Just Posted: Embarrassment in Vanuatu

Lanakal, Vanuatu

I went too close to the surf and that breaking curl flipped me as neatly as a surgical procedure.

That is the gist of a story from 2002 about Vanautu which we just posted.

Nearly getting drowned right in front of the whole town because of a stupid mistake was embarrassing, but I lived through it.

Click here to read about my experience playing in the surf.

Fred & Judy, Bangkok

Just Posted: Tanna and the Volcano

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Volcano

As we stood on the rim of Yasur, the volcano on Tanna Island in Vanuatu, Yasur decided to shake us out of our complacency. Somewhere deep under the three steaming vents on the crater floor, three hundred yards from where we stood, an explosion occurred....

In 2002 we sailed to Tanna Island to meet the volcano which lives there. it was an exciting visit.

Click here to read the 2002 story about Tanna and the Volcano

Fred & Judy, Bangkok

Just Posted, Passage to Vanautu: Story from 2000

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Passage to Vanautu

Click Here to read about our trip.

Fred & Judy, Bangkok

November 23, 2002-Cruisers Make Difference

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Gene Mim-Mack and Robbie Springs and their daughter Allison

In a quiet bay on a rugged jungle island in a remote corner of the South Pacific, a cruising couple built a yacht club for visiting yachts and in doing so, made a bit of paradise even better, and made a dramatic impact on the lives of the villagers living there.

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Asenvari Bay

At Asenvari Bay in Vanuatu the villagers have been welcoming cruising sailboats and their crews for years. Cruisers who visit Asenvari love the place and the hospitality; the harbor has good shelter, is gorgeous, and the natives are very friendly. Chief Nelson, head of the local tribe, had built a native style building to serve as a "Yacht Club", where visiting cruisers relaxed and maybe had a cold beer. The women from the villages sold crafts and arranged feasts and dancing shows on request. It is a mutually agreeable situation, the locals have an industry and the cruisers have a place to hang out. It was great, except for one thing: the old yacht club building left a lot to be desired. It is (or was) dark, low and cramped and after a few years, was falling down. The next cyclone to hit the area would probably have flattened the yacht club.

Enter Gene Mim-Mack and Robbie Springs and their daughter Allison who had been coming to Asanvari on their sailboat Noason for years. They enjoyed Asenvari, loved the friendly people, and they wanted to do something to repay the village for all the hospitality. They talked to Chief Nelson, who mentioned the new yacht club building he’d been dreaming about. He showed Gene some plans that had been prepared. Gene and Robbie jumped in with both feet and decided to tackle the project of building a new yacht club.

In November 2001 they started writing grant requests and by February 2002 both New Zealand’s Vanuatu High Commission and Australia’s AUSAID agency had approved the requests and provided the money. Gene started shopping in Australia for the building materials and keeping with a tight budget he visited demolition sites looking for bargains. Used windows, kitchen cabinets and other items were purchased and packed into a container for shipment to Luganville, the nearest Vanuatu port to Asanvari. Some native materials, such as Natangora Palm leaves for the roof, would be obtained on the island. Anything available in Luganville would be purchased there. Gene & Robbie sailed from Australia with the remaining bits and pieces aboard Noason then transported the whole lot from Luganville to Asenvari.

By July 2002 Noason was anchored again at Asanvari, loaded to the gunnels with supplies for the new building, with more trips to come. Once they brought a cement mixer on Noason’s deck. With Gene leading and the villagers helping, the first western style buildings to be constructed on the island were soon taking shape. Concrete was mixed on the beach and a sawmill was set up in the mountain forests, using chain saws to cut large beams and timbers. Bamboo was woven into mats for the walls and the palm leaves were woven for the roof. In addition to up to 24 men working on the site, many of the women in the village collected and prepared bamboo and roof leaf. The yacht club was a project for the whole village. By November, with the cruising season drawing to a close, the yacht club building, guest bungalow, and women’s handicraft center were nearly all finished. Gene and Robbie decided to stay late, into the cyclone season, to wrap it up.

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Building in Progress

By November 23, 2002, the Asenvari Yacht Club was complete, the kitchen appliances were in and the plumbing was hooked up. The villagers took turns trying out the hot water shower and switching on the gas burners on the new stove. Chief Nelson presided over a grand opening ceremony and predicted great things for the new club. Gene, Robbie and Allison trundled off onto Noason and set sail for Australia, waving goodbye and just beating the arrival of the season's first cyclone, happy in the thought that when the cyclone did come, the new building would probably remain standing. All in all it was a very successful project and cruisers will undoubtedly enjoy Asenvari even more than before.

Click here for more Asenvari Photos

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Asenvari

October 4, 2002-Playing in The Surf

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The Surf at Lanakal

A beautiful surf pounding on the reef just outside the anchorage at Lanakal called to me that day and it still does even after the disaster.

Maybe it is what draws surfers: the blue sky, the blue ocean, the swells rising to form a wave, then the wave becoming a wall, then the wall curling over and breaking onto the reef in a pounding white fury of foaming thunder. And behind this breaker another swell rises, into an even higher blue wall. It is endless.

I couldn't keep my eyes off of them when we were anchored there and one day when I was in the dingy alone I felt compelled to motor in the direction of these beautiful waves.

I don’t know why; they just pulled me.

Maybe I just meant to go closer; to get a feel of the power by being near to its thunder.

There was a safe place where the reef ended and the breakers stopped. It was calm there and I stopped the dingy and watched. Then I wanted to feel the rise of the swell. I moved forward a little. Can you predict what happened? A big wave formed, and I was inside it, in its path, it was close and it turned into a wall. No time to turn and run, I hesitated, should I go straight over it? The hesitation was a mistake. I was sideways to it when it reached me, and then I saw it curl and begin to break. And that breaking curl flipped me as neatly as a surgical procedure. No drama, no splashing; just a quick toss and I was upside down.

The curl of the wave, the pouring white water, threw me and my dingy over in an instant. The next thing I knew I was swimming and the dingy was upside down about 50 feet away. I looked behind me to see if any more waves were coming. No…good! I looked back to the dingy and I expected to see the propeller sticking up into the air, but I couldn't see it. Right then I was just worried about the boat and the motor and getting it all right again. I reached the dingy quickly, the motor was there, just tilted, but it had been submerged of course. I righted the dingy, motor and all, like a Hobie sailor by pulling on a line from one side while standing on the other. It was all intact except one oar, which I saw floating in the surf. I decide to leave the boat and swim to retrieve the oar, which I did, but in the meanwhile the dingy started to drift downwind and then I got about thirty minutes of good but fruitless exercise trying to catch up to it, pushing my oar ahead of me, and finally tucking the end of the oar in my pants to keep it under me, thankful for its meager but welcome support as I grew tired and started thinking about how I'd like some help.

As I was swimming Judy noticed my plight: I could see her standing on Wings shielding her eyes against the glare of the sun, trying to see what I was up to. Soon she had started the motor and was pulling up the anchor. I wanted her to hurry. Meanwhile some local youths had also noticed and they swam out from the shore to the dingy and then paddled it to where I was feebly swimming. Ten minutes later we were all back on Wings and re-anchoring, and I was squirming under Judy's angry glare. But she was right, it was dumb, and I swear, I'll never play in the surf again, at least not with the dingy.

Lanakal, Vanauatu

Lanakal
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On the west side of the island of Tanna in Vanuatu in the South Pacific there is a small village called Lanakal. When we came to Tanna we had to check in at Lanakal. Some boats anchor at Port Resolution on the east side of Tanna and come over by truck, but that costs and we were cheap.

So we anhored at Lanakal and walked to the customs office.

Tying up the Copra Boat
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There wasn’t much at Lanakal; a few houses and a few Vanuatu people around. But there is a pier build by the Japanese as a gift to Tanna and a copra boat comes to Lanakal. I wandered down to the pier to for a look. Otherwise we didn’t do much at Lanakal, except go for a little fun in the surf.

Click here for a few more photos

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Lanakal, Vanuatu

September 23, 2002-TANNA AND THE VOLCANO

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Tanna and the Volcano

As we stood on the rim of Yasur, the volcano on Tanna Island in Vanuatu, casually pondering the smoking crater floor Yasur decided to shake us out of our complacency. Somewhere deep under the three steaming vents on the crater floor, three hundred yards from where we stood, an explosion occurred. It shook the earth and it roared. Its shock wave hit us in the chest and we felt it in our insides. We wanted to run away, but we could not move quickly enough. Then results of this explosion roared out of the vents and into the sky in front of our eyes: giant spouts of hot gases and molten lava shooting high over our heads, then lazily floating down onto the sides of the volcano and landing with clearly audible thuds. We were stunned.

This was more than we’d bargained for, but this was Tanna Island.

Two days before this we’d arrived on our sailboat Wings in Port Resolution, on Tanna Island’s east side, its most protected anchorage. But we had not sailed here for a good anchorage: we’d come to see the volcano. The day we arrived we were aware of the volcano’s presence just over the hill; it was making sounds. A cruiser from another yacht in the anchorage came over to welcome us. She said, “Yes, that’s Yassur, its very exciting." We looked at each other. Yes, this was going to be exciting. We just didn’t know how exciting.

Click here to see more photos from Port Resolution and Tanna Island.

The next day the volcano was talking loudly all day, as the natives say, with a voice that started like the rumble of surf, then grew to a roar like a jetliner on take-off, and then smoke and ash would roil up into sight over the hill next to the bay. In five seconds it was over, nothing left but a fading mushroom cloud. The word reached the village, and they passed it on to the cruisers anchored around the bay, that the geologists in Vila had raised the volcano’s activity level to four, and maybe it wasn’t a safe day to climb to the top and peer over the rim into the crater. We quietly cancelled our plans to do just that; we’d go on another day when the level was slightly lower.

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Looming volcano

Meanwhile, even without the volcano’s ominous presence, Port Resolution had an air of primordial about it. On the hillside above the anchorage steam rose lazily from vents in the jungle, and around the bay there were cracks in the rocks where boiling water shot out like from an over-filled tea pot. On the beach local people were cooking vegetables in natural pools and further down towards the water’s edge, where it is cool enough, they were doing their laundry.

Port Resolution is remote and life here is primitive for the villages in the area, but this might be changing. The Vanuatu government now allows yachts to check into or out of Tanna, making Port Resolution an easier place to visit. Before, when formalities had to occur in Port Vila, it was a tough beat to weather to get here, and only the hardy came. Now there are boats coming and going every day. The villages have been quick to capitalize on the new opportunities that all of the visiting yachts present. One thing they do is organize tours to the volcano.

When, a couple of days later, the volcano had quieted down from its previous level, we asked at the village if a visit that night was possible. They said it was. At 5:00 PM a beefy 4WD Mitsubishi pick-up arrived for us and seven yachties piled into the back for an expedition. After a stop to pay for admittance to the area to a village near the volcano’s base, the driver shifted to 4WD low and ground up the hill to the ash field where he parked. “You walk from here”, he said, “too dangerous for me.” We looked up at the rim of the volcano. It seemed quiet, but maybe he knew something that we didn’t. With some trepidation we got out of the truck and started to walk up the hill over the same kind of black sand found on beaches all over Vanuatu. It was a short climb up and then we were on the rim of the crater of the volcano. We were just standing there when the eruption occurred.

After that first eruption some of those watching quietly returned to the truck where the driver and our “guide” waited. The rest couldn’t get enough, watching spellbound as the volcano roared again and again. Hot lava soared skyward and fell on the rim east of where we stood. Some of these molten rocks were as big and garbage cans and they made the ground shake and the sand hiss when they landed, but they were landing well clear of the watching cruisers, so people stayed where they were a little longer before the last of us finally wandered back down to the waiting truck, and piled in for the return trip to the shore of Port Resolution and back to our boats, our minds filled with images of fireworks better than any fourth of July, and memories which we will be a long time forgetting. The adventure on the rim Yassur, on Tanna Island, was really a highlight of our cruise in the South Pacific.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Tanna

Click here to see more photos from Port Resolution and Tanna Island

October 10, 2000-Waiting in Vanautu

Hideaway

Usually cruising boats in Vanuatu are waiting for something.

Waiting for mail, waiting for parts or, for a lot of us, waiting for the weather.

The problem is that the islands of Vanuatu lie in a string from Southeast to Northwest. The wind blows mostly from the Southeast. Going up the island chain is easy, coming back is not so easy. Sailing Southeast to Tanna Island or even South to New Caledonia is a wet beat in the typical Southeast Trades. So boats sit in harbors and ports throughout Vanuatu and watch the weather. If the Southeast Trades shift to Northeast, then there is a big exodus as they all try to get to the Southeast. Even if the wind just slackens a little people head out, figuring they can motor or beat into a light wind. This morning the wind was light and the weather report was for Northeasterlies. Several boats up and down the chain headed out going south to the next island or the next country.

On WINGS we are waiting too, but right now its not for the wind to change. We are waiting for our Monday dinner date on a boat called ONLY BLUE to try some of their famous curry. We are also waiting until Wednesday when our Australian visas will be ready. Then maybe we'll leave for New Caledonia or maybe we to will wait for weather.

Meanwhile we are enjoying our little Hideaway anchorage. Calm water, nice view, a pretty island close with a resort and restaurant and bar, and a long beach behind us where the surf breaks. Kind of a South Pacific Tennecatita. There is a school at one end of the beach and in the evenings the boys play basketball on an outdoor court there. We can hear the backboard rattle far into the night.

Today the sun was shining and we went for a snorkel on the reef nearby. It was great. We took some bread to feed the fish and it attracted several schools, some of some quite big fish. When a few dozen two footers came close to our masks with their mouths open it surprised Judy and she let out a yelp. Good thing she was on the surface at the time, yelping underwater leads to salt water in the mouth. Then we went to the shore and walked along the long white sand beach. There is a river mouth there and some local families were doing laundry. They smiled and said "Hi," and the naked kids splashed water on each other. Back on the boat we sewed some more on our torn genoa, and then went on deck to eat lunch and enjoy the sunshine. I heard some sails flapping, crisp like new dacron, and looked up to see a boat tack around and head back out of the bay. They had just come in for a look. I guess seeing another boat here they thought it was too crowded. It was an interesting boat however, low and flat and angular, like a Beeker design maybe, only the main and boom were more like BOC style, with the gooseneck on deck and the boom pointed up sharply. It looked brand new and too radical to be out here cruising, but here it was. A shirtless tanned young man in a ponytail was sailing it and when he tacked a woman's head appeared in the hatch. They went out around the island the hardened up heading for Vila. I watched until they came out behind the other side of the island to see how they looked going to weather. Against the tide and waves, with a small jib and a reefed main, they made steady, if slow, progress. I wished we were out there too to compare boat speed with them. I thought we could beat them to weather, which is true of most boats we see.

I swam from the boat to cool off after working on the sails, and I didn't put the swim ladder out. I wanted to practice climbing up the anchor chain then pulling myself over the bow pulpit. I thought it was a good test of my strength, good for my health. The joke was on me. I got up OK, but in doing so I kicked the side of the boat and agravated a sore toe, so now I am limping again. My strength seems OK, but my stupidity is superb.

In the evening, as light faded in Hideaway, we enjoyed a pleasant cocktail on deck. The colors went from brilliant greens, yellows, and whites to subdued blues and purples as twilight fell. There had been a number of families on the beaches all day, this being Sunday, and in the darkness we could still hear the sounds of children playing in the water. That sound is universal. We also listened to the basketball sounds from the schoolyard, those boys must be getting pretty good by now. We went below for dinner and after dinner we watched the Olympics closing ceremony on TV. At night the boat hardly moved in this quietest of anchorages, we slept well.

Fred & Judy, SV WINGS, Hideway Anchorage, Vanuatu

October 1, 2000-Fun in Port Vila

Port Vila

We came back to Port Vila to make our preparations for departure from Vanuatu. Even though we haven't seen much of this country, our season is winding down and we need to head to Noumea, New Caledonia. So we'll leave Vanuatu for this year and come back for a longer stay next time.

Meanwhile, we have been having fun in Vila. We went to a local restaurant and found ourselves right in the middle of a big squabble between the French owner, his much aggrieved and apparently long suffering wife, a waitress who was probably his mistress and a third woman, who by looks and reputation, is the town prostitute. No one but the prostitute was talking to anyone else, and she wasn't saying much, but there was plenty of huffing and sighing and slamming of plates and things. The owner was doing a lot of dancing around trying to placate the women and make all guests think everything was normal, and meanwhile the guests didn't know whether to laugh or be embarrassed. On top of it all, several cats were wandering around and they kept getting into catfights under the unoccupied tables, which just added to the commotion. We don't know exactly what the fight was all about, although we had fun imagining, but the food and wine were good.

Then we went to the Waterfront Bar & Grill and danced ourselves silly to an excellent local band playing a combination of reggae, blues and Vanuatuan music. There is lots of good rock music in New Zealand but it is hard to find in the Pacific Island countries, and we've been looking. This band however was exactly what we wanted; they played loud, fast, and hard. We were still suffering from bad case of sore toe, but with plenty of rum aboard we didn't feel a thing. Like the locals say, "I straight no mo" meaning: "no problem". After we closed the place down we wound up on the yacht SENARAND, having rum and ice with Mark and his crew, which sort of took us over the top, alcohol wise (or unwise). Good thing we left the light on for ourselves back on WINGS, or we might not have found our way home. The next morning we were a bit shakey as we went about getting WINGS underway for an early appointment at the fuel dock, but, like they say, "I straight no mo."

We also would like to report, for those of you familiar with the Seattle sailboat racing scene back in the 70's, that WARRIOR, the great Chance 50 once owned and raced very successfully by the Hedrick family in Portland and Seattle, is out here cruising and still looking exactly the same as she always did except maybe slightly older. We haven't met the family aboard her yet but we are going to if we can just catch up with them.

So all is well on WINGS in Port Vila, and we're out of here. We'll get this off to you today, and we expect to be sailing towards Noumea by Monday, October 9, if the weather isn't too forbidding. We'll write from there.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Port Vila

Sept 21, 2000-Racing In Port Vila

Port Villa, Vanuatu

WINGS has been tied up on the sea wall near these boats in the town of Port Vila for two weeks now, side by side with about 20 other cruisers, and there are about 80 boats anchored or moored in the snug harbor. Port Vila is a full this season with a lot of boats here that skipped Fiji because of the problems there, but it seems like there is plenty of room for us all. The seawall is concrete and the water is about 5 feet deep at low tide so when we tie stern-to with our six foot rudder we have to be well off, about 10 feet away. We have a long plank (about 10 feet long, did you guess?) from the stern to the wall and to get ashore or back we walk the plank, so to speak. Its a little tippy too, so walking it is sort of daunting. Guests who want to come aboard have to face this little jaunt and we tend to get fewer guests than we might otherwise. Knowing that they have to go back the same way they drink less while here too. In some ports where stern-to mooring is required the fancier yachts have aluminium gang-planks called passerelles but nobody here seems to have one. Maybe the ones they have are not long enough, so all the boats use the 8" wide tippy planks.

Like we'd heard, Port Vila is a nice town, very cosmopoliton. It has one main street and a few side streets, several restraunts and clothing shops, and everything is within walking distance of the sea wall. Prices are high compared to Fiji or New Zealand, but not too bad. They have TV here too and we've been watching non-stop Olympics, with French commentary. We see every odd event that has a French competitor in it. The people of Vanuatu are Melanesian, very happy and pleasant people and they all seem to be tri-lingual, with English, French, and Bislama, a funny sounding pidgeon English. "Youfella go blue boat blong salwater?" (Translation: Are you people going to the blue ocean going boat?, maybe). The food is good here, if less exotic than Fiji, and the beer is great. Tuskers, the local brewery makes some good lagers. One aspect of Vanuatu which we were not expecting is the industriousness of the people here. Not since Mexico have we had so many offers to do boat work for such low prices. We've been hiring guys to do things like wax the hull for $US1.50/hr, and they work hard.
Racing Fun

Tuskers also sponsors some yacht races and Sunday we sailed in the Tuskers Regatta, a short "fun" race in the outer harbor. There were thirty boats or so, local and visiting yachts, and there was a proper committee boat, real marks, fair handicaps, and an excellent prize-giving party with tons of barbequed food and good wine and Tuskers beer, all free for all the race participants including crew. The barbeque included ribs, fish, and a whole calf on a spit. But before we could get to the barbeque we had to do the race. With eight excellent crew we picked up off of other crusing yachts, plus the two of us for ten total, WINGS probably had the biggest and I think the best crew, in the race. The wind was in the high 20's and sometimes over 30. The course was a couple of long reaches and one long close hauled fetch. The reaches were too close to the wind for the kite with 30 knots so we planned to use the genoa. Most of our excitement occured before the start. At three minutes to go our genoa blew out. It ripped from leech to luff about half way up. Of course we were (in typical WINGS fashion) in the midst of the fleet going the opposite direction. The crew pulled together marvelously to get the sail changed in under three minutes while we got turned around and positioned as best we could without a jib for the for the start. When the gun went off we had the three up and we made a good start, fourth across the line. The crew work saved us. Then we worked our way past those four boats while one boat passed us and we finished second behind MILANTO, a nice Swan 46 from Cowes, England. They had a little bigger sail which helped them on the reaches and they reefed the main for the close hauled work. I think we might have pulled them in if we'd had more beating, but we were happy to take second.
Back in Business

We want to acknowlege Ed & Julie from CINNABAR, Laura and Randy from POLLEN PATH, Dave and Sue from PERRIGRIN, and Andrew and Deb from RISKY. Not only did they sail WINGS very close to its potential, they danced to Psycho Killer when we toured the harbor after the race. Good sailors and dancers all.

Now we are repairing sails and getting ready to do a little cruising elsewhere in Vanuatu before we take off to Noumea in October. We will come back to Vanautu next season and spend more time here, this is a great place for cruising and racing.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Port Villa

Wing's Crew

September 1, 2000-Passage to Vanautu

Riding the Windvane to Vanautu

We've arrived in another new country, Vanuatu, or New Hebrides as Cook called it. We've been reading everything we have on the country and looking at charts (scroll down)...its exciting to be in a new place. Port Vila is the capitol and it is reputed to be very cosmopolitan with good European restaurants and shops, and now that we are here we are looking forward to it. Plus we have friends here we want to see.

The passage was easy, if exasperating. We had enough wind to sail for a little more than half of the four and a quarter days it took to get here. We motored the other half of the time. Well, it was not really a problem, just slightly frustrating. We wanted to sail, we tried to sail, and all we got was a lot of sweat and not much forward progress. The spinnaker was up and down about five times. Oh, we had some good sailing, just not enough.

On the plus side, we got a lot of rest and read some books. We also wrote a neat computer program that figures out, given the wind strength, direction, and the direction of your destination, whether it makes sense to try to sail or not, how fast you will go if you do sail, and how much progress you will make towards your objective. It takes all the adding and subtracting of compass headings and calculations of velocity made good, etc, into account. For example, if the wind is 10 knots from 55 degrees, and your next port bears 260 degrees, the computer program tells us that for WINGS, the best we can do is to sail 275 degrees, which will give us 5 knots of boat speed and 4.6 knots toward the objective. Going more directly towards it will slow the boat down too much (reaching gives better boat speed than running) but sailing higher takes us too far away from the mark, although it gives us delightful speed, it is in the wrong direction. This was a fun exercise and it actually helped us on the trip, but it still needs some development and debugging. Oh well, on the next passage maybe.

Now we are here, time to explore and enjoy. We'll write more later about Port Vila and the ni Vanuatu, as the people are called.


Stern Tie in Port Villa


Click Here for a view of Port Villa Harbor

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Port Villa