Lat: 15:32.3 S: Long: 167:10.7 E

16^th July, 2013 – Aore Island Resort & Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

We then spent a few days in Efate not doing too much before we moved on to Luganville on Espiritu Santo, which was a major WW2 supply and staging base for the retaking of the Solomon Islands from the Japanese.

Towards the end of the war the Americans built a pier and drove millions of dollars’ worth of equipment into the sea rather than leave it behind, when the British and French refused to buy it. “Million Dollar Point” is now a scuba diver’s paradise, one which Alan, Will and Roger were keen to explore. They saw dozens of jeeps, bulldozers, cranes, motor-bikes and a whole arsenal of explosives, just sitting on the ocean floor.

A second dive took them into the Segond Channel, right along the shoreline, where they explored the sunken remains of the converted liner USS President Coolidge, which hit one of its own mines coming in loaded up as a troop ship.

Provisioning for the five-day sail to Mackay, Queensland, Australia, was much easier than expected as there were several decent supermarkets and a huge daily fruit and vegetables market.