We ended up spending a bit longer in Anatom than expected due to weather which was not an issue as it is a very beautiful bay with really lovely people.

We found the village baker so were able to  buy some bread which was a pleasant surprise although the next day when we went back he was all out of flour until the next island trading vessel turns up in a couple of weeks.

We had a bit false start on our way to Tanna.  We were hoping to get here on Thursday (27^th June) but after setting off nice an early we found a sizable northerly swell had formed which is not a good thing in Port Resolution so we skulked back to Anatom and had another go on Friday.  We had a bit more luck on Friday and found a southerly swell had formed so we kept on our way to Port Resolution.  During the 45NM trip to Tanna we were lucky enough to catch a small tuna on our hand line which was all good until it arrived on board.  It became apparent that we are not very proficient at dealing with fish on board as it quickly looked like we had conducted an axe murder all over the back of the boat – this is something that we have to work on however, it did mean that we had a couple of nice tuna steaks on the BBQ for dinner.

We arrived around 15:00H only to find a 124ft pleasure craft in the bay called Platinum from Fremantle – we figured with a name like that it must belong to some mining magnate!!  As we are keen to do the trip up to the local volcano, Mt Yasur which is only a couple of kilometres from the anchorage, we head into the main village in search of Stanley who is apparently in charge of yacht relations and tours.  Instead of Stanley we ended up finding Chief Narua (aka Russell) who informed us that is was already Kava time so we should come back to find him tomorrow morning.  We found out that Russell is also the local primary school teacher so we have found a home for some of school books that we have had on board since Melbourne.

We wandered back into the village on the Saturday morning and this time did find Stanley but unfortunately there is a bit of a problem with the transport vehicle so we have left him on the case to work on our trip to see the volcano.  We are confident that Stanley will be back as he gave us his mobile phone to charge.  Luckily we do have at least some of the volcano in the bay with us as there is steam and boiling water running into the bay continuously which is a bit eerie and disturbing Mark to the point where he is doing regular checks to make sure there is no boiling water or glowing bits around the boat.  We have already started the trading process this morning and so far have ordered some Pompamoose (big grapefruit), Spring Onions, Paw Paw, Bananas and hopefully a Lemon from Timothy and on another front have ordered in 2 Cray’s from Simon so we are now waiting with great anticipation to see what actually turns up.   

We also found out that it was a good thing that we did not arrive on Thursday as the other boat in the anchorage (a cat with a young French family from Tahiti) reported that there was a large swell in the bay and also that their boat ended up covered in volcanic ash which then took around 5 hours to clean off the next day.

We are looking forward to a warm dip in the hot springs this arvo before our lobster dinner and hopefully have some good news on our trip to Mt Yasur and the famous Shark Bay - apparently this bay comes complete with sharks unlike its namesake – Shark Bay at Safety Beach!