the Maskelynes we can still swim when it's hot, but from here north sharks become a real issue so until the safety of Luganville there will be no snorkelling or diving. We hope there will be internet access in Luganville so we can put up some pics. Cheers from us!
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xxx
29Jul2009, Lamen Bay, Epi Island
Our last post was from Sulua Bay, where we had anchored after a nice quick day-sail from Havannah Harbour. Unfortunately during that night the wind really piped up - still a trade wind from the SE but quite strong. The topography of Emae Island is a central low area, where the village sits on a small stream leading into the bay; flanking this small plain-like area are two large mountains which sit at either end of the island like pillars. Such is the orientation of the island that when the trades blow strongly, the wind funnels between the mountains and is accentuated in strength and tends to whip around in the bay in eddying bullets. This makes for a very uncomfortable time at anchor, and we had a pretty lousy night's sleep, so we decided to move on first thing the next morning. That was a pity as we wanted to meet the villagers in Sulua, who are not often visited by outsiders. The nearest anchorage North of Sulua that looked on the chart as if it would be relatively protected was Revolieu Bay on Epi Island. We set a reefed main and made Revolieu in a brisk 5 hour downwind run; the breeze was dead astern so we made a series of long gybes to keep the boat's motion comfortable. We trolled lures all the way, including over the 100 metre line as we skated around the South-west corner of Epi, but pulled nothing. About 3 in the afternoon we dropped anchor in Revolieu, just after Matind'Or and Wombat. Another Kiwi boat was there, and the anchoring was quite tight - a big bay but lots of coral heads intruding into the useable space and big reefs at both ends of the bay. But we found it a safe and comfortable anchorage after we all set bridles on the anchor chain to bring the bows into the prevailing swell, which found its way into the bay around the reefs. Ashore at Revolieu are three villages - the first is at the head of the bay itself and consists of just four families. They were very friendly and hospitable; the chief was working in the gardens when we came ashore but we met him later. The usual handshaking and broad smiles accompanied the exchange of names - they always want to know your name, and always remember it! Then some small gifts both ways - some small items of clothing from us to the women for themselves and the kids, then some fresh vegetables, delicious ripe fruit and some coconuts to us from the villagers. One of the boys, 12 year old Phillip, took us under his wing and guided us down the track about 3 kilometres to Mae Mora, a much bigger village which lies South of Revolieu and which has the school serving the area's villages. Mae Mora was delightful - a really tidy village with a good man as chief. The head teacher was Jonathon and he showed us the school and we met the villagers who were preparing timber, bamboo and palm branch stands for Independence Day celebrations (today, July 30 - more of that later). Head Teacher Jonathon was extremely grateful to receive two soccer balls for his students, and some stationery materials sent by people at the Skin and Cancer Foundation at home. We did some snorkelling in Revolieu Bay, and had a great afternoon towing Phillip and his friends around the anchorage, tethering their canoe to the dinghy and hooning about. The village in the other direction is Burumba, where there is a small store selling a few snack items, some basic household items and the inevitable canned corned beef and canned tuna. John walked there with Mike from Wombat and Allan from Matin d'Or. We didn't really need or want anything there, but did buy a couple of snacks from Ishmael the owner as he was really keen to get to know us, and ignored several local customers while questioning us closely about our home countries and our lives, our yachts and our plans while here in Vanuatu. Three days there saw us moving on, but only a couple of hours sail North, to Lamen Bay. This is a very pretty and sheltered bay with a village on the beachfront. Relative to the smaller villages, Lamen Bay is a bit of a metropolis. A small hospital, a high school which serves all the primary schools in the region, an unsealed airfield for the weekly plane from Vila, and even some lighting in some of the dwellings at night (until 9:00pm) provided by a community generator. There is a small on-demand restaurant run by a local mover and shaker called Tesso. We let him know that a bunch of yachties would want to have a meal there last night and for about the equivalent of $10 a head he prepared a huge smorgasbord of local delicacies, with kumara in coconut sauce, island greens, rice, manioc chips fried crisp in coconut oil, tuna, mahi-mahi and Dorado in various sauces and in a curry, salads and some kind of fruit pie which we couldn't identify but which was superb. Today is Independance Day and many of the villagers have gone by truck to a village a bit further East - we would be imposing if we tried to squeeze in, so the yachts are all going to have a quiet day exploring on foot and taking in the magnificent scenery here. We'll be in touch in a couple of days - best wishes to all. Cheers!
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