My new crew member Bulgarian Peter had a couple of days to get used to the boat and then we were scheduled to depart. Its difficult for me getting used to having someone strange on the boat especially after having Nik onboard for the last month where we were pretty much always in sync with what we had to do. Am aware I am not the most accommodating of travel companions but am trying to make an effort to be a bit more patient. Peter is a fairly burly, rough around the edges type of chap with a heavy eastern euro accent. He is older at 70 but seems fairly agile around the boat and affable enough. One reason I took Peter was that after he gets off Sea Otter in Darwin he is already slated to crew across the Indian Ocean to Cape Town so he is certainly committed.
I spent the day before our departure (Thursday 19th
June) getting ready to leave. Went to
customs and immigration and filed the requisite paperwork to get our departure
clearance. Once filed the vessel has 48hrs
to leave New Caledonia. I reprovisioned
with food from the excellent nearby Auchan supermarket. The next morning I went to the
marina office to settle up and to say goodbye to the lovely ladies who carried
out the admin for the marina office. I
have found everyone at the marina to be super friendly and helpful and it was
sad to say goodbye.
We motored out of Noumea and headed south.
After a couple of hours the wind came in and we managed to sail most of the way
through the Woodin Canal and onto the nights anchorage at a protected calm bay
called Port Boise. Early next morning we
took off and were clear of the New Caledonia fringing reef by around 5am heading
approx north east. Our route initially took
us to the south of the southerly most Loyalty Island called Mare approximately
80NM away. We sailed all through the day
and rounded Cap Boyer on Mare at around sunset and then turned more northerly to
lay a course for the port of Lenakel on Tanna Island in Vanuatu approximately
140NM away.
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| The track from Noumea to Lenakel to Port Villa |
I need to improve my weather forecasting skills. I am using a app called Predict Wind which provides weather forecasting and also routing information and has proved to be really useful. However it is one thing to have all the data but another thing to interpret it. Again I looked at the forecasts and decided that the data looked reasonable enough to make the crossing. The conditions were still up (up to 3m seas, gusting 30kts and roll of up to 5.5deg forecast) but this was less than we had encountered for the majority of the passage from New Zealand, it was a broad reach and the passage time was only 36hrs – so even if it was a bit uncomfortable my thinking was we just needed to suck it up.
The first part of the trip during the day was
great - nice sailing although a bit rolly.
Once we turned around Mare and nightfall came though the motion got
worse and I was as sick as I have ever been.
The next 18 hrs were pure misery.
Peter was feeling it aswell but was not as bad as me. I was either down below trying to sleep when off watch
or on deck dry retching on and off.
Lenakel could not come quick enough and slowly over the following
afternoon it came into view. We
eventually put the anchor down in a rolly harbour around 1800 in the dark. One of my golden rules is not to enter an unknown
anchorage in the dark but I would have to call this exceptional
circumstances. There was another yacht
there – an American catamaran called Gratefull and we circled it and then put
the anchor down close by.
Had a rolly night and was up early the next
morning to see a large inter island landing craft type freighter pass us heading
for the wharf. Sometimes these can be a real hazard as some commercial vessels have an aversion to yachts being near the wharf area and will intentionally pass close or create unnecessary wake. (kind of similar to the relationship some drivers have for cyclists). This one was good though and put on a great seamanship show when coming along side the wharf after a tight turn. There was not much to Lenakel
that I could see. A reef to seaward was
keeping most of the swell out and there were patches of reef around the
bay. In the middle was a concrete wharf
at which the landing craft had tied up to.
Most of the shore was rocky/reef with small dark sand patches every so
often and then lush green vegetation beyond.
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| Lenakel Harbour with wharf and landing craft (Sea Otter far right) |
We had come to Lenakel as it was a dedicated port of entry for Vanuatu. Failing to raise the customs office on the VHF radio I decided to head in to shore and luckily the skipper of the US cat, a guy called Jamie, had the same idea and he offered me a ride into shore in their tender which was bigger and better suited to the conditions than our tender, Wee Otter (credit to Nik for coming up with the perfect tender name).
Checking in took most of the morning by the
time we had walked to the right location, found the customs office, found the customs dude, visited the immigration
office, met the biosecurity guy, visited the biosecurity office and paid a visit to the local bank ATM to get
some local currency out to pay the entry fees.
By midday we were clear. The town
is quite rural with no large buildings.
It reminded me a bit of rural SE Asia like parts of Indonesia. Very few modern buildings, a lot of run down
structures and roads in poor condition.
However the people are friendly and there was a busy small market down
near the wharf. Jamie stocked up on vegetables while I looked around trying to
guess what most of them were – all looked very earthy, green and healthy but not sure what they were or
how I might go about cooking with them.
Am sure that will come.
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| Lenakel Market |
Peter went ashore and had a look around but I stayed onboard as was pretty shattered from the passage. I was eager to press on to get to Port Villa. This trip is really a round–about transit to Darwin so whilst we will stop and look at a few sights I am not approaching this as a holiday cruise and want to keep pushing on. So next day around midday we left Lenakel for an overnight sail of 120NM. This time I was ready for the roll after having taken a couple of tablets. Weather was still up but we were running with the wind and we had a really great sail during the night. The next morning saw us rounding Pango Point, turning into Mele Bay on the island of Efate around midday.
Port Villa is the capital of Vanuatu and is located oin Efate Island. It sits around Port Villa Bay which is off
the larger Mele Bay. Within Port Villa Bay
are two protected anchorages called Pontoon Bay and Paray Bay formed by the
presence of Iririki Island in the middle of the Port Villa Bay. Paray Bay to the east and the NE part of Port
Villa Bay form the waterfront for the town which rise fairly sharply away from
the water. Port Villa is a working port
and so the waterfront is ringed by various commercial enterprises from accommodation, shopping, to wharfs and shipyards further around. It makes for a really interesting place to
sit and watch life go by.
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| Port Villa - Paray Bay (Sea Otter at mooring) |
There is no marina in Port Villa but a group
called World Yachting provide all the same services but without the mooring pens. There is a sea wall you can med moor to or a number of moorings in the bay which can be rented. Ashore there is a
bar/restaurant, showers, rubbish disposal and laundry service. We put Sea Otter on a mooring planning to
spend a couple of days looking around before moving on.
My saga with the autopilot is slowly being resolved. I ordered a brand new unit from Lewmar in the
UK but that will take 4 to 6 weeks to be delivered. Meanwhile Nik carried the defective unit to Perth when she left and my good friend Graeme has pulled it apart and identified the broken
component. Am now trying to source this
part so we can rebuild it and have a spare unit onboard. Meanwhile Graeme will use his inimitable
skills to effect a repair to the broken piece in case we cannot source a
replacement. So things are looking up
but clearly does not help me in the short term.
Luckily the wind pilot onboard is behaving itself which limits the
amount of hand steering we need to do on the passages.
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| The broken autopilot |
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