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…
July 2, 2024
With not much time before leaving for Alaska and Fiji, I really wanted to get in a backpacking trip. I wish there had been more time but alas only a single night could be squeezed into my schedule. A massive bonus was that I was the first one on the trail for the year. Well maybe not a massive bonus…
May 7, 2024
Typically on Isla Monserrate I enjoy a morning hike up into the hills of the island but we woke to an absolute swarm of bobos. Unbelievably worse that Refugio even. It was quickly decided that we were leaving now. Lowell called on the radio to inform the fleet and the reply was that plans had been updated to head for…
May 4, 2024
My San Juanico tradition was continued with an early paddle into shore before climbing the hill overlooking the bay. I was pushing it a bit because it was a longer walk than normal but I ended up with five minutes to spare. A pretty sunrise with some clouds over the Sea was my payoff. I enjoyed the meditative view awhile…
May 3, 2024
No reason to stick around Mulege, come sunrise we upped the anchor and got underway for our 50-odd mile passage to San Juanico. It was a mellow morning, just smooth seas and light winds. Eddie had the fishing lines out and as we crossed structure over the bottom, nada. Oh well. Around the point and headed southwest the breeze gave…
April 28, 2024
The night before I let everyone know I planned to get up for the sunrise and for a hike before we pulled the anchor at 7am. So at 5:15, I quietly (as much as possible) lowered the dinghy and used the oars to get a quarter mile away before starting the engine and idling away. I headed up around the…
January 5, 2024
Anna wasn’t training until the afternoon, so I picked her up and we headed to Rabland. Actually the plan had been to go to a cool town that I passed on the drive from Venice but it turned out to be too far. Not to worry Rabland was a cute town. We walked around checking out the fire station (Anna…
December 3, 2023
When Jean was here I had wanted to do a hike in the Koroyanitu national heritage park but the timing didn’t work. But as Carl and I made good progress on decommissioning it began to look like we would get done early so I proposed to Carl a hike to Mt. Batilamu peak and to the waterfall in the park.…
November 11, 2023
Where we are anchored on in a cove of a private island with a coconut farm on one side and a fancy five-star resort on the other side. The cove is on the backside and has a little bure (cabana) that resort guests rent as a private beach experience. They drop them off with a long boat and guests get…
November 8, 2023
It was a beautiful morning and soon the paddleboards were in the water, as we headed to a farm and lookout spot 300 feet above us. Reaching a dock, we started the climb up 270 odd stairs. Other than a few loose and rotten boards, that we managed to avoid, we were soon on the top of the hill and…
October 24, 2023
Up at our normal 5:00ish. There were some sprinkles of rain around 3:00am and again at 5:00am so with that help and a bucket with detergent I cleaned the caked on salt from the passage off of the windows and hatches. Morning coffee and a breakfast for me led to some texting home before the morning weather check. Looks like…
October 8, 2023
We made the long 2.5nm passage to the north bay of Somosomo finding just a single boat in the anchorage. Wanting to get the best daylight we got our snorkeling gear and piled in the dinghy stopping by the Swiss boat (SV Lupina) and we convinced them to join us. They quickly grabbed their gear and dropped their dinghy. Reaching…