Ironie's Pacific Adventures

Greetings to all Ironie blog followers from the island of Espiro Santo,Vanuatu!Another sailing season
and another equatoral crossing logged for Ironie and crew.After spending 3 months on Majuro,and having made a little money and May aquirring her high school diploma from marshall islands high school(congratulations May!!!) it was time to go.May's visa
was up,and the cyclone season in the northern hemesphere approaching telling us it was time to set sails and head south.we decided to head to Vanuatu partly because May's sister,Evelyn is living there with her husband Tony(they run a dive operation named Santo Island Dive) and May would like to live with Evelyn and Tony for a while.
We bid our friends on Majuro a fond farewell,then spent a couple of days on eniko islet cleaning the dinghy,relaxing and doing a little fishing before the 1450 mile passage to Vanuatu.
We made the pass out of Majuro atoll early afternoon on April 6th(my 45th birthday...lol you old salty man indeed!!)We had a nice 20 knots from the north to get us on our way sailing around
the west side of Majuro.As night approached we settled into our course towards Tarawa Atoll in Kiribati.
My plan was to make as much easting as i could before heading on a straight rumb line for Vanuatu,thinking the South East trade winds could come up at anytime ,which
would make a course of 190 true a little challenging.So we sailed hard on the wind for 4 days to make Tarawa.
I thought about going in to rest up a bit bt realized it was good friday and would have to pay big overtime fees to customs and immigration so i gave tarawa a miss.
Our wind was steady at 20 knots with a 6 foot swell from the east ,so we had good sailing conditions, on we sailed,we encountered lots of dolphins enroute and even a pod of pilot whales...We were making very good progress of 130-150
miles a day for the first week and a half with our east wind,I thought we'd be Anchored in santo in no time at the rate we were moving, but just as we were coming to about
10 degrees south, the wind gods decided to have some fun with us turning the winds to the north east and making them barely sailable at 5-8 knots.So,where i had expected to encounter a South East
trade winds on the nose, I got downwind spinnaker conditions, the exact oppisite of what I'd expected!!So,May and I set our funky blue and yellow spinnaker and broke out the cards on our 3 knot
roll downwind.Our 140 mile a day average,dropped like a stone to 50- 75 miles per day...We sailed on until our wind gave up on us and left us drifting in a lake-like ocean.we motored off and on for a while
when the wind would totally die and sail when we could but now the wind was coming from the North West,West and even South West when it did come.the last 200 miles to vanuatu were all motor miles.We past
Tikopia island(part of the solomons) to port and then entered the Banks group of islands in the north of Vanuatu.We did catch a beautiful Yellow Fin Tuna while motoring through the Banks on our second to last day.Mr. Tuna
was a very welcome visitor and we throughly enjoyed his company.As we entered the channel leading into Luganville(Santo).I was suprised by a rather large 25 ft,humpback whale not 10 ft. from Ironie!A very nice greeting to Santo Island from our cetacious brethren.
We were anchoring in front of immigration next to another boat that was checking in named "sea spray".we dropped the anchor but it dragged so i told May we would give it another go,so i started to bring the anchor back up and i told May to
motor forward.she said we're not moving ,the engine is'nt working!!We were very close to shore so i dropped the anchor again immediately.When i went to check the problem I found the "flex Coupler"(the thing that connects the shaft to the engine),
had fully broken all four bolts that were holding it in place!!Unbeliveable!!!I'd replaced this part in Trinadad at the advice of my friend Leon,so luckily, i still had the spare.After checking in with Customs and Immigration and stopping in to visit May's
sister and brother in law,i went back to Ironie and replaced the broken part.I finally fellto sleep after a 1450 mile passage and a bit of engine repair....all was well,or so i thought!!
TO BE CONTINUED!!!!