As preparation goes for Vanuatu, we are filling up the boat. Here you cannot get to a gas station so the only way is to 

"jerrycan" the diesel to the boat. Thanks to Impi we could borrow 7 X 25 liters jerrycans and the first round Brendt even drove 

and helped with their dinghy.

So to fill up you take the cans to the gas station, when they are full you carry them down to the water, fill up the dinghy, drive to the boat

that is on a mooring. There you lift each one on deck and the you have to blow into the can to get the diesel going.

For those that don't know that yellow filter can be the difference between having an engine that works or not.

It is called Baya filter and it filters water from the fuel and also keeps dirt away from the tanks.

When the first seven were empty you just go for one more round...

I guess 365 liters comes to about 365 kg so my body soars a bit today.

There seem to be some confusion about how far away we are from the scene of disaster. To be honest I did not know much about geography

before coming here either. So if you want to learn the geography from a sailors point of view follow me on this one.

First of all it might be good to know that Salsa makes about 180nM (Nautical Miles)/24 hrs at sea. 

So after 48 hrs we have usually carried out 360nM. Now weather can always change things so we can go faster or slower.

OK, so the X shows where we are located when we hide from cyclones, far inside the bay of Savusavu. 

If we would sail to Suva the main capital on the south side of Viti Levu we need about 24hrs. 

If you look at a bigger chart, Vanuatu is west of us about 600nM from Viti Levu. 

As you probably have read the hurricane affects big areas and does normally not follow a straight line. 

So we got strong winds and rain from it, but it absolutely nothing compared to what the people 

in the middle of the track experienced. We learned from somebody who went through a cyclone in Rarotonga,

it is like sitting 15 meters behind a Jumbo Jet that has full power on the engines. The sound is the same...

So pls take note, nothing has been damaged here in Fiji other than small landslides from heavy rain.

 

If we look at the geography, we have Vanuatu (V)  600nM west of us and Tuvalu (A) 450nM north of us. 

Tuvalu consists of very low islands- atolls that have been affected by monster surge from Pam,

 their islands are already low in the rising sea, because of climate change. 

Tuvalu has not been much in the media as far as we know, only 10.000 souls

 live there but from reports we've seen they have lost half of what they had, and they did not have much to start with...

North of Tuvalu there is Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas), 900nM from us. That is an island group that is also badly affected 

by the surge. Their president has already long before Pam declared that his country is drowning in the rising sea. Pam did not

improve their problem.

So where do we go? We don't know, because it is not up to us. We are a very small unit in  a big

operation that unfortunately has not started yet.