Stowaways, Tanna
Pacific Bliss
Colin Price
Tue 18 Jun 2013 08:36
Not wanting to subject the kids to another passage, we made the 50nm over night. Whilst exhausted from the previous nights anchor watch sound effects, our gentle nocturnal gib sail to Tanna was rather pleasant. Thanks Neptune we needed that.
Colin was the first to see the first glows of Mount Yasur, the most accessible 'live' volcano in the world. We have been anticipating reaching this destination for 5 years now. By the time the children were up we could see huge plumes of smoke billowing into the early morning sky. By night fall on our first night in Port Resolution here on Tanna the entire crew had adjourned to the cockpit to watch, in awe, the mounting and ebbing red glow of the volcano, v. cool.
Port Resolution, named after captain Cooks 2nd boat to cross these waters, docked here nearly three hundred years ago. On first impressions not much has really changed.
Anyway we needed to focus on the increasing itch action going on with the children, in particular Cosmo. A lovely friend had given me the heads-up nit alert, but having lived Nit free for the past 3 years and being a little preoccupied with departures I was not particularly vigilant and had long forgotten the rapidity of their reproduction. Well by the time I got round to it Cosmo had a flipping stow away city on board his bonce. It's going to take a lot of combing before we rid him, and now us, of the mothers of all mothers now impregnating his follicles. So we have finally found a negative about Nelson's inhabitance!. However having arrived here we find ourselves in good company the entire population of the village appears to spend a good deal of time with nails embedded in scalp and given the thick frizzy nature of the manes here riding the issue must be near on impossible, suspect it just might be an on going issue for the next 6 months.
We have all rather rapidly become accustomed to Western culture again. Anatom was rather wealthy and sanitized, but a step into a less visited village and it really is like going back in time. We, just right now, need to acclimatize ourselves. Again we're finding the people incredibly gentle, smiley and super polite. It feels like it's time for the west to relearn what life is all about, you'd never see so many smiley faces walking around a village in the UK.