11/09/2008, Port Vila, Efate island, Vanuatu
The official rally start is tomorrow morning. There is a total of 35 yachts registered in the rally. In addition we are partnered with a group of yachts which have sailed from New Caledonia to meet us and return, bringing the total to 49 vessels. Lots of things to bump into at night! However, some yachts will probably depart today thus easing the congestion. Diomedea is ready for her trip. Both engines have been serviced and the rig is in good condition. The wind instrument problem appears to have been resolved without the need for rewiring the whole thing. The ships stores have been brought aboard, and diesel tanks topped off. I have tried to put some more photos on the blog but there is some problem uploading them but I will try again. Yesterday Andrea and I took a break from preparations and took ourselves for a dive. About a mile away is the wreck of the steel clipper ship "Star of Russia". The wreck has a nice big steel buoy marking its position and lies at 36m depth. So it was down the chain from the buoy into the rather murky green, brown gloom. Visibility was less than 15m. The ship lies upright with the stumps of her masts protruding from the decks. It appears like a ghost ship still sailing along the seabed. Your intrepid diving correspondents promenaded on the decks and chatted with the crew in the forecastle. After 10 minutes we reascended, spending 5min at 9metres, 5min at 6metres and 3min at 3metres. Today we do all the clearing out procedures and will be ready to leave.
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Comments [2]
Hope you got your postal votes in for the NSW local government elections this weekend. The penalty for failing to vote is $55. Crew care factor: zero. Have a good one.
08/09/2008, Port Vila, Efate island, Vanuatu
Diomedea completed the last 25 miles to Vila yesterday in a light nor'easter which of course meant 10 miles of tacking up Mele bay to the harbour. Still, it was good sailing in mostly very flat water, AND, we caught a nice spanish mackerel on the way. Yum for dinner last night. We have decided that fish here seem to prefer pink lures. In Vila the tension is building for rally departure on Saturday the 13th. A total of 35 yachts are lined up for the 0600hr departure. It is 180nm to Ouvea so hopefully only 24 hours or so to the lagoon entrance. A further 23 miles across the lagoon to our anchorage. We will stay only a short time at Ouvea before heading to Noumea via possibly Lifou. Diomedea will need to keep moving to get to Australia. Today we managed to squeeze in some diving on some beautiful coral reefs near Hideaway island. Ollie's Lolly and Gotham City were the names. We saw some pink and orange fluorescent anenomes. The rest of the week will be busy with numerous preparations for departure as well as a few social bashes.
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The A$ has slumped to 80 US cents and oil returned to around US100 per barrel.
On the political front, Peter Costello's autobiography is due out Wed 17 Sept. Unlikely to be as explosive as the Latham Diaries, but sure to generate a lot of interest.
Cheers and see you (not too soon)!
06/09/2008, Havannah Harbour, Efate island, Vanuatu 17deg 33.015'S 168deg 17.02'E
First of all, my apologies. I have mistyped the date for the last four entries so they did not appear in the current window. It is my hope that the last four entries up to and including "The Tyranny of Place" are now in the current blog window. Diomedea is now back at Efate island, just around the corner from Port Vila. We had a brilliant sail from Port Sandwich yesterday. Did 84 miles, hard on the wind, in 15-20 kts ESE. We were only just laying the island but in the last 10 miles, the land effect on the breeze gave us the 20 degree lift that was needed to make the passage into Havannah harbour. We completed the course in 12.5 hours and best of all, arrived to a BBQ on board the ICA yacht Windflower. Fortunately we had caught a mahi mahi on the way so we were able to immediately cook the fillets. Excellent. Port Sandwich was an interesting place. It is scenically very stunning. A nice coral fragment beach fronts the coconut plantation. Large rolling hills surround the bay. There is a jetty used by MV Aurora to unload diesel drums and load on bags of copra. The jetty was falling apart as I watched the loading process. Just don't drop through the holes into the water because you know what is lurking beneath. We went ashore to take the walk to Lamap village. This village is strategically positioned on the southern headland of the bay and is cooled by the tradewinds. In former times it was obviously a very major outpost of the French colony here. However, now the buildings are mostly just concrete, roofless shells and the people live in the typical thatched bungalow. We visited one of the five Vanuatu meteorological field offices which make up the national network. It was equipped with beautiful classic brass instruments none of which worked. Its only functioning pieces of equipment were a barometer and a thermometer. An HF radio was used to get observations to the main office. However, the most distressing was the local hospital which is used mainly for obstetrics. The hospital was in dire straits. Blood stains were seen on the mattresses. There was no running water. Obstetric instruments were left in the open. Sterilisation was done by boiling the water drawn from a well. Supplies were in disarray and extremely limited in quantity and variety. There was a four month supply of the OC pill for one person. There was no regular power. An x-ray facility had fallen fallow. A petrol genset was rusting quietly in the corner. Beds were primitive. Our donation of new sheets and mattress protectors was gratefully received as these were virtually non-existent. In the nursery a newborn babe was found lying unattended on a bed. The nurse Lydia who ran the hospital was of exceptional calibre however. She would need to be. She was on call 24/7. She had attended 60 deliveries so far this year. The youngest mother is generally around 14 and by 18 most of the girls have visited the antenatal clinic. A doctor was present but could not be easily distinguished from any other village person. Clearly, government funding of provincial healthcare was negligible. By contrast, hospitals in Nepal were miles ahead. It is indeed sad to see a country that is inevitably sliding backwards when once it must have been quite a well looked-after place. I am not advocating colonialism as a policy, being someone who would support an Australian republic. However, the country does not appear to be able to maintain its infrastructure. If aid is to be given to countries like Vanuatu then at least some of it should be in the form of how to service things. Technology alone is not of any value unless it is cared for and spare parts are available. Finally, the ultimate conundrum is of a mobile phone company which is expanding rapidly in the South Pacific. It has constructed its own networks across the islands and sells phones and SIM cards. A good move forward into the 21st century you might say. The reality is that any spare money and some not-spare money is now being wasted on social phone calls that the locals can ill afford. I liken it to the selling of cheap cigarettes in Africa and Latin America. Tomorrow we sail to Port Vila, only 15 miles away and will then prepare for the next ocean leg to Ouvea in the French Loyalties, adjacent to Nouvelle Caledonie.
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03/09/2008, Port Sandwich, Malekula island, Vanuatu 16deg 26.379'S 167deg 46.989'E
I sometimes wonder whether the local people feel dominated. Not by politicians, bureaucrats, or family, but by the mere position of their lives. Almost all the islands of the Vanuatu group have a very thin coastal strip backed by the most rugged and impenetrable hinterland you can imagine. Most of the villages are tacked onto the shoreline with only a mere 100m or so of flat ground. Pressing down hard behind the villages are the big hills. Some of the villages are linked by four wheel drive tracks, others by walking tracks. Some not at all. Very few villages own boats sturdy enough to do more than fish around the fringing reef. Inter-island travel on a local boat would be uncommon or even rare. Most of the islands do have a single airstrip with periodic flights to Vila, but this airstrip may be at the far end of your island, many kilometres of walking from your village. In any event, the airfare will be well outside the locals' means. A copra boat will drop by every now and again to those harbours that have a loading jetty. Not too many of these. In the northern Banks and Torres group of islands, the boats don't come at all. It is not possible to even post anything to these islands. But perhaps the greatest tyrant is the dark. After sunset at 6pm, the villages slide into blackness. Occasional kero lanterns provide pinpricks of luminescence for an hour or two. Then nothing. No street lights, no nice glow from the cityscape, no car headlights. You would be trapped in your little bungalow, unable to move much further than the outhouse. On Pentecost, we watched last night as the "capital", Loltong, vanished with the dusk. The main admin centre was swallowed by the night, to reappear in the morning. A few lucky villages have solar panel and battery setups to allow some low wattage lights. Asanvari had a 500watt mini hydroelectric powerplant running off a nearby waterfall. This was donated by a benevolent yachtie. There is not enough light to allow nighttime reading or study though. I suppose that is why there is a monumental baby boom everywhere we go. Diomedea cleared the reefs of Loltong and set her course of 188deg for Port Sandwich. The wind had gone east enough for us to close reach, skimming the western tip of the dreaded Ambryn island. An ash haze extended from the active volcano to meet us as we sailed through its lee. Diomedea sat on 8.3 knots hull speed for long periods in the 20-25 knot breeze. The 56 miles slipped by easily. Port Sandwich is just south of Banam bay, where we had previously spent a few days. The port is an excellent harbour in all conditions and could be used as a hurricane hole. However, there is a population of resident sharks and swimming is an absolute no-no. A nine year old from a cruising yacht was taken here.... This evening we met with the crew of Retour, Bevan and Jan, a Bavaria 51 from Port Adelaide, SA. A delightful couple who regaled us with stories of Vanuatu.
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02/09/2008, Loltong, Pentecost island, Vanuatu 15deg 32.65'S 168deg 07.89'E
Well, almost. Diomedea sits in the now submerged and hopefully extinct caldera of the volcano that once erupted here. The walls of the caldera rise almost 350m directly above us in a vertiginous green riot. Beyond the ridge the clouds compete in the race to be first across. Occasional bullets sneak through a col to give Diomedea a gentle kick but she barely notices. Sunset comes and splashes some gold into the bay. The majestic flanks of Ambae are sillhouted in the west but the volcano of that island remains occulted in the sky. It was only a short passage to this destination but the wind proved very fickle and we made hard work of it in rain squalls. Pentecost, best known for its land divers, is a long skinny island lying north-south. Harbours are generally marginal but this is the best of them. Loltong is the administrative hub of Pentecost and has some largish buildings. The water is muddy and we do not bother venturing into the brine. Unfortunately, the land diving season is not upon us so no luck there either. Interestingly, tonight we are anchored next to Namadgi, a Bavaria 44 owned in syndicate by the Canberra Ocean Racing Club. We meet them from time to time and the yacht does a lot of miles. The wind is forecast to swing more to the east tomorrow which should give us reasonable angles to head south. The main obstacle is the black magic island of Ambryn. It will have major effects on the wind and is beset by tidal overfalls on all coasts. Its active volcano has a smoke and dust plume which coats the unwary yacht with fallout. Active submarine volcanos loiter on the windward coast, pumping pumice into saltwater intakes for diesel motors. The island is directly in our path. Once clear of Ambryn, we plan to return briefly to Lamen Bay on Epi island and then on to Vila. I have finished Persimmon Tree and found it increasingly difficult to digest. It reads like Wilbur Smith without the lions. Nonetheless, one is always grateful for literature on board and the only book I have failed to complete is one by Umberto Eco. His text is rather turgid.
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02/09/2008, Asanvari, Maewo island, Vanuatu 15deg 23'S 168deg 07'E
Just a quick one. We had a pleasant dive around a big bommie, encountering a white tip shark and numerous large pelagics. Then, with the remainder of the tank it was off to clean the hull. Not much fun but someone's got to do it. We had a pleasant walk around the village and met Chief Nelson. The folk were preoccupied with voting today and took it quite seriously. I dont know the outcome yet. We are tonight watching Mutiny on the Bounty with Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins et al. I recommend it to all you chaps planning a visit to Tahiti.
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