Wings Cruising Log

We are in Luganville, Santo, Vanuatu. The following notes were written along the way on our cruise north to get here.

Thursday, 24th of October:
It's time to be setting out. Port Vila is quite empty of cruising yachts; nearly everyone has left for Australia or New Zealand, we alone are heading north. But the cyclone season is coming, and now we too must start our way to safer waters.

Underway:
A fish just hit our bait with a swirl and a splash, and immediately broke the heavy line, so it must have been a big one. Now he has our brand new lure. OK, keep it you big fish, maybe we'll catch you another day and get it back.

Friday:
We're in Utanlangi on Nguna Island, anchored in the lee of another volcano. This one is dormant I guess since the sides are green instead of ash gray, and there is a quiet village on the shore at its foot. No one came out from the village. We had another windward leg today, fast and rough, in the open ocean, with 18 knots of wind and good sized waves. I squinted against the sun to check the trim of the mainsail, and then I bent over the mainsheet winch and slowly ground in the sail until it was close hauled. With the sails sheeted hard Wings came up a bit more into the wind and powered north. Judy and I climbed to the high side, put our feet over, and watched the volcanic islands pass in progression..

Saturday:
We're having another great sail, heading to Epi Island and passing more of the steep volcanic cones that rise from the seafloor all over Vanuatu. After an early start we made coffee and ate some fruit. The coffee was like it should be on a morning at sea, hot and black. The sail today is a beam reach and we are making good time. I dug out the spinnaker before we got out into the open, thinking we might be able to use it, but with this much wind, and this wind angle, we don't need it, at this rate we'll be in Epi by early afternoon.

Monday:
Tonight, as the light fades into a moonless black, we're walking from Joseph's store and bakery on one end of Lamen Bay Village to Epi High School on the other end, where we have an appointment to help one of the administrators with a computer problem. We're glad we can still make out the sandy path which passes for a road, and glancing occasionally to our left to the bay for the reassurance that Wings' anchor light gives us, as it glows in the distance, a beacon to home. We went to Joseph's store to buy some bread, fresh and still warm from the oven, which he normally would sell tomorrow morning but since we are leaving in the morning he invited us to get ours tonight, as soon as it was cool enough to take off the oven racks. The bread is in the back pack now, warming my back.

As we walk through the village we pass the houses where people are preparing their evening meals or eating outdoors. The sounds from the village are muted, we feel at ease here. The people seem happy and maybe they know they are living in a paradise.

Wednesday:
We're in the Maskelyne Islands. At midnight I am on deck just to take a look around. There's nothing here, nothing to see. There are no lights in this bay, even though during the day there are a lot of people about and we had dugout canoes alongside most of the day with local people wanting to trade or just to look at us. I guess than they just don't have electricity or any other kind of lights.

Maurice and his wife Marina were the first people we met and they sold us some sweet potatoes and bananas from their garden on Malakula Island. Maurice had a nice canoe, big and well formed, that he'd carved himself from one log, and I admired it. He in turn admired our boat. Maybe we could trade? We both laughed. Then he said he lived on the other side of the island where we are anchored, and he has four children, two in school and two little ones (which he had with him in the canoe). Judy traded kids clothes for the food he gave us, but the kids were cute and she would have given them the clothes anyhow. Later, from other natives, we got a big fresh crab and some bok choy and tonight we had an island dinner with it all.

Thursday:
This morning a man and his wife, Philip and Mae, came by early, at 6:00 AM asking me if I had any needles or thread to trade. He needed them to fix the tattered sail on his canoe. I said I didn't have any to spare but I told him I would fix the sail instead, He left me the sail while they went on to the garden, promising to return in an hour or two, and I got out my sewing machine. When they came back I had completely refurbished his sail and needless to say he was very pleased. I sent him on his way, watching as he proudly jibed his way downwind making good time with his newly repaired sail.

This afternoon we sailed fifteen miles to Port Sandwich, one of the few deep inlets in Vanuatu, and anchored in front of what was called the Ballande wharf, but is really just a battered framework of concrete with a flew planks on it, painted on its side with large letters warning of "Shark Attacks!" and which has a reputation as a home for cockroaches. We didn't see any cockroaches or sharks, but then we didn't venture near the wharf itself, going ashore with our dingy on the beach nearby, and we certainly didn't swim here.

It is said that you could take refuge from a cyclone here in Port Sandwich, that it is a "hurricane hole" because it cuts deeply into the hills of Malacula and has enough twists and turns that you'd probably be pretty safe from just about anything all the way in the back of it, and due to sand and mud that the rivers which empty into Port sandwich have deposited, holding is good too. Anyhow, we have been keeping in our minds whenever we are in this part of Vanuatu how far and in what direction we are from Port Sandwich, just in case. Other cruisers do the same. So far we haven't needed to find a hurricane hole, but if we did, we might head to Port Sandwich.

We walked to a village near here called Lamap, mentioned in the guide book as attractive. It is a very strange, and yes, in a certain eerie way, an attractive place. Hard to describe really, it's on a hill top overlooking the sea, which gently slopes down towards the cliff at the end of the point on which it sits, and it is open and windblown, and, though there are a lot of houses, it has an empty feeling. There are people here, just not so many that you see much of them. Some of the structures in Lamap are ruins, probably from WWII, with walls and floors and window frames but no roofs, window glass, or interior walls. One of these old buildings, overlooking the point and the ocean, still has its roof, or again has its roof, as well as interior walls and windows, and is still apparently in use, although no one was around when we were there. There were signs indicating that it housed a bank, police station, and post office. But it also has several empty sections with missing doors and dark hallways. We looked into one corridor where we heard a voice and saw a shadowy figure leaning against a wall, talking on a telephone. There is a phone there, but no lights. The guy using the phone was as startled to see us as we were to see him.

After a look around Lamap we headed back to the boat. On the walk back the people finally appeared, All along the return trip we had little kids yelling "hello" from their yards and many of them came out and tagged along for a while as we walked. There were also pigs and chickens and dogs on the road and we saw one truck and one man on a motorbike.

Interesting place, but all in all, we think we'll stay the night but leave early tomorrow.

Sunday:
Asanvari Bay on Maewo Island. On this high and rugged island the jungle tumbles right down to the ocean, as do the rivers and creeks, which Maewo has in abundance due to the nearly constant rain. The boat rocks with a bit of swell which gets in here sometimes, but mostly the wind and waves, predominately from the east, are well blocked by the island and the point which forms this bay. From a protection standpoint, it's not Port Sandwich; it's more like a tiny piece of tenuous shelter hanging on the edge of the wild ocean.

There is a "Yacht Club" in Asanvari and friends of ours, Gene and Robbie and their daughter Alison are here working on a new building for the yacht club. The local chief, Nelson, years ago established this yacht club as a place for visiting yachties to congregate and spend a little money on handicrafts, feasts, cool beers maybe, and to watch native dancing. There are no yachts here or club members except the people and boats that visit. The money that comes from them however in is the sole source of income for this end of the island. Gene and Robbie wanted to do something to help the village and they have taken on the project to replace the building. After obtaining funding from Ausaid, a foreign aid section of the Australian government, and from New Zealand's Vanuatu embassy they purchased and shipped, or brought, materials to this island and have proceeded to build a beautiful new yacht club building . By November they hope to have finished the yacht club, guest house, and women's handicraft center, all complete with running hot and cold water, kitchens, and indoor plumbing.

We've been hanging around for a few days, lending a hand where we could, and I can tell you, this place is nice, and the people doing it, Gene and Robbie from the yacht Noason have done a great job.

Thursday:
We are in Luganville, as I mentioned. There were six other boats here when we arrived but two have left for Australia, one leaves Saturday, and two are disabled. Still, it's nice to have some company. Luganville was the scene of a huge American military base here during WWII, and has a number of war relics, including a very large and accessible sunken troopship, the Coolidge and an underwater junkyard called million dollar point where the Americans dumped tons of perfectly good military hardware rather than ship it home after the war. This place is also the reputed home of the "John Frum" religion which is based on the prophecy that the rich Americans, lead by John, (from America) will someday return and make everyone here rich.

We're going to do some shopping, fix a worn mainsail batten pocket, do email, and head on north. We'll write again when we can.