Category: Cruising Vanuatu

Things I’d never go sailing without

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We really didn’t know what we were doing. We Googled and forumed like crazy. We took advice from helpful people and thought really, really hard. But at the end of the day, we still felt ill prepared. Having said that, there’s not a lot we’d do differently if we were going to go on a sailing adventure again.

Here are some things we would definitely take again.

Green Bags. These are breathable plastic bags to store vegetables in and keep in the fridge. I did an experiment before we left: I brought two broccoli; one went in the fridge naked and the other went in in a Green Bag. The Green Bag one lasted three times as long. I get them from Trade Me (just put Green Bags in the search box). They’re imported from USA – NASA International Space Shuttle used to use them. You can wash them and reuse them 8-10 times – at least that’s what the instructions say – but I used them about 20.  Still good. Tip: Make sure there’s no moisture on the vege/fruit when you put them in. Or if there is, wrap a paper towel around it for a day or so.

Charcoal tablets and Alpine tea. When my Mum was dying, all the hospice nurses were obsessed with her bowels. Sailing can also be all about the bowels. For any kind of tummy bug or diarrhoea, we used charcoal tablets (thanks Peter). They absorb any nasties in your bowel (they actually soak up everything so drink plenty of water – I didn’t and got constipated). Lucky I also have a natural remedy for when you are constipated – a cup of herbal Alpine tea. After 3-4 hours you will definitely go – quite violently sometimes, but it absolutely clears you out. I wish the description on the packet had been a bit more honest – I took it when I was working in town once. I had a cup thinking it was an innocent herbal tea and got quite a shock when I walked home to the train station.

Audio books. For those terrifying night shifts when you can’t read or concentrate, listening to audio books is a really nice half-distraction. I only put one ear plug in so I could still listen to the weather and sea scream, waiting for any kind of different noise in. I subscribed to Audible. It’s $15 a month. The books take ages to download (do it before you leave because there’s no way internet in the Pacific can handle it). My favourite Audio Book is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. It’s not rocket science – plot drive with vivid characters and is a bit of thriller – and best of all, the actors are British.

Hair stuff. I looked about 10 years old but a hair band keeps your hair out of your face without having to use lots of hairclips. I bought some really expensive morocco oil hair moisturiser which I used every other day – just slip a bit through, like gel. It keeps it hydrated and even when I knew it looked like shite, it smelt yummy. Your hairdresser will be very impressed when you get back.

A groovy dress. On the odd occasion when we went to a resort, I’m really glad I had a nice frock to wear. I hate the term ‘grotty yachtie’ and tried hard to not be one. Of course you are one after five day passage without  a shower but there’s no need to look yucky just because you’re at sea. It is of course quite helpful to not look in the mirror though. OMG that first shower when you reach land is so unbelievably amazing.

LED candles. They look fake but give a bit of glamour. We have three in a set of different heights. They alternate different colors and have a remote control. They’re lovely it the cockpit at night. We had three but traded one for fish. And we also put fairy lights up in the cockpit which Dean did reluctantly until he saw how well they lit us up from a distance. If you forget to put your anchor light on, you still light up like a Christmas tree. It was quite a magical moment, rowing out in the dinghy and looking back at our stary night, gorgeous boat. They’re solar powered and hook up to our dodger. It’s also part of my cunning plan to make sure we don’t race our boat in the next Mana Cruising Club winter sailing season – the fairy lights will take too long to take down! Woop, woop.

A box of gorgeous things. Sailing is all about safety and trauma. As soon as I got to a bay I’d open out my box of gorgeous things and lay them out on the saloon table…a plastic lotus flower, a shell from Kapiti, half a coconut shell and a miniature crocheted Christmas pudding that my Mum won in the hospice raffle. This is a bit macabre, but I also have a Dead Box. It’s got funeral programmes, dried flowers, photos, notes and little things that remind me of the person who died. I also have the ashes of my little pussy cat, Willow, in my Dead Box. Dean thinks I’m weird. But being at sea doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings. There’s nothing like a good sob after a shit sail.

A shift bag. I had a large waist bag that I put all my shift essentials in (ear plugs, eye mask, clean knickers, alarm clock, gloves, note pad and pen). I attached it to the nav station so that even if it was rough, I could get to it easy. It was right next to the Grab Bag.

Okay, so I’ve asked Dean what he’d never go to sea without – he’ll be practical:

Three navigation tools. Ray Marine charts as our main nav tool, in the cockpit, and Open CPN and iSailor for our laptop and iPad. Dean also connected our chart plotter to the iPad. He blew up our radar two weeks before we left. Our amazing marine insurance people, The Marina Shop, made sure our insurance covered it and it meant we got new charts for the Pacific. Unlike some people, reefs were where they were meant to be.

Solar panels. As many as you can take.

Davits on our arch. Being able to hoist our dinghy up on davits which are attached to our arch: Not only was it easy when we got somewhere, but the dinghy was perfectly safe, still inflated, during passages. We were one of the only boats with an inflatable dingy and we never got into trouble. Dean had Outboard Envy. Ours has 5hp – a lot had 15hp. 10hp was common. Dean was obsessed with ‘getting on the plane’. I don’t see what the fuss is about. We got to places, eventually.

Soda Stream for fizzy drinks. He can’t live without his bourbon and coke. Except I bought sugar-free which he HATED and never forgave me for. Telling him that the amount of sugar that goes in a glass of coke is actually poisonous, and to stop you throwing up they put another poison in, doesn’t put him off.

Iridium Go satellite communications (includes an email address so we could email anywhere, any time, and 150 talking minutes). Apparently they’ll have 3G internet speed too soon. Iridium Go also has a tracking feature that Predict Wind can show on a website. This was great except for when it went a bit haywire and we got an email from Dean’s Mum saying, “you’re on land, you’re on land, what’s wrong?”

AIS. We wouldn’t go anywhere without it. It saved our lives: Once we were headed right for a rock. We had our chart zoomed out to 10nm which meant the rock didn’t show. The rock had an AIS beacon on and came up as an alert. It was a revolting night shift and our headsail had just ripped so we were in no mood to hit a rock. We should of course have scanned a paper chart more thoroughly before we left.  AIS is great for piece of mind for general collision avoidance too. It’s also handy if you want to avoid  someone in a bay, and you can turn it off if you don’t want to be found.

A good horn to announce your arrival in a bay and say a big goodbye when you leave. Oh for safety reasons too.

What are three things you’d never go to sea without?

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And cushions. I can’t buy furniture, art work, books, art deco things – we only have room for cushions. My new cockpit cushions have ducks on them. I love them. Dean doesn’t.

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Nothing to do this this post, but my current favourite photo. This is the first time Zena went up on the deck, unprompted. Taken from our trip a couple of weeks ago to D’Urville Island and Pelorous Sound.

 

Tanna Island – More than one volcanic eruption

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Really? Perching on the edge of an active, exploding volcano, where the thunderous sound alone is enough to send you screaming back to safety?

I knew that I’d be overcoming fear when it came to sailing on this adventure, but not every day in every way! Again, we had a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

We saw the inside of the earth explode.

Tanna Island was one of the worst hit by Cyclone Pam. They’re rebuilding but they were without medical support for a long time. The visitor centre at the bottom of the volcano was demolished.

The people were lovely yet quiet.

We want to come back here to see the rest of the island. There’s the fascinating John Frum ‘cult’ – locals who worship an American who perhaps once bought supplies.  Some of the other boats tried to visit their festival night but almost killed themselves in their dinghy getting round to the village.

Leaving here, hurt.

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Our guide didn’t have shoes or a headlamp. I gave him mine but without batteries, what’s the point? That’s what we’ve seen the Chinese do…give free solar panels to villages (for fishing rights?) but leave them unable to fix the panels or afford to replace the batteries. Junk.

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Dean loved the insane ride up to the volcano. I had my eyes closed a lot.

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This tree defied the cyclone. That’s me at the bottom. I walked around it, holding on to it’s hanging branches and whispered, “It must of been scary. I hope you’ll be okay next time too.”

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The make-shift visitor centre.

 

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Some of the rock on the way up the volcano. I thought it looked like gluten and dairy free carob muffins.

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Yep.

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Safely back at the bashed-up ‘Yacht Club’ at Port Resolution for a beer. The next day they were starting to rebuild the bungalows next to the Club. We really wanted to stay and help build, but I had my own little volcano erupting – a ruddy huge coldsore! Adventure was wearing me down. So while people needed our help I spent two days watching TV episodes of Private Practice. Crappy, crappy guilt.

 

A waterfall on Anatom Island, Vanuatu (and walking the devastation of Cyclone Pam)

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No one died on Aneityum Island after the cyclone. They say they are the only island where this happened – because they had a plan.

You could see what destruction the village and villages had to cope with. Many buildings remained unbuilt but village life goes on. They have amazing resilience. The head of the tourism committee there, Kenneth, told us that they are proud of natural disaster plan. They have rules – no drinking water for three days after; work together; mainly, stick to the rules.

They’ve gone back to building their houses pre-missionary days. They last longer. They use traditional ways of food preserving food which includes making a kind of cheese from scraped out and minced green bananas that lasts three or four years. They suck water from stone baked sugar cane.

We went on a “Yes, very easy, four hour return walk” to a waterfall with Kim and Peter, and an Australian researcher visiting the village. This turned out to be a seven hour walk that was really a bush bash and river boulder treacherous climb, returning in the dark. Dean and I were in our element – all those Tararua tramps. About half way through I did say, “I’ve had enough now” but we still had an hour to go.

We were the first people to do the trip to the waterfall since the Cyclone. The tracks weren’t really there. Nature was broken but growing back.

We had two guides – one who went ahead and cut the track or chose the less dangerous route, the other who stayed with us. They both wore bare feet and didn’t take any lunch.
The waterfall was the tallest I’d ever seen. Hennie, one of our guides, jumped straight in with her clothes on, looked up to the top and bashed the water a few times with her fists. She had the best laugh.

The end of the walk back ended up being at dusk through the village. Some little kids had just had a wash in the river and were wrapped in towels. They ran after us then hid, squealing. “Bye bye,” they shrieked. We stood still and watched them jump up in different places like rabbits in a field. We laughed and beamed. I knew I’d remember this moment.

That night we had too much red wine, homemade fish and chips and crashed, a little scratched and bruised, but wonderfully exhausted.

The next day we found out that we could have been taken to the wrong waterfall. We possibly went to the bigger waterfall in the middle of the island! I don’t think their outdoor safety requirements are quite the same as New Zealand.

The day we left I wanted to talk to Kenneth more about what they are doing in the tourism space. But there was a big meeting on to sort out some land disputes. We were told it could go on for a couple of hours or a couple of weeks. Island time.

We’ll be back here in the future.

Waiting for our guide outside the community building.

Waiting for our guide outside the community building.

What the local kids draw in the sand.

What the local kids draw in the sand.

 

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The government boat that supplies water to some outer island village schools. The next day its propeller dropped off.

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A teenager’s roost.

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Dean drinking carva. Muddy dish water. Makes lips go numb.

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We love the local speak.

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Traditional, traditional, traditional.

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John the Australian was here researching his missionary ancestors. He had a lot to say about how great white people are.

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Lots of Unicef tents all over Vanuatu. Some empty and flapping in the breeze.

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Zena bubby doggy

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After four hours on our two hour walk to get there, the waterfall!

First glimpse of Vanuatu (and the cat on Mystery Island)

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As the sun came up after three hideous night shifts from Fiji, we saw Vanuatu. Did we expect to see something broken? We knew this country, more than the others on our adventure, was going to be different because of the devastation of Cyclone Pam.

It’s the first time we’ve sailed downwind for any length of time. Very rocky rolly but I wasn’t seasick (no medication). Woop woop. Dean was in his element because he got the genaker out. No fish. But we caught ONE in Fiji. Fish count for the whole five months – ONE. A beautiful bright yellow mahi mahi. We were so scared we’d caught a poisonous one that we didn’t eat it till someone confirmed it was okay. Best fish ever. Except for Queen Charlotte Sounds blue cod of course.

The first island we saw, Aneityum, in southern Vanuatu, looked so solid it could blow any cyclone away. The first thing I thought of was that it looked like Kapiti Island – a chief lying down with his hands over his belly. No palm trees, just cliffs and ridges and lushness. I had a bit of an emotional moment – of course it could totally be self-created from my own expectations. Other’s felt it too.  

We spent five days in the main village in Analgawat Bay getting to know the villagers and the land. I think it takes at least a week for them to realise you’re not just going to leave before they invest in you. They are a lot shyer than Fijians. I like that.

The first days were taken up with ‘festivities’. First, a not-so-much-cringe cultural tour around the village, then and a show and feast on nearby Mystery Island. Parts were fascinating (seeing how they cook, umu and hangi style; and how they still fish with traditional grass nets). And some were very uncomfortable (women in traditional gear showing weaving techniques – it was a very cold night).

On the tour, Kenneth, our tour guide, had his two sons demonstrate how to use the fishing nets. They looked like typical awkward, disinterested teenagers. This village has introduced more traditional ways that have been lost since the missionaries came. They kick their sons out when they are teenagers and teach them to build and house and fish. There are these cool little huts around the island with ‘Danger, Keep Out’ signs on. They are a few metres away from their parents hut but could be in another land.

The police station on the main island was hilarious. It was a small, concrete building that had a lock-up cell the size of a closet, with a teeny padlock on. Above the door was a big sign in capitals, NO RAPE. All the posters on the walls were in English and the floor was stacked with outboard motors. A TV was playing a cartoon where characters were bashing each other.

The ‘shop’ sells two minute noodles and the only DVD’s you can buy are Rastafarian music videos. I never saw a DVD player or a TV.

I met a cat on nearby Mystery Island where the show and feast was. It lived on the island alone with no other cats or dogs or humans. It wasn’t skinny but it had a bung eye. It was obviously fed tourist scraps because when I asked where we should put the leftovers on our plate after the feast, I was given a sweeping motion. P&O Cruises come here most weeks. Mystery Island cat had the cutest, round face. It would hate being a boat cat. Maybe.

Most of the ICA boats left the next day – we were sick of rushing – so we stayed. There’s such a difference between a holiday and an adventure. Then add a whole new layer like a country recovering from a cyclone and it’s overwhelming.

However, I am now totally over my, “What’s paradise, what’s home, why aren’t I happier?” neurosis. Vanuatu, so far, has been very sobering and totally awesome.

Tomorrow a waterfall, the next day a live volcano: wholy shit. As Kim says, “There’s no ‘ho-hum’ on this adventure'”.

Sorry, no photos. Internet too dodgy here, even in the capital. Wait till you see the video of the volcano at Tanna Island.

Tomorrow we go out to the outer islands – really in wop-wop land. Can’t wait. We’re fascinated by this place. It’s very special