Port resolution, Tanna, Vanuatu.
Lochmarin
Tue 1 Sep 2015 04:57
Got here! The waves and wind abated and it turned into a lovely down wind passage. We poled out our twin jibs and had a glorious moonlit night with the swell coming up behind us, passing under us and swooshing away on either side. Exhilarating! All was good until the wind backed so we needed to drop the second jib, no problem since we got our wonderful code zero furler in Trinidad, we just wind it into long manageable sausage and drop it onto the deck. The sausage part worked fine, but when we came to drop it it was stuck.. something's gone wrong with the halyard up at the top of the mast. We now have a huge sausage strapped to the mast waiting for a calm anchorage day so Phil can climb up and sort it out.
Apart from that it was a lovely second half of the trip: sunshine, reading, peaceful sailing, although I have to admit to a little sunburn. We arrived soon after midday, had no trouble spotting the reefs as we entered and got safely anchored. As usual, we celebrated safe anchoring with a beer, we do this in part to get us to stop, sit, look around us at the new place we're in, and partly because we run a 'dry ship' when on passage.
And look around we did. Wow. It is amazing here. You folk may be thinking that surely one pacific island is much like another - not so! The main attraction of Tanna it's active Volcano, Mount Yasur. You can see the plume of white smoke and steam rising above the hill behind the anchorage. But what we didn't realise was the volcanic activity we'd see all around us. On the shore, alongside where we're anchored, there's steam puffing out from the rocks. We can even see a pool that's continually bubbling over, like a pot on the boil. Shame we have to stay on board until customs come in the morning - I could have tossed my potatoes in there to cook for supper!
Food:
Day 2: Supper: "Soup in a can", beef with pasta thing. But at least we fancied eating!
Day 3: Breakfast: weet-bix; lunch: pastrami, tomato and lettuce sandwich; supper: diced potato, diced ham and onion all fried up with some cabbage, so a sort of hash.
Day 4: Breakfast: eggy bread. Then we arrived by lunch time so I don't have to tell you any more! (I only have to tell you passage food)
Lukim yu bakagem! (See you later, in Bislama!)
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