Wednesday 1st September

Sunday 28th August

We finally left Port Vila, much to everyone’s surprise. We had become fixtures at the nakamal, the Waterfront Bar & Grill, the veggie market, Au Bon Marché Nambas 1 & 2…and we had a whole new lot of BFFs. Not to mention our daily contact with darling Leah and Mark.

Pete and Andrew slaved for two long hot grueling days on the rudder problem. Sledgehammers were all go… If Andrew hadn’t been there, with his diving equipment, his competence and his patience, we would still be up on the (very expensive) slip in Port Vila, trying to solve and fix The Rudder problem. We knew that we couldn’t leave Port Vila with the steering so stiff, and with the autopilot refusing to work. It had been absolutely grueling, just having a day trip over from Erromango to Efate.

Now I am going to ask The Men what the issue was:
Oh dear…they are drinking beer and are very very hot. They gazed at me in horror; what fresh hell was this?? I wanted them to do something??. But…to my great delight Pete took over, as he says, with a gentle smile of enthusiasm!

No, Pete has arisen, after 3 kavas with a gentle smile of (could that be)….enthusiasm?

Pete’s explanation: I do believe that Laura is somewhat overcome by my enthusiasm for my contributing to her blog. Mind you there are some of her followers who believe I am likely to corrupt, defile or simply bugger up her wonderful efforts of writing her blog. On the other hand some of her more nautical followers are requesting a bit more information as to the sailing decisions that accrue.
Here goes :-Whilst in Tassie James and I removed the port side rudder. Two reasons…Firstly I had dinged the rudder in the Whitsundays and it was a bit stiff to turn, but also there had been a deterioration in the autopilot and I thought the stiffness was causing this problem.

We had an engineering firm test the stock for bend, no problem, but it was extremely difficult to remove…much hammering and swearing, but eventually it was dissociated from the boat and tested. Absolutely no bend, and very little to show why it was stiff. A bit of a clean up, removing what appeared to be minimal residue from (maybe) electrolysis and all seemed to be fixed. Certainly the new autopilot that was installed worked without a hitch.

Sadly, as we progressed from Sydney to Lord Howe Island, we started to encounter problems with the autopilot. It would have a “fit” and totally lose direction. By the time we reached New Caledonia it was unable to “Track”. (For the uninitiated that means staying exactly on a rhumb line, as compared with staying on a course (direction). By Efate Laura and I were totally exhausted from having to manually steer the whole way and it was obvious that the steering needed fixed.

The problem was exactly the same as previously, after much effort to get the rudder out there is still little to show for it being so tight. Many suggestions, such as increased water temperature causing increased expansion in the rudder stock, a further ding (no that has not happened), the start of electrolysis and the aluminium stock releasing some small particles of metal which caused scouring of the stock and tightness. Whatever... Andrew spent a lot of time and effort removing some millimeters from the nylon (neoprene) bush (bearing), using his battery operated hookah as this needed to be done from under the hull, and I polished the stock, applied grease and all has popped back in place. OK for the moment, but I can assure you we are not far away from our next challenge.

(This is Pete’s first contribution; I am very happy with it and have only fixed the spacing – he doesn’t believe there should be two spaces after a full stop. And he wouldn’t let me change “needed fixed” – it is apparently an in-joke which everyone will understand (except me…) I have been Laura all day in the village where we spent the afternoon. Local people can cope very well with Laura as a name. Unfortunately we were with a party of Quatre Français, to whom I introduced myself, ofcourse, as Marguerite, so it was all a bit schizophrenic. Pete is very happily still in LauraMode, and is being very nice to me in spite of the fact that his camera had a bit of a damp moment or two in my backpack and now it doesn’t work… I quite like being Laura, it is a whole new world out there when you have a different name!)

I spent my last morning in Vila buying provisions – fresh fruit and veggies from the market, that sort of thing. I also sat sadly in the Waterfront Café with Mark and Leah, sipping our very last fresh lime juices. (They were usually so reliably delicious, but this time…Leah’s had no ice and mine, I fear, had no lime…but never mind!) Very sad to say farewell but…so it goes…

It was a beautiful day and we made very good speed to Havana Harbour, where we anchored for the night. Absolutely beautiful! There is a fabulous resort there, and Cate Blanchett has, we hear, bought land nearby. But…even she was denied access to the resort because she had children under 12 with her!

The next morning we set off for Epi island, famous, in Lonely Planet, for having NO SHARKS. We found a lovely anchorage in gorgeous Lamon Bay, home to, so they told us, turtles and dugongs. Alack and alas we didn’t see any but…it was picture-postcard perfect.

Lonely Planet informed us that there was a restaurant in the village, at the promisingly named Paradise Sunset Resort. It was similar in style to the Port Resolution Yacht Club, but in an enclosed hut, sans cats and dogs. Our welcoming committee to the village told us, after much discussion with the Women Who Cook, that we would be very welcome to come back for a meal at 7.30, with some visiting missionaries, here for an Assembly of God conference. What could be nicer?? We assumed that the missionaries would be dining with us rather than on the menu, and this was indeed the case. Chris and Paul were very nice men. Paul was originally from Launceston and very happy to chat about his home town. Not sure where Chris came from. (Qld?) He was a very kindly old gentleman, and we enjoyed their company very much. They probably enjoyed ours even more because they both revealed a surprising passion for motor car racing and I told them they were dining with Andrew Miedecke. Their eyes lit up and our status went up enormously in their eyes, even though I told them Chris (our new friend from Port Vila)’s joke about the drug and bomb-detecting dog on the plane (it involved the word SHIT.)

After this we had a very early night and possibly slept, all three of us, for about 11 hours… This reminds me – oh why this connection, I wonder? – of a snoring story I haven’t written about yet. One night when we were at the marina in Port Vila, Pete got up to commune with nature on the deck. It was about 2am and he idly glanced around to see if the security guard was doing his rounds. He could see a white shirt, and then wondered to himself if this nightwatchman ever, perchance, took a little nap. Could it be that he was lying on a bench in the café? Well yes…a few minutes later Pete heard a loud snore….

Monday 29th August

Epi was beautiful but we had miles to go so the next morning we left early and went to Avoch Island, just off the coast of Malekula Island. Another gorgeous stetting…I won’t gush too much but if you can visualize little white beaches, thick lush jungle on steep hills and crystal clear water…well yes…Oh and a dear little thatched village with gentle, hospitable people waiting to ply us with kava and pamplemousse…We had a few lovely swims in the warm clear water, and I enjoyed my snorkeling very much because, for once, my mask didn’t try to drown me – I have been having problems with it, so annoying. There wasn’t a lot of coral – alack and alas, most of it is dead – but I did see was quite spectacular, brilliant orange and yellow with schools of tiny luminous blue fish darting around.
Andrew had caught two decent sized bonitos out at sea – lovely little tuna. We gave one to some boys in a dugout. They fish all the time on the edge of the sea, ofcourse, but can’t catch deep-sea fish so they were very grateful. We were sorry later that we hadn’t caught a dozen to give to the other villagers, who were very envious. There were two other yachts in the bay, and we were all invited to a “kastom dance” at 2.00.

I don’t usually like seeing village people being made to perform tribal dances for our edification, it all seems very undignified, but this session was good. They had a whole program which they trotted out for us and our Quatre Français, companions. First there was a speech from The Chief (Jif Andrew), then a welcome song from a lively little string band. Two lovely men called Philip and George then took us for a guided tour around the beautiful village. George wanted me to be the translator for the Quatre Français; in fact what he REALLY wanted was for me to make them keep up with the rest of us… It was like herding cats and after a while I gave up. It was too hot and they paid no attention to me anyway, so I let them come at their own pace. In fact it was the hottest day we have had so far – between 33-36. We darted from one large breadfruit tree to the next…

After an hour or so of village tour, we were led down a wonderfully shady path along a mangrove-rimmed creek to the dancing area. It was all very atmospheric, sitting on a log under the huge shady trees, hearing tomtoms beating in the distance, and hearing a warrior song approaching. I will copy out a bit from Lonely Planet – I am very hot and can’t think of a better way to describe the tribal differences on Malekula:

“Two of Malekula’s major tribal groups are the Big Nambas and Small Nambas, named because of the size of the men’s namba (penis sheath.) Small Nambas men wear only one leaf of dried fibre wound around the penis and tucked into a bark belt. Their semi-kastom communities are built around tamtam, ready to beat a rhythm, and a dance area.”

We were in the World of Small Nambas; apparently the Big Nambas are much more terrifying…and were not all that long ago prone to eat intruders… The dance was just great. The men all wore anklets of dried nuts (very similar to large gumnuts) around their ankles and stamped to make them rattle – very like Morris Dancers’ bells… But otherwise nothing like Morris Dancers; they all had bare bottoms and were painted with ochre. One young man banged the tamtam while three old codgers sang the warrior songs. The dancers were all very fit and in their prime. They marched off in single file back into the jungle, chanting another bloodthirsty song, and were ready and waiting for us back in the village wearing their cotton shirts and shorts, ready to sing for us as the original string band… So lovely; their first song, to a jaunty reggae rhythm was… “The Grand Old Duke of York,” followed by… “Jingle Bells”!! A feast had been spread out on our return – coconuts, navele (native nuts threaded onto sticks,) pamplemousse (pink grapefruit, delicious) and sweet corn. And kava!

One of les Quatre Français, Jean-Francois, has chupachups to give to random children. I was sitting with him and his wife when they were talking about the villagers. “What beautiful teeth they have!” he said. “They won’t have now!” I said, a bit rudely…well…very rudely…

It all cost quite a lot – about $22 per head. But we didn’t begrudge a penny; it all goes back into the village economy, and they certainly gave us our money’s worth. Andrew had done a deal with James, the boy to whom he had given the bonito, and he came back with two beautiful big mud crabs. He cooked them for us for dinner last night, with much chilli and garlic, and it was THE most fabulous meal.

Tuesday 30th August

No lingering about for 2XS! We got up quite early again and set off for our next destination. I think we are in Uri Bay but Pete says Port Stanley. The coast of Malekula, anyway. We were planning on swimming, snorkeling, diving but…all I can hear around me is…snore snore… By the way, Infinity, our big boatfriend from Port Resolution, is right next to us.

Sharks are a BIG theme here in Vanuatu. I think I wrote about the woman Andrew and I were talking to (shouting to!) while dancing at the Waterfront Bar & Grill on Friday? She was saying “Where are you going blah blah blah SHARKS….don’t swim there blah blah blah SHARKS blah blah” so I said, “I really can’t hear you!” and danced off with my fingers in my ears…

And, for example, Lonely Planet says, of Port Sandwich, on Malekula:

“At the wharf, a small golden beach may tempt you in for a swim. Don’t do it! Don’t even paddle. This is the worst place for shark attacks.”

We carefully avoided Port Sandwich and its treacherous golden beach, and went to Port Stanley instead. On the way, Pete was talking to somebody close by on the radio and when he said we were heading here, was told, “Oh no…don’t swim there! The big shark problem in Port Sandwich has now transferred to…Port Stanley!””

But…we have never actually heard of anyone being killed, or even bitten by a shark in Vanuatu. Maybe people are terrified out of their wits if they just SEE one?? Anyway…my snoring boys woke up and it was so hot, the water so beautiful, that we all went for a swim. Andrew and Pete both dived with Andrew’s special power snorkel thingy, and I just snorkeled, not too far from the boat. And…it was beautiful! Gorgeous coral, lots of fish…no sharks!!

Wednesday 31st August

Early start again and off Espiritu Santo. Pete and Andrew launched the sailchute early on in the day and it accompanied it all the way, looking just glorious in the blue sky. Not only looking good; it carried us along at a spanking pace.

Andrew had his fishing lines out, as usual, and while Pete was lying on the net at the front of the boat watching the sailchute and I was sitting at the helm listening to podcasts there was a sudden commotion – a BIG fish on the line! It took ages for the fish to appear in view…a very big Spanish Mackerel, 700 mls in length. We had some for lunch, cooked on the BBQ with teriyaki sauce and it was absolutely delicious. Weehee Andrew! Hunter gatherer and cook!

We got to Aore Resort a bit after 2pm. It had been recommended as a nice place to moor the boat, and indeed it was a most beautiful resort, picture perfect, with a ferry service to Luganville across the channel.. We tied up to a small mooring and Pete took the tender in to work out what the system involved. A very efficient Australian woman owns and runs the resort and she told us we should go to a deeper mooring. Well we tried that but…it didn’t have a rope on it so we drove into the middle of Luganville and dropped poor Andrew off at a dodgy looking concrete jetty arrangement. No nice little ferry…but at least he didn’t miss the plane.

We didn’t go back to Aore; they had such a huge list of regulations I was tired even thinking of reading them. But before we left I did have a wonderful swim; so many fish, and some beautiful coral, I just loved it. Instead of Aore we anchored on the Luganville side of the channel, outside another less posh resort called Beachfront.

Friday 26th August

Yesterday we – finally – went to the Mélé Cascades with Mark and Leah as our chauffeur and guides. This is an absolutely wonderful place, only about five kilometes out of Port Vila. A magical cascade of clear blue pools with, at the top, a magnificent pair of waterfalls. We swam in the very top pool, under the smaller of the waterfalls, and gasped happily as the cold spray hit us on the head. Mark was frolicking happily on the larger of the falls, clambering up like a mountain goat. Leah took lots of photos while Pete and I admired this feat appreciatively. Andrew, who while quiet and gentle is actually VERY competitive ( well you have to be, to be a racing car driver…) waited till we were out of sight and clambered up the waterfall himself. (Pete stayed behind and took a photo to prove it. He, mind you, stayed on a warm dry rock…) Mark took Andrew into a cave behind the larger fall, and I decided, after a bit of cautious deliberation, that I couldn’t miss this opportunity. It was a bit confronting going under the breath-taking (literally) rush of water, but then – magic! A dry little cave! Whoopee! I was inordinately proud of this achievement and managed to get all the way back down (down is always much harder than up…) the Cascades without having to slide on my bottom, as usually happens to me in waterfall areas.

At the bottom we celebrated our achievements by having a nice cold drink – beer for the older people brightly coloured drinks with flowers and umbrellas atop for Mark and Leah. The Cascades belong to Mark’s large extended family –various cousins, uncles, brothers-of-cousins, brothers-in-law and uncle-in-law, and they have created a most beautiful development there, totally in keeping with the beauty of the area.

Our other activities for the daylight hours consisted of…travelling around in buses, or in long-suffering Mark and Leah’s Island Princess Ute, looking in hardware stores and mechanical repair shops for weapons to tackle the rudder problems on 2XS.

At 5 we had speedy showers and met up with Chris, who sells photocopiers and other such Toshiba equipment in an office overlooking our marina. (He has a connection to Pete’s cousin Michael, who had told him we were in Vila.) Chris had very kindly offered to take us to a kava bar (nakamel). It was a much more salubrious establishment than Ronnie’s, where we had been with Fred, our wild Dutch friend. It was perched on a steep hill overlooking the harbor, and we had clean plastic chairs to sit on instead of dusty wooden benches in an unlit thatched hut. We met yet another group of expats, all of them long-time Vanuatu residents. Jerry and Jan (Dutch) own La Tentation, the beautiful restaurant where Pete and I had dinner the night before we went back to Tasmania. Their son Nick is the manager. When I told Jerry how much we enjoyed our dinner there, she said, swiftly, “Please put a review on tripadvisor.com”, which is exactly what the manager of the Café du Village said the night before.

We were later joined by Beverley (English) who has also lived in Vanuatu for over twenty years. She does various jobs, including being a property manager for rentals around Vila. Not an easy job…. “I have 200 children who ring me saying, “fix this, fix that, my light globes have blown,’ that sort of thing.” Beverley is very tall, blonde, gorgeous, and she might join us after work today. For drinks not kava, I hope… I really enjoyed the kava last night and was very circumspect – TWO shells, not FIVE. But…I still had terrible trouble getting to sleep. Kava is not my friend!

At 7.30 we met Leah and Mark for dinner at our front garden restaurant (Waterfront Bar & Grill.) Mark and I had totally delicious fish (wahu) with veggies. Pete had rack of beef which was ENORMOUS and possibly not as yummy as my fish…Andrew had steak, which was also… not as yummy as my fish, and Leah had calamari. Food here is good! Later in the evening I was talking to the owner of the Waterfront and she said…“Please put a review on tripadvisor.com.” I am very busy writing reviews to make all my Vanuatu restaurant managers happy! She also told me where we should go when we leave her –this island, that island, not here, not there, and WATCH OUT FOR SHARKS. I said I couldn’t hear her above the music, it was all too loud. I don’t want to hear any more about sharks!!

We have been reading our Lonely Planet Guide to the South Pacific, and it is FULL of shark warnings. In fact, it is fulsome in its praise of Epi Island - you can swim there secure in the knowledge here will be no sharks. So where it is SILENT on the topic of sharks, this is also alarming! Pete and I talked to a man in Au Bon Marché supermarket the other day. He is Australian and has a little resort on Epi. He agreed there were no sharks around Epi but said, charmingly, “No sharks but many inexplicable disappearances of catamarans.” Very witty and amusing!!

We have been reading jaw-dropping stories about the time of the Condominium in Vanuatu – generally known as the Pandemonium. For about seventy years this poor benighted country was run by a coalition of Les Francais and The English. On some islands, they even had currency with cinq centimes on one side and sixpence on the other. And Beverly told me last night that they could never agree on left-hand or right-hand traffic, so they instituted a rule of alternate days… So you would wake up in the morning thinking, “Hmmm…is it Wednesday, when I drive on the left, or Thursday when I drive on the right?” She said it actually all worked quite well because there were, in those days, so few cars here.

We are supposed to be leaving for bluer waters tomorrow. Pete and Andrew have been slogging away on the rudder problems. I swear I saw them with a very large sledge-hammer, making a horrendous noise. I am prudently keeping out of it; I have no skills in this area. I spent a very pleasant hour or two bobbing around in the dinghy under the boat with a small squirty bottle of fairly mild poison (the fish loved it and clustered around me, fascinated, trying to wash off some of the slime adhering to the hull.) Occasionally I would look up, to find the odd wistful sailor gazing at me. “I think I should bring my wife to watch this. Can I take a photo?” No thank you! I do not want photos of me looking like a tomato appearing on youtube; and I do not wish to make enemies of sailing wives, whose husbands are very wrongly impressed by the very small contributions I make to boat maintenance and wellbeing.

I don’t know when next I will be in internet range. A mystery! I will keep writing but the next blogpost might be a large and unwieldy affair…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANN-MARIE!!

Thursday 25th August

Yesterday was busy yet again…a lovely Port Vila day.

I got up and scrubbed the decks with the hose and the broom; always fun, always satisfying. There was still, believe it or not, volcanic ash from Mt Yasur lurking in various crevices. Oh those volcanoes!

Pete spent a lot of the day down various hatches trying to fix the rudders – the steering is still alarmingly stiff. By the end of the day he was a sodden wreck and had to be revived with cold showers and beer while I sailed forth to find wild raspberries at the market. I also went to a very shmick pharmacy looking for antibiotic ream and dressing for my surgery wound. I knew where the dressings where because of my rusty ladder wound experience, but I couldn’t find the correct dressing. A dreamy young chick came up to gaze at the shelves with me; she didn’t have a clue either and went off to find a superior pharmacy attendant. “Hmmm…” she said, looking at my wrist. She showed me her catalogue and said that this particular item, No: XJY 3456543 216789765 was out of stock. I could feel my woundette throbbing and mild panic rising so I pointed, mutely, at a package of Johnson and Johnson dressings, waterproof, which looked exactly the same size as the one on my wrist. “Oh yes…” said my helpful assistant. I suppose that might be the same…” So...I bought the required items – antibiotic cream, strong painkillers (just in case) and dressings from my reluctant new friend…

At midday we met up with Mark and Leah, and, as a bonus, Mark’s lovely mother Tauchi, who had escaped from her village school in Ekipe to spend the day in the Big Smoke. She was delighted to have a big chocolate milkshake all to herself and to have a tour of 2XS. “It is my dream,” she said happily, “that one day Mark and Leah will have a boat like this!” Well I didn’t like to put too many obstacles in her way but…Leah gets fearfully seasick…

Leah let me know very gently that…I was no longer in possession of beloved iphone. I had taken it to the showers in the morning, and had left it – OH NO – on top of the toilet. I think I had been so bamboozled by the coldness of the shower (BRRRR!!) that I had taken temporary leave of my senses; no other excuse will do; I LOVE my iphone! Leah had sent me a message and a very wonderful woman called Dominique, temporarily on Chasse Spleen, a big yacht not far from 2XS, had texted back saying she had rescued my phone from almost certain disaster. I am so grateful for this I can barely type…and even better, I didn’t know I had been parted from my phone until Leah told me, so I didn’t have to implode with anxiety! (Well only retrospectively.) I spent a long time in the bottleshop choosing the most appropriate reward: Wolf Blass champagne won the day; I hope Dominique and her friends enjoy it as much as she deserves.

Leah says that ni-Van people don’t generally steal; they wouldn’t take your handbag, or mug you, or slither things out of your backpack. But…they LOVE phones and would very possibly take your phone right from under your nose. So…how lucky was I??

Pete and I had another battery-chasing excursion in the afternoon. I don’t think one single stone has been left unturned in Port Vila in the search for this particular battery… Bus trips are great fun in Vanuatu. You clamber into a Tarago-style van and give some vague sort of indication as to where you might like to go. Then the bus takes off and may or may not veer in a completely different direction. (Tauchi, for example, said it would take her from 2-6 to get home to Ekipe, which is only really 30 minutes drive from Port Vila…) We enjoyed our detours in the back blocks of Vila very much. We were also fascinated by the battery shop. Pete had rung to check and the shop assistant had said, “Yes, we have hundreds of batteries.” What she meant was, “We have hundreds of exactly the same battery, none of which is what you want.” Too funny!

We went for dinner at a different restaurant, just along the waterfront – the Village Café, I think. Lots of atmosphere – a leafy flowery bower, in fact. We had a great time. Delicious food once again – I had – so surprising – fish with veggies; Pete had steak with potatoes and salad (he wanted veggies but never mind…) There was great music as well - three singers, a big synthesiser, the same sort of repertoire as the Waterfront – a bit of Frank, a bit of Bob Marley, Lionel Ritchie, Leo Sayer… We made some lovely new friends, from Australia (Mt Colah NSW), New Zealand (Christchurch) and there was much dancing and merriment. The Australians, Anne and Laurie, had been to Vanuatu before, many years ago, and have travelled widely. “We usually bring the kids,’ said Laurie – they have six. “But…our oldest is now fifty-four so we thought it was time we had a holiday by ourselves.” They were great dancers; Anne had been, until the age of 74 a ballet, jazz and tap teacher, and Laurie was a ballroom dancing whizz. I enjoyed my dance with him very much while Pete was jiving with Anne.

At 10.30 it was time for Cinderella and Cinderello to go back to 2XS to watch moves and wait for Andrew Miedecke to arrive on the midnight special…We were thrilled to bits when he arrived and frolicked around making him tropical fruit salad and pouring beer into him.

Today is hot and sunny. Pete and Andrew are already in a lather of sweat, having powered around Vila and its environs in a bus (I went on this trip, great fun going up all the by-ways) looking for something-or-another, not finding it, borrowing an enormous socket thingy…oh dear I MUST let Pete write these details.. What we are SUPPOSED to be doing is going to the Cascades with Leah and Mark. I have let them trudge up the hill (mad dogs and Englishmen) looking for a another widget for a wadget; I am in the Waterfront Café in the shade with a large lime juice, admiring Mary who is wearing her new Tasmanian earrings (not gold but she is happy with silver adorned with bright blue beads…)

Wednesday 24th August

So how did Pete like my new Tropical Frocks? He is much disposed to admire various shades of grey and black and beige so my violently Sunset Coloured maxi-dress drew nothing but a startled gasp. And my black shirred frock, adorned with large blue flowers – well he smiled very fondly but not in admiration of the attire. Never mind! I will wear both of these dresses with great comfort and joy. And I think I look a treat! (A TropicalTreat…)

No we didn’t kick up our heels last night. We played with our computers, which was just mildly unpleasant – for example, I tried to get my blogpost up about fifteen times. Each time I JUST got it to “Publish post” – the last step – and it would fade away…computer says no… Eventually think I succeeded. Pete was having similar struggles with his banking site. I tore myself away from my epic discourse with cyberforces and made a very beautiful filling omelette for Pete, and a slightly less bursting one for myself. Once it was all done and dusted, we lay on the couches and read our books, with our lovely singers on our front terrace doing their Leo Sayer/Rod Stuart/Joe Cocker thing.

I forgot to say we made some new BFFs yesterday, from a catamaran called Reflections, just arrived from New Zealand. It took them nine days non-stop to get here. Oh it was no problem, a lovely if lively trip (60 knot winds, 6-9 metre swells), said Russell. Then I met Anne who had been very ill, in spite of scopatches… Next we met Eric, who we think is the owner. “So,” said Pete brightly, “A reasonable trip, nothing broken?” Eric beamed at him and started listing all of the things which were in fact shattered, bent, twisted, buggered…oh what fun!

Back in Tasmania most people I met said they were enjoying this blog. Either that or they hadn’t looked at it at all; not interested, too busy, etc etc. Why hadn’t I told them we were in Vanuatu, they said, accusingly? Well…I did…in cyberspace. And my many postcards to the grandchildren (mine, but also to Pete’s – we have 15, soon to be 16, between us,) were very much appreciated. Eva, 3½ was deeply suspicious. “So,” she said, accusingly, “How do you get postcards to OUR house when you are at sea on a BOAT?” And – oh dear – unfortunately I have revealed one of my big weaknesses by sending postcards to anyone at all… I have very poor handwriting. In fact it is godawful… Can I please point out that I am, on the other hand, a very good speller? Does this make amends?? I did tell one of my commenters that my writing is PARTICULARLY bad on the postcards because I am writing them on a wobbly boat. Or in a wobbly café while drinking wobbly alcohol…

Another complaint/request was for more info about sailing details. This blog IS, I realise, called SAILING2XS… Not…IDLEGOSSIP2XS. So I have asked Pete if he would make a regular contribution with details about wind, sails, lalala, engines, blah blah blah, bilges, ahahaha and he said – YES! This should be a big improvement; I will put his bit at the front so those who really only want to know about knots and wind and ocean swell and leaky this and that can move on to greener pastures very swiftly. Or not?? Anyone with any ideas/suggestions re this? Or maybe I will put it at the end, in big bold typeface?

Tuesday 23rd August
So now there are three young girls who can do the Pride of Erin – a skill which will stand them in good stead for many years to come! Last night we had dinner at the Waterfront Bar & Grill aka our front garden/café. (Delicious meal, by the way, Kate H – Pete had a beef curry and I had beautiful fresh wahu on a bed of mashed kumara with veggies lavishly cooked in garlic and butter.) The next table was full of cheery charming Australians with their delightful children. They were all staying at Le Lagon resort, which is, apparently, quite wonderful. But they decided to leave their comfort zone come and hang out here, and we enjoyed their company very much – especially that of the girls, aged 6, 7 and 9. They had all had their hair braided and were wearing new sun-dresses from the market, and they were full of fizz, bounce and chat. The local singers were singing their way through their repertoire, and the girls all enjoyed learning their new dance very much. A few old people (by old people I mean Pete’s and my age or even older…) sitting on the sidelines recognised the steps if not the music – yes it is possible to do the Pride of Erin to Lady in Red; in fact, to just about any song – and called me over very happily to tell me they too had learned this very lovely dance at primary school.
So we are back to food, music, dancing and…sleeping… We went to bed at about eleven and when we (finally…) woke this morning, Pete said, “What time do you think it is?” I stretched my guess and said, “Nine?” Well no, it was closer to ten… Back in snoozyland!!
Today we have wandered around Port Vila in search of mundane items such as a special sort of battery for the diving equipment Andrew Miedecke is bringing with him tomorrow.
We met up with Mark and Leah by chance in the small pharmacy opposite the yacht club – great joy all round, and amazement –they had been looking for us on the boat, and had quickly scarpered because people in the café were staring at them with great suspicion. We had been buying doxycycline and were then going to make our way to Island Princess to find them, so it was good luck all round, and we had a lovely lunch at the Waterfront instead of having to traipse any further. (Re the doxycycline…this is a very light dose of antibiotic which we are – sigh sigh – required to take as an anti-malarial precaution thingy. I am deeply suspicious of antibiotics and very rarely take them – I have suffered very bad side effects, won’t go into it but any of you know what thrush is will sympathise. So I usually go to areas of malarial infestation going lalalala, I won’t get it. Our Asian pharmacist gazed at us expressionlessly as she watched me dithering, will-I-won’t-I-maybe-just-you-take-them-Pete. Then she said, flatly. “You have to take them. You will get malaria if you don’t.” Oh OK… She was a bit Chinese Mother so, ofcourse, I obeyed.)
Mark and Leah were full of chat about (a) the earthquake the day before yesterday – 7.5 on the Richter Scale and OH MY GOD, their house shook on its foundations… and (b) Alice’s wedding. The church service went from just after 10am till 1.30…MUCH singing, many sermons. There were about 1,000 guests; Leah the only white person. She thought she and Mark would slink in and out but no…they found themselves at the bridal table for the wedding feast, guests of honour! Alice looked beautiful in her Chinese ebay dress with much ruffling and bling, but Leah and Mark said the entire wedding party looked absolutely petrified –centre of attention for 1,00 people, very daunting!
One of the things I had on my to-do list back in Tasmania was to do to the doctor and get a disgusting growth thingy cut off my wrist. It has been there for about six months and has not responded to treatment in any way other than to flourish and grow bigger and yuckier. I have even knocked it off during moments of Extreme Sailing, and it has inexorably grown back. But… I was TOO BUSY. When we were back on 2XS, Pete noticed that it was stil there, in spite of my cunning disguise of Large Bandaid. “Oh Gawd, you didn’t get it cut off!” I asked Leah about the accessibility of doctors – would I have to wait a long time to get an appointment? She laughed heartily – “Just walk in!” The Medical Centre is just opposite our Waterfront Paradise so I abandoned Pete to yet more battery searching (yes he gets all the fun!) and I went in, hesitantly, to make an appointment. The ni-Van receptionist, lacking any evidence of teeth, and chewing gum with great vigour, said, “When you want appointment? Now? Write your name and date of birth here.” She tore a tiny strip of paper off her desk calendar and I wrote the required details. Within thirty seconds I was flat on my back on a bed having my wrist anaesthetised by a lovely kindly doctor from Tuvalu. Leah had warned me that his equipment would be primitive and indeed I could see a re-fillable and very large syringe coming my way…so I closed my eyes.
When I was paying my bill (this took longer than the rest of the appointment and it cost me nearly $100 in case you ever want to come and have a yucky growth cut off your wrist in Vanuatu) I looked at the posters. There was a lovely one promoting baby (bebi) health, and it said, baldly, “GIVIM TITI.” Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Next to the medical centre is a very hot and stifling computer shop, where I also spent some time this afternoon. I bought a new ipod at Sydney Duty Free, with greater capacity, and my new BFF (Best Friend Forever) Ravi spent a stifling few hours trying to get it to work in English rather than Mandarin – I had inadvertently pressed yes to this inscrutable language rather than English – oh dear and oh no… I have also purchased some new audiobooks – Alistair Cook’s entire Letters From America, for example, which will be every soothing when I am at sea on ocean passages. But…they are not visible anywhere on my itunes although I have receipts from Audiobooks thanking me for my business. Ravi is going to work on this ALL NIGHT, or so he assures me, and all for… about $10.
Maybe you have realised that this afternoon I was NOT with Pete. Aha! So what did I do? I spent money very freely! I bought two summer dresses, one from a shop ($25) and one from the market ($18), ideal for hot weather. They are very very beautiful…for the tropics. So they will no doubt be hidden in the bottom of my wardrobe when I get back to Tasmania.

Monday 22^nd August

Back to 2Xs…did you even know we had gone?? I sort of neglected to mention it in my recent blog entries… It didn’t seem like a good idea, for some vague reason. We left on the tenth and have spent many happy but very busy days home in Tasmania. When we arrived, everyone who saw us gasped and said, “Oh don’t you look well!” (They also may have gasped because my hair is so SHORT; who knows...) By yesterday, no-one was mentioning the words “well” or “relaxed,” in fact I heard the word…”tired”… Oh dear, oh no…will have to get back into RelaxedMode on the water.

It is wonderful to be back although we had to wrench ourselves tearfully away from our darling families and friends. 2XS looks fine; no rat infestations or engulfment by tsunami; not even a light bit of break ‘n’ enter. I had a bit of difficulty getting aboard; our plank had been confiscated (maybe to deter rats and break ‘n’ enter attempts??) so I had to dejoomp across quite a big gap. I made just a bit of a wally of myself, teetering on the edge and saying, “I just can’t,” in a Selwyn-esque voice (private in-joke, won’t explain…) until,, with a bit of coaxing and hand-holding from poor tired Pete, I got aboard, to a round of applause from the people at the nearby café table… The plank is back now, so I just have to wobble across instead of teetering and whingeing.

I won’t go into an account of our Tasmanian time just now; in fact I am just going to sink into a very nice big G & T, dinner at the Yacht Club at the other end of the plank, and then – snoozytime.

Sunday 21st August

I am looking forward to hearing accounts of the Big Wedding in Vanuatu. My niece Leah and her boyfriend, Mark, were invited to Alice’s nuptials last Saturday – Alice works in Island Princess (the shop not the ute…they are connected but not interchangeable!!), and her wedding was a huge affair, involving a week or so of festivities, ceremonies, changes of – ahem – costume. Leah was the only non-ni-Van guest. An honour!

The whole Tasmanian family was involved; Monique’s role was…to procure the wedding dress, on ebay, from China. Alice chose a most elaborate meringue-like gown, with much ruffling and bling, for $150. Great excitement! Great value! All Monique had to do was…order it… It turned into a nightmare; every time she pressed “continue” on her computer, the order would multiply and she would get a polite Chinglish message – “Dear Valued Client, two wedding dresses are on their way to you!” Then four…and eventually – SIX identical meringue-like gowns, with much ruffling and bling were soon to be winging their way to Australia. It took a lot of emailing and a fair amount of blind panic before Monique could stem the flow of frocks. And then the worry – would it arrive in time for her to take it to Vanuatu?? Her new Chinese Best Friends Forever (BFFs) were very encouraging. “Yes! Your dress has transport!” She hoped and prayed this meant it was on its way, and indeed it did arrive, just in the nick of time. She was too frightened to open the plastic packaging enclosing The Frock – the dog might bite it to shreds, the cats might wee on it…

Pete and I were actually in Island Princess (the shop not the ute…) at the moment of The Reveal, and we saw Alice in tears of happiness – the meringue-like gown, with much ruffling and bling, exceeding expectation and fitted perfectly.

Phew….

Friday 19th August

We have finally managed to get a copy of a Lonely Planet guide to the South Pacific.
And I have to make yet another apology – the Vanuatu people are not Nivans; they are ni-Vans.

Also – I have to do some more research on this – maybe I have to apologise to the entire French nation – the horrid erosion and degradation of forests on all of the islands of New Caledonia might NOT be caused by open-cut mining and forestry, but by natural attrition by poisons seeping into the soil. Let me know if I am correct/incorrect.

Another nice story about our ni-Van friend Mark… He worked for a while as an abseiling guide in the Mélé cascades. His English is quite good; his French maybe not so good. In fact…maybe non-existent… He had some nice French women in a tour group, middle-aged, who didn’t speak one single word of English. He met them halfway down the waterfall and had to get them to leap further down the chasm. But they just blinked at him and smiled winningly – Mark is a very attractive young bloke. How to get them to leap?? No common language…maybe he could…ummm….invent some French. He gazed at them intently and made some sort of encouraging semi-leaping movements in Interpretative Dance mode. “Dejoompe,” he said. “dejooompe!” Wasn’t that how Les Français say JUMP??? Well no.. they stared at him in astonishment and stayed put on the ledge until eventually…they dejoomped!! We haven’t been to these cascades yet but we hope to do so very soon. Unfortunately we have to put in a few long and strenuous days in Immigration renewing our visas for another month otherwise we can’t stay in beautiful Vanuatu (ni-Van??) islands and will have to scarper to the Solomons.

16th August

There are quite a few grim little penitentiaries in Vanuatu, dotted around the countryside. Concrete blocks, surrounded by a bit of bare ground and a reasonably high fence with a roll of barbed wire on top. Prisoners are forever escaping, sometimes eight at a time. They always seem to get re-captured and thrown back into the not-very-pleasant clink.

When Mark, my niece Leah’s boyfriend, was a toddler and his mother a struggling young teacher, they lived in a village hut right next to such a prison. There was quite a large hole under the fence… The prisoners loved cute little Mark and after a while, his resourceful mother would post him under the fence in the morning and fetch him back at the end of the day. Instant and free day care! Mark made everyone’s lives very happy and he was as well cared for as you could want. We loved this story, and wondered why on earth the prisoners didn’t make the hole just a bit bigger so they could scamper in and out themselves…

Monday 15th August

Oh the saga of the tenants…

My new and much-longed for tenants moved in on Friday, and just as swiftly moved out again, back to their hotel. My poor agent, Teresa, rang me to say…they were FREEZING. I asked if she had put the heating on and she said yes, on Wednesday. And they had cranked it up to…THIRTY! (I have it on 18, but have been known to put it up to 20 when it is particularly icy outside, and it stays very pleasantly warm all the time… My friend Jacqui only has hers on 15!!) Teresa said, succinctly, “I don’t find it very cold in there…” But my poor Saudis couldn’t bear it and wouldn’t go into the bedrooms downstairs where – gasp – there is no thermostat control… I don’t like the bedrooms to be all that hot, and find they are a pleasant temperature just from the floor heating upstairs. But…Teresa said they HAD to have heaters, one for each bedroom… She organised for me to buy some by remote control from Harvey Norman, and she picked them up and installed them. I said that the electricity bill will be phenomenal and she said, coldly, “Not your problem. They will have to pay!”

I told my friend Elsa and she said she knows someone who rents out an apartment under her house to students from the Middle East. They have all the heaters on high all winter long, and she doesn’t need to heat her own living area at all – she has floor heating from the tenants, who have enormous electricity bills; $1200 a quarter…

Sunday 14th August

So how do people in the Pacific islands cope with our Australian accents, and weird-o names?? Marguerite poses quite a problem – Margeree?? Margene?? - and sometimes I just introduce myself as Laura. Pete thinks this is great; Laura is MUCH easier for him too.

As for Pete – well you would think Peter would be as easy as could be. Not so! “I’m Peter,” he says in his loud clear voice. “Hello, Imepeter; I am Gregory, the Presbyterian minister in Ekipe.” My favourite, however, was, “I’m Peter.” “Oh, hello Poiter.” (Much sniggering by Marguerite aka Laura in the background.)

Friday 12th August

On Wednesday I stepped off the plank with my pack and computer and found one of the café waitresses at my side. “Do you know my name? I am Mary! I always SMILE at you!” I said of course I knew who she was and that yes she has a lovely, memorable smile. “Well, if you are going to Australia, could you please buy me some earrings and a necklace.” Well… I was a bit taken aback but quite happy to do this, I suppose… “So what colour jewellery do you want, Mary?” She looked at me as if I were mad, and said, “Gold, of course!”

Oh…

This happened on beautiful little Maré, one of the Loyalty Islands running along the north of New Caledonia, after we left…it was all so chilled-out when we were there – nothing more incendiary than the Pacific Games torch ceremony! Too sad...

France has asked religious mediators to defuse protests in New Caledonia over rising air fares that have resulted in four dead and 23 wounded.

The conflict at the airport on Mare island in the French territory follow months of political instability triggered by the adoption of the indigenous Kanak flag alongside the French tricolour.

On Saturday, a group of 300 residents who support the local Kanak leader Nidoish Naisseline, also the chairman of Air Caledonie, had tried to disband protesters who were asking for air fares to be cut.

Tenant - potholes - kava - dinner

10th August 2011

Well I can start off the blog with good news – a tenant for my house, after nearly three and a half months… I am VERY relieved. The contract is only for a few months, but…it is income, at last!

Yesterday afternoon Pete and I walked up to Au Bon Marché Numba 2. Next to this very expansive supermarket is…a lovely and enticing… hardware store! I walked around kindly for about ten minutes, admiring this and that with Pete, and then…it all went on too long and got very hot and stuffy. So I leaned on an Aussie BBQ – SPECIAL PRICE - in the doorway where there was a nice cool breeze and waited. I had to go into a sort of Zen trance to survive; I had foolishly not brought a book, or even my ipod. I became quite a fixture in the entrance. The large security guard got used to me and kept me informed of Pete’s progress (slow and steady) around the shop, nodding in the direction of the top of Pete’s head as it appeared and disappeared between racks, and I was able to watch many transactions, in a variety of languages. At one stage there was the security guard (Nivan,) the store manager (Vietnamese), a large white man wearing a US t-shirt (?) and a willing boy with a trolley – all speaking…French! Pete finally wandered out to the cash register. He beamed when he saw me. “This is such a great shop! Come and see what they have, down the back!” I very firmly said “NO.” I knew what would happen… Pete would go back into slow-motion hardware-store bliss and I would have to go and lean on the Aussie BBQ again.

We bought ourselves an almond Magnum at Au Bon Marché and then walked back down the hill to the yacht club. We entertained ourselves very happily envisaging the ghastly accidents which would befall us were we foolish enough to walk this treacherous footpath in the dark, or even at speed in broad daylight. “Aha! You would break your leg in this big deep unexpected hole, and you would scrape it very badly on the rusty reo, pulling it back out!” And…”Oh look, a steep precipice falling away from the footpath, which itself is falling away from the road! You would undoubtedly tumble and fall right down there!” And – my very own nemesis – a short sharp (and surely unnecessary??) pole in the middle of the footpath – of course I had to walk into it and bruise my thigh, even though it was bright midday sunshine. (I have an inexplicable magnetic attraction to poles in the middle of footpaths, and rode my bike straight into several in Noumea, sometimes more than once running into the very same one.)

We had another bit of 2XS-Café time yesterday. We were expecting Leah and Mark between three and four; they know how nice the fresh lime juice and cold milkshakes are at Yachting World. We had also invited Ness, one of the waitresses at the Port Café, along the main road, where we sometimes had beer and often struggled to get internet connection. ( Owned by Australians…) Ness had given Pete a small Vanuatu flag on our first visit to the café, and would always say, “When are you going to show me your boat?” So when we moved to the marina, we went to tell her she should call in after her shift at 4pm. She never did turn up, but while I was sitting at the (real not 2XS) café with Leah and Mark, I caught a glimpse of Ness, with two other young women, moving swiftly past the boats, looking VERY anxious. I called her and she looked around very warily. But when she realised I was not about to kidnap her for whatever nefarious purposes she might have envisaged, and that she and her friends (chefs from the Port Café, as it turned out,) were safe she was thrilled to bits. The three girls were very cautious walking the plank – gasp blink gulp –but they got across without incident and then had a lively time inspecting the boat. Pete was working benignly on his computer, not looking like a kidnapper, so they soon relaxed and darted around taking in close-up photos of…the stove, especially of – the coffee pot, which seemed to exert a particular charm. Out on deck they took lots more photos, insisting on having Pete and me in most of them…we smiled obligingly.

I managed to get them to settle at our table and bought them all a lime juice – I don’t think they are accustomed to being at the receiving end after all their years working in hospitality. By then Barbara had arrived, and then Punctual Fred (he may look Rock & Roll but…he is Dutch!) And right at the last minute…Egills and Harry, who had been very doubtful about visiting a kava bar. Mark and Leah debated about joining us, but they had work to do and went off in their big back shiny ute. The rest of us loaded ourselves into Fred’s big 4WD. Egills squashed into a small prison-type seat in the back; Harry, Pete and Barbara squashed in the back and Princess Marguerite had the front passenger seat, with a seatbelt!

Robbie’s Nakamel wasn’t really in walking distance so we were glad of the ride. We spent an hour or so there, sitting at a table under a thatched roof with a disparate group of expats. (Locals kept more to the dark bushes...not sure why!) I drank lots of kava, which was a mistake… It is not, I can assure you, yummy, but the whole experience was great fun – getting a little bowl of putrid-looking liquid, skulling it down, rinsing out the bowl, having a big spit in the bushes – what was not to like? And the initial effects were, of course, very pleasant – kava is a drug, and this is what drugs do, make you feel good, to begin with. Very relaxing, that’s about it. My problem with it was I just couldn’t sleep properly when I finally got to bed. I lay like a zombie under the sheet; I am sure Pete thought I was dead to the world. But in fact I was only NEARLY asleep, with my head buzzing unpleasantly, till about 2.30. And NEARLY asleep is not really all that satisfying. So yes I will drink kava again, but…maybe not five helpings…

Egills, who very swiftly transferred from kava to beer, had the best time at the table because one of the expats, Kellie, turned out to have – a Latvian mother! They exchanged Bonegilla stories, and Latvian retirement home stories, and were very happy. (By another Vanuatu coincidence, it turns out Kellie is Leah’s landlady, at Island Princess – she works in the office upstairs, and has been in Vanuatu since the early 80s.) All of the long-term expats had stories about how to make a business work in Vanuatu – not easy… Fred said, “If you want to know how to make a small fortune in Vanuatu – come here with a big one.”

When we got back to Yachting World we left them all, and gave Fred Jessica Watson’s book, True Spirit, to read. Pete and I had further plans for the evening. We had a bet, before we arrived in Port Vila, about the availability of consumer items. I was sure, not certain why, that the supermarkets would have a bigger selection than the ones in Noumea, and Pete was equally certain the shelves would be bare. We made a list of our own KPIs (key performance indicators) and decided that the reward for winning the bet would be – dinner at a restaurant of the winner’s choice. Well – ahem – I won. Au bon Marché has everything you can imagine except, strangely, RyVita.

My choice was to go to La Tentation. When we had first arrived at our anchorage in Vila, we putt-putted in to shore in the tender and tied up to a floating jetty. It turned out to be a private dock, belonging to a very fancy and beautiful waterfront restaurant. Pete went and asked the manager, David, if we could leave the tender there while we wandered around forlornly trying to find Mark and Leah, and David could not have been more obliging. He even offered to have a security guard watch our humble little dinghy! After that auspicious beginning, we used La Tentation as a toilet-stop and beer or coffee stop, and to use their WiFi, but we never spent much money there at all. So it was a good choice to go there for a slap-up Tuesday meal. It was a wonderful meal, well worth the walk along the bumpy potholey footpaths. Pete had fillet steak stuffed with (a very generous bit of) lobster, and I had poulet fish, which is similar to mahi mahi, ie a local, large white fish, served with mashed potatoes and lots of steamed veggies – yummo.

Our waitress, Sylvia, was just beautiful. She has two young children and is saving up to get married. She lives in a vilej near the airport and works 3-11pm every day… Her grandmother lives with them and looks after the children; they do not have an easy life!

When Pete went up to pay, David said, very seriously, “We have an issue.” “Oh Gawd,” said Pete, “Isn’t my visacard working?” But no…the “issue,” David said, very seriously was, that people here have too many mobile phones. “They have no money,” he said, “and yet they have three or four phones each, which they don’t need and can’t afford.” The two men stood at the counter and contemplated this issue for a while, and then they parted amicably and we walked home to 2XS. Our friends were still at the café, drinking coffee. Barbara told us that David isn’t the owner of La Tentation; the owner is – what a surprise – an Australian called Nick.

Cafe life - dinner and dancing and chat - expats in Port Pila

Tuesday 9th August

It is fun living in the middle of a café, really. The only disadvantage of being moored in such a very public position is that you can’t just wander out onto deck in your bedclothes, scratching your head and yawning. The people sitting at the tables only a mere or two away are thrilled to catch glimpses of Life Aboard but…we really have to censor our public appearances.

Last night we invited Egills (from Panache IV) and his new crew member, Harry, for a drink at our floating café table – I was going to say after work at five but…oh bliss – I meant after not doing very much at all at five o’clock. Harry’s sister-in-law Barbara joined us. She is originally from Launceston but now is a property manager on the Gold Coast, with her husband. They also have built a hotel here, The Moorings, and they run a couple of nightclubs as well. Her son Justin and daughter-in-law Kate live here permanently with their little children and they enjoy it all very much. We have met a few Australians doing this sort of thing. The people running the bookshop, which only opened four weeks ago, after a few years of bureaucratic fumbling, are also here for the foreseeable future. The children all go to the International School and learn French as well as English, but possibly not any of the local dialects…

After our very delicious G & Ts we all walked the plank to the restaurant where we had beautiful meals. Harry had some sort of rack of lamb which was absolutely enormous; I think it stonkered him! Egills had beef curry which looked rich and wonderful, while Pete (yes Pete, the non-fish-lover!) had fresh mahi mahi with vegetables, cooked just perfectly. Barbara and I had the same and enjoyed it very much.

There was live music – a very pleasant low-key singer with a synthesizer. These local boys certainly sing beautifully. All middle-of-the-road stuff. Pete and I were inspired to get up and have a bit of mild dancing to Stand By Me, and later I had a whirl around the dance floor with Fred, who had joined us for after-dinner beer – (Smooth Operator – the song, not the man). We all then walked the plank (a bit more wobbly…) and sat around talking, ofcourse, about sailing. Egills, Harry and Pete can, as you can imagine, talk about sailing for hours on end, happily reminiscing or contemplating this or that adventure, this or that bit of gear. Fred, who must have sailing conversations with every single new lot of yachties who roll into Port Vila, got sick of this, and said, impatiently, “Let’s not talk about sailing! Let’s talk about sex!” This broke up the party instantly.

Fred has lived here for 22 years and has a very big boat (62’, I think,) called Drydock. He is from Arnhem and frequently speaks Dutch to me, which I do understand, mostly, but am incapable of reciprocating. Fred is totally rock & roll, a very Mick Jagger character, with wild grey hair and a very deep tan from many years on the water. He works as an engineer on big building projects here. Tonight he is going to take us to a kava bar. Egills and Harry recoiled at this but he said, firmly, “You don’t know what you are talking about. You will enjoy it very much!” The kava here is ground with some sort of pulverising implements; the kava on Tanna, on the other hand, is made by young boys’ spit…they sit around chewing it and spitting it into a bowl… NOT so attractive a prospect.

It is very hot today and Pete says we are going to WALK to hardware shops and Au Bon Marché Numba 2.

Yesterday we wandered long our new neigbourhood and had a chat to George From Tasmania who runs sunset tours on his ex-Hobart fishing boat. We had watched and admired this boat from our anchorage coming back at night, all lit up with neon blue partylights, looking fabulous. He has lived here (on board) for many years, has got used to the warmth. So many expats!

Betrayal in Sandy Bay – nickel mine upset – vilej school – comparisons with NC – move to marina

Sunday 7th August

Yesterday I got an email from Teresa, the poor beleaguered woman from Knight Frank who has been trying to find a tenant for my dear little Hobart House for the past three and a half months. Apparently she had been showing some people around for the SECOND time (so they must have been just a bit keen) when one of the ‘residents,’ ie. a neighbour (sadly, I thought the neighbors were my friends!!), popped up and started asking Teresa about a broken pipe in the garage and what was she going to DO about it. I am totally shocked by this. There are only nine of us ‘residents’ and we all know that the Body Corporate has a property manager, Armina, who is ready, willing and able to deal with this sort of issue. The prospective tenants probably won’t go ahead, having been alarmed both by the broken pipe issue and by the speedy proximity of whichever neighbour it was felt the need to pester Teresa, and I feel like lying on the floor and drumming my heels on the ground in frustration. Pete says, “If it makes you feel better,” in kindly tones… Oh deary me…

Betty, one of the women who works in Island Princess (the shop not the ute) owns property up the coast, where we went for our tour the other day. It is a beautiful bit of land, if overrun with the noxious strangly US vine. They are bravely battling this vine with machetes and, says Monique, are making progress. The land used to be the site of a big nickel mine, owned and run by a French company. There were houses, a little school, the mine itself. When Vanuatu claimed its independent 31 years ago, the French had to clear out. They were on excellent terms with the locals, especially Betty’s family, who owned the land. But…they were ordered to destroy everything. They bulldozed the houses, mine, school, and buried all of the trucks and equipment. Nobody here can afford to get it all up and running again; such a waste and a sadness.

Dara has told us lots of stories about her six week prac at the village school in Mélé. She had children in her class aged from about six to eleven; they don’t get to move up to the next class till they have passed certain tests. Lessons are supposed to be in English but for lots of the children, who come from many different islands, English is their umpteenth language. They speak their local village dialect, that of the neighbouring villages, the dominant language of the island, whatever variety of Pidgin English is around in their area. Oh and a lot of them speak some sort of French as well… The children all bring their big long bush knives (machetes) to school and they go off to sharpen their pencils through the day. None of them seem to slice off their fingers, or bits of each other, with these very sharp implements, but Dara decided to give each of them their very own pencil sharpener. Oh the joy! They loved their sharpeners so much they sat in class, riveted, sharpening their pencils right away to a long thin spiral… The school couldn’t afford to keep replacing pencils, so Dara had to confiscate sharpeners and let them go back to their lethal weapons in the corner…

The people here (Nivans) are amazingly vigorous and fit, especially compared to the people in New Caledonia. We hardly saw anyone swimming in NC; nobody other than Les Français or Les Touristes in a boat; nobody running other than Les Gendarmes on a training mission. It was also surprisingly – in fact astoundingly – rare to see children playing with a ball. Everywhere I have travelled in the world, children are playing some sort of football, generally soccer with a round ball, on any patch of land – boggy, rocky, sandy, slope-y. But here, happily, in Vanuatu – there are children splishy-splashing in the water, throwing balls, kicking balls, riding bikes in the villages, and, as soon as they are big enough, zipping around on any stretch of water in a tinny with an outboard.

People swim all around the harbour, right around 2XS, in fact. Every morning three very fit swimmers in speedos power across the bay, impressing me very much. The first time I saw them I thought, “Oh good; the lovely sparkly blue (warm!) water looks so inviting; these people are swimming, it must be safe!” I had visions of dipping off the back of the boat several times of day for a bit of exercise and coolness… Anyway, I watched these swimmers as they re-grouped around our anchor chain and swam off again. And then…RIGHT where they had been chatting, I saw, floating happily around, someone’s VERY big plump morning poo… Oh NO…. And yes I have swum in Ha Long Bay (Vietnam), which is, essentially, a large warm sewer… But I never actually set eyes on a floating poo so I could pretend I didn’t know. So now do I hop off the back of the boat? Well no, I sit with my legs dangling in the sea, peering suspiciously at the water through my polaroid glasses…

Another difference is – thank goodness – it is possible to find books. In Noumea there were two lovely bookshops, one selling very up-market children’s books as well as textbooks. But all of the books are in French – translations of English bestsellers, and I really don’t enjoy reading translations. One of the larger shops did have ten books in English – they were all vampire-type books, plus Keith Richard’s autobiography, which I was very keen to read except it was in big heavy hardback and cost nearly $100… And…no book exchange shops for travellers! Oh yes I forgot…I did find three (Jeffrey Archer and Patricia Cornwall, yuckety-yuck,) at the cathedral fete; I remember writing about this. But here there are several shops selling books; even Au Bon Marché (supermarket) has a reasonable selection. So…if you are thinking of going to live in New Caledonia, I guarantee a big money-spinner would be – a second hand book shop!
We were waiting to see the Vanuatu family yesterday, because it was Monique and Dara (and fast-growing baby Justin)’s last day. But they were all too busy so we just had a quick phone call. And we had a very lazy day… Pete worked on his accounts and I…read another book or two!

Monday 8th August
This morning we moored from our anchorage to the marina. Well it’s not really a marina; we are backed up to a wharf, tied on at the front to a big buoy and at the back to two ropes, port and starboard. And to get ashore we have to…walk the plank! But I love it; at our doorstep is a lovely shady café which sells delicious fresh lime juice full of crushed ice and access to two shady little showers, with warm-ish water. Bliss! And – connection to electricity! Just across a small stretch of water is Iririki, a resort with burés built out over the water. I might even swim over there this afternoon, if there aren’t too many people sitting at the café watching me clamber in and out of the water – never a dignified matter…(Oh dear…Egills just came for a chat and warned against a swim right here…too many boats discharging too much…ummm…crap…)

We had been given instructions on how to back the boat into the (very small) allocated space – go over the buoy, pick it up, thread it through two ropes, get two more ropes tied off at the stern, all while avoiding a collision with the boats on either side (very close by…) We were just a teensy bit nervous about this procedure…so much room for error, so many people sitting at the café right alongside the wharf, watching with idle fascination. Pete hailed Egills, who just happened to cruise past on Panache IV as we were approaching our goal, and his new crew mate, Harry, came running to help us. But as it turned out…we were just backing up to the wharf when a little tinny zoomed up, with three large, competent black men on it. They took charge – tied off the ropes, hooked up the buoy, whisked a plank into place – all part of the service!

Friday 5th August
Apology time!! I think in my last blogpost I might have just HINTED that the people who were so rude and unhelpful when I had DinghyProblems might have come from… Black Pearl, the big Glamour Yacht. Well this morning the tender from Black Pearl whizzed past 2XS while I was soaking my feet in the sea…and it was loaded with nice young people, wreathed in smiles, waving cheerily. Hmmmm… Out on the bay, when we came back last night, we saw the super maxi giant yacht, gorgeous shinyblack Eagle V, last glimpsed in Noumea harbour. Today we took Monique out for a short cruise. We went past Eagle V, and as we were admiring it, she said…oh no… “That’s it! There on the back is… the tender, with the people who were so rude and so unhelpful!” And yes indeed so it was…
Yesterday we met up with the Vanuatu family in the afternoon and had a lovely little trip to Mélé village (vilej…) It is the largest village in Vanuatu – about 4,000 people – and it is where most of Mark’s family live. He drove us up and down and around the narrow lanes between the huts. It felt a bit intrusive to be cruising in big black Island Princess (the ute not the shop…,) peering into everyone’s vilej life… but nobody seemed to mind. They all knew Mark and waved, smiled, rushed out to hug if possible. He has a very large extended family – so many aunts, cousins, adoptive mothers, sisters-of-cousins, his brother Patrick, the whole kit and caboodle. The others all got out to be enveloped and embraced while Pete and I stayed wedged in the ute tray.
We were very impressed with the vilej. All neat and tidy, with dear little thatched huts, chooks, pigs, dogs, children all roaming contentedly around. No the huts are not romantic and comfy; they are very stark; I would not last more than a day and a night in one - no mattress! No downy pillow! No table and chairs!! Oh woe! But I think the huts are only for night time; all of family life is conducted out on the street. Cooking, chatting, washing at the tap. People did look very happy. (Mind you I asked Monique if Mark misses vilej life, in the big house on the hill, with Leah and she said NO…he loves his new life, and only goes back to the village once in a while to hang out with the clan…)
We went to the Beach Bar and had a drink or two – margaritas for Monique and me, fruit cocktails for the girls, beer for Pete. We were waiting for the fire dance to start, at 7pm. So, it being Island Time, we had plenty of time to spare, and even managed to eat some dinner as well as drinking our drinks. (Mark’s dinner arrived about half an hour after we had all gobbled ours up but…never mind!) The Beach Bar was completely crowded out, with happy expats – it was, according to the blackboard, “Jared’s birthday.” The bar is owned by Australians, and most of the guests, with the birthday guests, all aged about ten, were also Australian – maybe all these children go to the international school? They were having the most wonderful time, playing on the beach, eating pizzas, rushing about.
The fire dancing is not a traditional Vanuatu thing. The theatre company, Wan Smol Bag, who work with young people, started it up about a year ago. And what fun it was! About a dozen local kids came out and twirled fire hoops and ropes, dancing to a lively sound track on the beach in front of us (I think I heard Beyoncé – Leo would have been thrilled!) Great fun. Towards the end lots of the guests went and joined in, twirling fire ropes quite expertly along with the performers. The entire birthday party went to join in the grand finale – a sort of happy conga linedance.
Saturday 6th August
We had planned to take the Vanuatu Family for a bit of a cruise and lunch on 2XS today. At 11-ish I went and picked up…Monique! (Were there issues with the tender? Well…I drive it in to the dock with great expertise and moored it like a pro. But…when I got Monique in and tried to start it for the trip back to 2XS…I couldn’t pull the starter cord…it had jammed. So…row row row your boat… Monique very kindly chose to be impressed with my rowing ability rather than unimpressed by my motor ability…
We had a five nautical mile sail around to Hideaway Island, opposite the Beach Bar, where we had arranged to meet Mark and the girls plus baby Justin. But…as I expected, they absolutely didn’t want to come onto 2XS. Dara was fearful of the trip in the tender with her delicate new little baby, and Leah knew she would be ill as soon as she stepped on deck. So we left them to have lunch back at the Beach Bar and we had a lovely little BBQ for just the three of us.

Thursday 4th August

Well I don’t suppose anyone has given much thought to the issue of whether or not I could drive the tender…or have you always assumed that yes OF COURSE I would have this skill?? Well I didn’t… I have always hopped in happily and let Pete do all the starting and stopping and steering while I go lalalala in my head and look at the scenery, holding the painter (the rope which ties the dinghy to whatever it needs to be tied to) delicately between my knees. Well today Pete channeled the Chinese Mother and told me I HAD to learn. News to me, I thought he liked being The Man while I sat delicately on the edge of the boat holding the painter… I don’t respond well to Chinese Mother Mode so I lay on the couch with my book, trembling a bit, until Pete modified his approach. I actually do want to be able to drive the tender; this means FREEDOM when we are on a mooring or anchorage and Pete wants to stay buried in his account work, or in MacGuivering things on the boat work.

So…after a brief and informative lecture and demo, off I putt-putted, in a slightly zigzag course, for the Port Vila wharf. I had just a bit of difficulty actually stopping in the right spot, but eventually there I was, shaking a bit, but…climbing the rusty rickety ladder with the painter clenched – no not between my teeth! – in my fist. I tethered the dear little boat to a bollardthingy and set off for my first solo Port Vila Experience. But...What was trickling out of my fingers and onto the ground? Could it be BLOOD? From a rusty ladder wound?? I was a bit horrified by this setback. Wounds in tropical Third World-ish countries are not funny; Pete and I have been reading our guide to Cruising Vanuatu and there are many chastening accounts and warnings. So I hotfooted it to the nearest pharmacy, disinfectant and bandaids in mind. When I walked in, the dreamy young chick looked at me vaguely and said, “Oh no…” as she watched the blood trickling. I said I needed antiseptic handwash, bandaids, and wipes, and she agreed. Now where might they be??? Lalalalalala… I found a large bottle of Aqium gel and bled all over it as we drifted towards bandaid territory. I ended up with everything I needed and then bled all over my little shoulder bag while I paid. Then what?? Well I took my first-aid items over to the icecream fridge (what else, in a pharmacy?) and washed the (not very life threatening) wounds and slapped on some bandaids. And yes I nicely disposed of the wrappings in a little bin under the cash register. My dreamy girl was fascinated.

Next stop was the Bookstop shop to get a few more thrillers for our 2XS library – I have completely run out of reading material and am feeling the failure of my Kindle very keenly. The nice (expat Australian) owner of the shop was very interested in my bloodspattered bag, especially as I was buying John Sandford and Michael Connolly. So appropriate!
After a restorative and delicious fresh lime juice at the Yacht Club I made my way back to the veggie market, which runs 24 hours most days of the week, and bought a whole backpack full of delicious items, including a big hand of darling little finger bananas for about 5o cents…

Then it was time to make my way back to the faithful tethered tender and brrrm brrm my way back to Pete… Some nice South Korean tourists stopped to giggle – surely I was not in charge of this very big motorboat?? (the 2XS tender is a small and delicate craft…) Monique was waiting for me at the rusty ladder. She had been talking to some of the ladies at the touristy market so I followed her in to the centre of the stalls. Most of the women – about twelve of them - had stopped for the day. They were sitting in a circle around a table, intent on…a card game!
I dumped my veggies in the boat and we towed it along to the nearby pontoon – easier than the rusty ladder… And then – I couldn’t get the motor to start – oh dear and oh no… Monique was very kind and supportive but she couldn’t help. I bobbled around pulling ineffectually on the cord and saying, “Bloody hell!” in slightly desperate tones. A couple of Australian women, attractive and nicely dressed, mid-forties, walked onto the pontoon and laughed. “Don’t worry, we’ve heard worse language!” they trilled. Oh good – help at hand, I thought, as The Men made their way to their tender, which was tied up just next to me on the little pontoon. I didn’t say anything, but watched, mouth agape, as they just drove off. Monique said that one of the women said, “Aren’t you going to help her?” and the men just shook their heads and drove off. This is just appalling behavior; it doesn’t matter who I was, how important or not important; surely a Rule of the Sea is that you help everyone and everyone in any sort of trouble? Anyway, it was all too silly; Monique had to go, her girls needed her, so I said, “I can row!” She was inordinately impressed and took many photos of me making my way back to 2XS – they will be ghastly photos please nobody look at them if the opportunity presents! Pete was very pleased that I got back, one way or the other, and showed me what I had done wrong (flooding the engine, ofcourse… I think Monique and I knew this but we didn’t know how to UN-flood it…)

Some of our friends and not-so-friends from the recent past are in the harbor. Infinity has arrived; oh how lovely to see it, all big and impressive with its two big masts. Hippy Party Boat! And anchored right next to it – Black Pearl, the big Glamour Yacht which was next to us at Port Moselle marina (Noumea) with the most unfriendly, snooty (Australian…) cast and crew. We strongly suspect the rude and nasty tender people to be from Black Pearl…they most certainly were NOT from Infinity

Wednesday 3rd August
We had a lovely excursion to Mele last night. Our Vanuatu Family picked us up in the big black twin cab ute and Pete and I, prepared for the ride, climbed into the tray with our cushions – luxury! It was a beautiful starry night, and only about 20 minutes drive to our destination. Dara (my niece) did a teaching prac session in this village in 2008; there is now a lovely little beachfront restaurant, selling curry (Pete) and woodfired pizzas (everyone else.) When she was there the village straggled all the way to the beach…now it is all prettified and urbanized. But…one hopes this brings income to the locals. We were very impressed. I was particularly taken with the toilets – they were truly glorious! Clean and beautiful, with stone water basins, liquid soap, paper towels. Posherama! I congratulated the staff and they beamed with well-found pride. Monique and I ordered margaritas… Pete’s G & T arrived swiftly, followed by large glasses of lime juice for Dara (Nursing Mother) and Leah (preggers), and for Mark (DriverMan). Monique warned me that last time her margarita had been nice enough….but warm!! This time…well it took ages for our waiter to scurry about (we could see him anxiously mixing and testing behind the bar). But…the margaritas were so cold and so delicious we had to have another one. Each!!

This morning we struggled away trying to get internet connection – ho hum, samesame… And then at 10-ish we putt-putted into the wharf to buy picnic supplies at Au Bon Marché and to wait for Island Princess (the twin cab ute) to arrive with our Vanuatu family. Monique had brought her own cushion and joined Pete and me in the back for our private tour of the island. Recently – and how lucky for us – the government decided that Efate (the main island, where the capital, Port Vila, is,) would benefit greatly from having a proper bitumen ring road, 160 kilometres around the whole island. Until then the only sealed bit of road was a thirty metre strip built by the Americans during World War II and never mended since then… So our trip would have been a whole world of hurt and discomfort. Mark drove us most expertly, and it was just gorgeous. My only issue (yes ofcourse it is all about ME ME ME…) was that sitting facing backwards made me feel – yes! – sick sick sickedy sick!! Sigh sigh never mind; it wasn’t that bad and I greatly enjoyed the tour. When we got back to 2XS I peeled a few potatoes for dinner, in a fairly lackluster fashion, and then Pete took over and whisked up a very nice meal – lots of veggies from the market, and some local steak.

We stopped at Eton Beach for our lunch, and for a swim. What a beautiful place! Monique and I were the only ones brave enough to face the chill – it was only about 27, and the water was probably about 23… There is a sheltered little lagoon area, with a deep blue hole fed by the nearby stream. We swam into this and bobbed about, enjoying the peace and calm while the ocean roared away just across the rocks. Mark swam in the stream; he doesn’t like salt water. We walked over and threw breadcrumbs to him, and to the tiny fish swirling about hoping for a feed.

The US Army in Vanuatu? Did I hear your ears prick up?? No it wasn’t a great scene of carnage or part of the masterplan, and I gather the soldiers based here got heartily bored. They contributed a few things to this country:
Some additions to the gene pool…
A pesty vine which is growing all over the island, smothering everything very thoroughly. They planted it to camouflage their army vehicles from…nobody at all…
A very ugly swimming pool, labeled as “The American Pool,” by the side of the road, right next to a gorgeous beach with crystal clear azure water. The pool is a square concrete box…
A whole lot of coke bottles, which had been hurled into the sea. Locals dive for them and sell them at a roadside stall. They must have drunk LOTS of coke – how long is it since WWII??? 1945 is a long long time ago….
Possibly the highlight of our trip was a visit to Mark’s mother, Taushi. She teaches at a village school in Ekipe, about halfway around the island. She lives in a little hut in the village and was waiting for us with the most huge white smile in the world. She is a small, neat woman, warm and kind, and she just adores her Tasmanian family. She regards Dara as another daughter; she had been teaching at the school in Mele when Dara was doing her prac there, and she is also delighted beyond words to have beautiful Leah as her daughter-in-law.

Richard and the volcano:
I am glad you went to Port Resolution.
After my last sailing trip to Vanuatu I flew down to Tanna from Lugganville on Santo to have a look at the Yasur volcano.
I phoned ahead and was to meet Wherry from the Port Resolution Yacht Club at the Airport for a three day stay.
When I arrived (about 4 pm) there was no one there but after half an hour or so and being reassured by some local people, he arrived.
The only problem was he could not locate his ute. He took off again in someone else's ute leaving me patiently waiting until he arrived after another half hour - some one had driven it into Lenakel!
Next came the ride across the island. It was dark when we started and just like your ride we stopped and started, picking up and dropping off people and stuff along the way.
It got very cold about midnight in the back of the ute but fortunately I was able to reach into my pack and get my warm sailing jacket - not so good for the others though who were freezing.
We went north and then onto the east coast and a pitch black Jon Frum cargo cult village then over the moonscape, coughing and spluttering in the ash from the unseen volcano arriving at Port Resolution at 1.1.00 am.
Quite a place ha?
The next morning I went around the bay to the boiling sand that you described and looked around the school near the Yacht Club.
When I came back Wherry said he needed my hut for a BBC film crew and I could stay with his brother in law Kelsen at Jungle Oasis near the volcano.
Back into the ute I went, passing the incoming film crew on the way, and getting a bit annoyed by now.
My stay at the Jungle Oasis was amazing. It was a bit like the Yacht Club but not so grand? and I was awakened several times in the night by the sound of the volcano which is about 1.5 ks away and by earthquakes which shook and swayed the slightly built hut on its wooden stilts.
Next day Kelsen organised a guide who (very cheaply) walked me up to the rim for the evening fireworks display. Amazing, awesome, wonderful spectacle as you said.

Monique, Dara, Leah and Mark at the volcano:
They all took a trip to Tanna in 2008, and, like Richard, stayed at the Jungle Oasis. (I don’t think I mentioned that Pete and I met the owner of this little establishment when we were on our long walk to Yasur. He appeared out of the bushes, as people do, all along any road or track in Vanuatu, and introduced himself. A very nicely spoken man, maybe in his fifties. He asked us if we had heard of Jungle Oasis and was a bit perplexed when we apologetically said no… “But…we are in Lonely Planet Guide!”)
Our Tasmanian Vanuatu girls unwisely wore white… They breathed, swallowed and endured many waves of volcanic ash on the ride there and all through their stay. Everything inside and outside their hut was lined with ash – the wind must have been blowing just the wrong way that day. When they were sitting having their dinner, Dara was in an interesting kava-induced state of mind. “Woohoo!’ she said, vaguely, looking at the rippling curtains. Monique, kava-less, looked at them more sharply. “Rats!” And yes a whole family of rats were running around behind the curtain. They leapt out onto a beam and galloped across the ceiling to indulge in a bit of fighting right above their heads. (Apparently there are lots of rats in Vanuatu; so far we haven’t seen a single one. A treat in store!)
Their trip up the volcano was very dramatic – how could it be otherwise? They had a guide, who was very frightened and wouldn’t go anywhere near the crater edge. Apparently someone was killed there recently – a thwacking great lump molten lava flew out of the volcano and hit them on the head. They remained safe from such threats and enjoyed it all very much and were mightily impressed as they gulped in great lungs-ful of ash and surveyed their once-white clothes with some dismay.

Well for some arcane reason I can(just) get into this blogsite...
And I am allowed to read the first line of my emails on gmail...but I can't open them. Well only one, and from then on, COMPUTER SAYS NO.
So I have a whole lot of tantalising bits...and no way of reading the whole messages...
Other than that - all is well!
Today it is NOT raining!! Well golly and gosh!
Kate H - Pete is able to read your whole message - yes I agree re swimming with sharks (NEVER AGAIN), and FYI - today we ate cheeseburgers at a cafe called Au Peche Mignon (Sweet Sin). And I had VERY sour lime juice...
We met up with my Vanuatu family - Mark from Mele, Leah now from Vanuatu, Monique, Dara and Tiny Baby Justin (growing rapidly, what a thriving boy!) from Tasmania.
Tonight we are going to Mark's village for half price pizza night - Mele here we come, in the back of the ute!
And no my fringe has not yet grown...My kind family, with their long flowing hair, all three of them, say I look fine; in fact I look like A Traveller. They also think Pete and I look "wiry"...which I THINK means lean and mean and fit...well I hope so...
Pete spent the whole morning being McGuiver, fixing water-catching hoses and rain-preventing hoods. He was very happy. I scrubbed down the kitchen benches with Vim then lay on the couches reading...also very happy...