Position 17:44.235S 168:18.55E

Firstly, we are safely anchored in Port Villa Bay at Vanuatu waiting for Quarantine and Customs clearance.

After a lovely days sailing on Monday we had a rude awakening at 5.00am on Tuesday morning when a terrific bang sounded on deck.

We quickly investigated and found that the starboard side shroud supporting the mast had collapsed on deck. The shroud was in tact but the fitting holding it to the lower spreaders (halfway up the mast) had completely broken.

We had 20 knots of wind with the twistle rig flying and some main sail out too – so it was all hands on deck to take in the sails and minimise any stress on the mast.

The seas were a bit rolly and the port side shroud became quite loose each time the boat rocked about, we put on the motor and kept our speed up as this seemed to reduce the rocking.

We took both spare masthead halyards and tensioned them on the starboard side to give some extra support. We thought about going up the mast to secure a line to the spreaders and tension it to the deck plate, but we weren’t sure if this extra weight on the mast was a good idea, let alone trying this manoeuvre at sea !

I can tell you we are both breathing a sigh of relief to be in port safely.

The boat yard here has a rigging service and they are coming out this morning to have a look, we hope that they will be able to carry out a repair even if they do not have the exact replacement part so that we can get to Australia without any delay ( it is at least 7 days delivery for parts from the UK).

Mackay in Australia have rigging services and also a Seldon dealer so they would be able to carry out any further repairs.

We will keep you posted, in the meantime we are looking forward to being on land again and exploring another new island.