Sailing to Vanuatu

Well as I’ve indicated before, cruising is full of plans…and changes to plans. This passage was to be no exception. We left Tonga intent on a 4-5 day passage to Suva, Fiji with the possibility of pulling in a little earlier at Kadavu, in the southern end of Fiji, if the weather turned nasty. Our first couple of days out saw boisterous conditions of ESE winds of 20-25 knots, gusting to 30 during the night, with seas of around 3 metres. We were sailing with three reefs in the main and the genoa about 1/3rd unfurled. Brio was getting along well at 5-6 knots, unlike her captain and crew who were yet again paying the price for having been in a flat anchorage for too long, and were dealing with the usual effects of mal de mer. By day 3 the winds were easing, the seas dropping and our stomachs were starting to settle. Brio was lolloping along at 4 knots by late afternoon in a 10 knot east, nor’easterly, but by early evening the wind dropped to the point we started to motor and continued to throughout the night. At some point around this time, we made the decision not to pull in at Kadavu and not to aim for Suva, but to keep going to Port Vila, Vanuatu. There were a number of factors that swayed us: Kadavu is not a port of entry for Fiji, so we ran the risk of the wrath of the authorities, if not fines, if we stopped there; Suva, while potentially a harbour of ice-cream, wifi and other such delights, was also likely to be big, noisy and dirty and as we really didn’t need to go there other than to check in, the cons outweighed the pros; having just got our sea legs again, the thought of stopping in port now and then having to endure another bout of sea-sickness for the leg from Fiji to Vanuatu was definitely not appealing; and finally, and probably most persuasively, it was going to cost us around $200 in clearance fees to enter Fiji, which for the few days we would be there, was going to make it an expensive stop. Port Vila was going to be another 4-5 days sail away, so resigned to our fate, we put all thoughts of pulling in to a nice, calm anchorage to the backs of our minds and just dealt with what the weather gods tossed at us: drizzle, winds up again, rolling seas then backing down again, northerlies, easterlies….being in the South Pacific Convergence Zone, where the moist air over the ocean condenses and rises, and mixes with cool air that comes in with fronts from down New Zealand way creating rain and thunderstorms, what else could we expect? (note: this is my very basic understanding of the SPCZ. There are many books, websites and amateur and professional forecasters dedicated to the explanation and analysis of the SPCZ and I’m leaving it up to them if you want to know more! And while on this note, I should sing the praises of David and Patricia who operate a net on the SSB called Gulf Harbour Radio. They provide – on a voluntary basis as far as we could tell – an invaluable weather information and analysis service to yachties in the zone. Each morning we would listen to David’s opinion of what the weather was doing and might do in the general area. The David and Patricia Show as I called it was chock full of info fur us.) On Thursday morning, day 6 at sea, we changed our course yet again, this time to aim for the island of Aneytioum (pronounced Aneeshum), the most southerly island of Vanuatu. We had learned from another yacht on the SSB radio, that it was a port of entry. Importantly, it would also mean one less night at sea for us! That night at midnight, motoring again through lack of wind, we encountered a pretty nasty storm that came in suddenly with winds all over the place, very heavy rain and lightning. It lasted for about 3 hours, during which we motored through it. During the storm a cargo ship, the South Islander, showed up on our AIS on a heading directly opposite us. Ie. On a potential collision course. Of course, it wasn’t that dramatic though as one of the beauties of the AIS is that we can pick up vessels as much as 20 miles away. We kept an eye on it and when she was about 7 miles away we called her up on the VHF radio. Yes, her captain had seen us too on his AIS and radar and he offered to alter his course slightly so as to pass us on our port side. We were very appreciative of that as if we had had to change course, one of us (and that would have been Ivan!) would have had to go out into the pelting rain and adjust the tiller pilot. The captain of the South Islander called us up on the radio to let us know he had passed us about 1 mile to port and wished us a safe passage for the rest of our journey. In the driving rain we had been unable to see any of his vessel’s navigation lights, even though it was so close to us; a little unnerving!

Friday morning saw the rain give way to sunshine and a surprise for us in the cockpit. Louise glanced out the main hatch to see how the day was shaping up and came face to face with a booby preening itself. It was totally unafraid of us and continued to preen while Louise took photos and Ivan made a buddy of it by scratching its neck. It wasn’t too long however before we realised why Bobby Booby was so intent on preening – he/she/it was teeming with small black insects we suspect were some form of lice. What was worse was they were dropping all over our cockpit. From then on the rest of our morning was taken up with us trying to remove Bobby from the yacht and detering him from coming back aboard. He was a determined bird that’s for sure. Ivan would pick him up by the tail and legs and sling him over the side. He would land in the water and watch as we would sail away and then after some time take flight, wheel around and hone in for his next landing. Sometimes he succeeding in making it back aboard the boat, all be it some of his landings were more crash than land. We were quite worried he would injure himself. Sometimes we ‘won the round’: as he came in to land Ivan would bark like a dog and wave a red cushion in the air, while Louise had resorted to the Indian villager method of detering animals by banging on a saucepan with a metal spoon. Eventually, after many ‘rounds’ of this ‘game’ Bobby sat on the surface of water, having been returned to it again by Ivan, tilted his head to one side and watched us sail away, with I’m sure a sad look in his eye as though he was saying “but why can’t I come with you?” We were nearing our destination with more light winds and more motoring and motor sailing. With less than 100 nm to go, the wind dropped right out and we wallowed in the rolly seas. Eager now to get into the anchorage at Aneytioum we burnt some more fossil fuel and early Sunday morning we joined 6 or 7 other yachts already there and dropped the anchor. We were glad to have those past 8 days behind us.