The passage south from Epi to Efate is typically hard on the wind and seas. To position ourselves for an early morning start we moved the boat down the west coast of Epi to Ivo Bay, where we anchored for the night. It was windy and bouncy all night, not a good sign for the next days’ passage. At 4 AM we set out with a forecast of 15 kts from ESE, but ended up with 20-25 kts and 1.5-2 meter seas. It was rough and wet, but we managed to hold our course motor sailing and made Havana harbor by midday.

Havana harbor is a large, nearly fully enclosed bay with several protected anchorages. It was used as a training area for the US during WWII and supposedly there are nearly 200 planes on the bottom of the harbor. There was a WWII ‘museum’ of sorts where a local gentlemen showed off his collection of artifacts. Particularly prominent was his collection of CocaCola bottles and I learned that each was stamped with its city of manufacture. These bottles came from all over the US.

The local population tends large gardens on the neighboring island and was eager to trade their produce. I gave two guys a gallon of gasoline and they were back the next morning with heaps of lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini and carrots. There were also a couple of restaurants and a resort where we had a couple of meals. They were good, but a bit pricey. We spent several days here walking and exploring the area by dinghy while we waited for another weather window to sail round to Port Vila on the south side of Efate. We needed a soft wind and low tide to correspond with an early morning rounding of the notorious Devil’s Point, where it can be quite rough especially if wind opposes tide. Fortunately, our rounding was uneventful and we took a mooring in Port Vila to muster with the ICA rally for the 200 mile passage to Lifou Island in New Caledonia.