Position           16:31.99 S 167:46.20 E

Date                1530 Tuesday 21 July 2015

Distance run    From Ai Creek to Awei 70.0nm over the ground, 71.7nm through the water

With a very favourable forecast for our trip we slipped from Ai Creek at 0600 and were out of Havannah Harbour through the northern passage 30 minutes later and heading directly for Awei. Whilst we did not manage the 8 knots average of our last trip north we did achieve 7.4 knots which given our additional weight and windage was not bad.

View astern with a large following sea.  The tanks to our great relief stayed put where they were lashed down and arrived safely. Some of the pipework can be seen on the aft deck lashed to a tarpaulin

Arriving in the familiar Awei anchorage we were greeted by Brian Wallace from the UK Ocean Cruising Club yacht Darramy.  Brian and his partner Sue is working under the auspices of the US charity Sea Mercy. We had previously met him in Havannah Harbour in June and had been discussing with him, on the morning SSB cruisers net, the problems of leaking concrete water tanks and the absence of catchment systems post cyclone Pam.  As a result he had obtained waterproof concrete repair materials and been carrying out repair work on the Awei tank, with tanks on Avokh to follow.

With Brian’s dinghy and assistance we quickly shed out load and had the tanks ashore ready for Chief Soffran and his family to cart them around to the village settlement on the far side of the island ready for installation the following day.

Hello Brian, goodbye tanks – within minutes arriving

Soffran, two of his children and Martin

(For those of UK origin, a certain age and apologies to the flowerpot men)

Not quite Bill, Ben and little weeds