August 10, 2024
The plan was to move up to Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, today because there was a blow coming that we wanted to stay ahead of. I had a work meeting at 10:00am, so once that was done we got moving. Some coffee, some breakfast, and a dinghy ride to explore the shoreline was in order. Carl and I…
August 9, 2024
What a great night of sleep. Only interruption was to close the hatch when some rain passed by us. Coffee and a beautiful sunrise started the day for me, while Roxy took to capturing the views in watercolor. Most of the morning was spent waiting to clear into the country, but Carl and I did dive into an AIS (system…
August 9, 2024
The coconut grapevine told us about a local villager who offered a hike up to the volcano on Tanna island here in Vanuatu. In our case, SV Beluga had heard from Alex on SV Blue Beryl who heard it from????. The normal experience is to hop in a pick-up truck for a sketchy drive up to watch the sunset at…
August 8, 2024
After settling a bit around 1:15am the seas kicked up and made for a rough few hours. Coming on watch at 5am Roxy filled me in on the lower winds but ongoing wave action. A low-key morning all around with acceptance that we truly would be arriving much sooner than we expected on departure. Always good news, well it would…
August 7, 2024
Waking up for my watch Roxy pointed out that SV Beluga (a boat we met just before checking out (also headed for Port Resolution, Vanautu) was down to 15nm miles in front of us. Exciting to see them on AIS, even if not visually yet. The wind speed was variable from highs in the twenties down to fifteen+ knots. Good…
August 6, 2024
It has been a bash to start the passage. Lots of loud, violent bangs as waves slap into the bridgedeck underneath my bunk. The vibration wakes me from sleep and the ongoing noise lengthens the time it takes to get back to sleep. On my watches in the saloon there is less movement (it is in the middle of the…
August 5, 2024
Roxy and I started the day with a forty-five minute cab ride to the GCC currency exchange in Nadi. There is always some challenge, today it was finding the shop. Google was no help, their Facebook page no help, hell even their website was no help. Luckily, I dialed the phone and someone answered who could give the driver directions.…
August 4, 2024
One night’s slip is included with the checkout fees at Vuda Marina. Wanting to make the most of it, we moved onto a slip as soon as we could. Then it was go time, cleaning the boat, storing the paddle boards and dinghy, along with blue water preparing the boat. Oh plus a pain in the butt job of tightening…
August 3, 2024
The weather gods smiled on us, instead of the normal SE trades (the direction we were headed), we had a north wind. With provisioning to get done it was still a motorsail giving us a very nice 7.5 knot average. The anchor was no more than set before Roxy and I headed to the dinghy dock to grab a cab…
August 2, 2024
Friday was the Yasawa group rugby playoffs, with our local village (Yasawairara) playing at 8am – it was much too early for us, but Carl and I made the paddleboard/two mile hike into a nearby village. The tournament was a fun format with 10 minute halves for the teams of 7. Being close to the action it was unexpected how…
August 1, 2024
After a quickly breakfast everyone headed to shore separately. Adrian and I had plans to help Mon fix his solar/battery issue. After doing research overnight we both came to the conclusion that the panel wiring was exceeding the solar controller maximum voltage. In a divide and conquer, Adrian took on rewiring the panels while I cleaned up the dirty connections…
July 31, 2024
Coffee complete and we headed north. It was blowing 20ish knots and we started with Reef 1 in the main sail giving up 7.6 knots of speed. Very nice. It wasn’t too rough so I headed down to make my breakfast. There was a gap in between islands coming up so Carl and I put in the second reef and…