Our position at Lamen Bay on Epi was “16:43.58S 168:08.61E”

 

We did the short hop of around 10nm from Revolieu Bay to Lamen Bay on Tuesday 30th July which is also Independence Day in Vanuatu so we are hoping that there will be a bit of celebrating going on especially as the celebrations seem to run for about 4 days.

 

After a gentle motor as there was no wind we arrived mid morning just in time to go for a swim before we head ashore to see what is going on.

The first thing that hits us when we arrive is the sound of music so we figure something must be going on.

After a bit of wandering around we met Justin and Stephanie from the Yarra Valley who have adopted Lamen Bay as their holiday home and have even built a modest native home here in the village.  They kindly provided us with lots of info about Lamen Bay and also the activities on the day.  As with most of the other villages there are a couple of soccer games on and in this case it is the Lamen Bay vs Lamen Island final so should be a big one. 

After a good walk around the village including a trip to the local airport we head back into town to check out the first of the scheduled soccer games and then head back to the boat in the late arvo to enjoy some celebrating on board.  The celebrations on shore seemed to continue right through the night and the village seemed very quiet when we headed back in the following morning.

 

As most things were shut on the Tuesday we thought we should do a bit more investigating on Wednesday morning.  We met Tasso from the Paradise Sunset Bungalows and booked in for a meal of Chilli Coconut Crab for dinner.  We then went and met Noel in one of the local shops and stocked up on our supply of chips. It is now day 10 since we left Port Vila and as we have not had any good rain and there is good spring water on tap in the village so we  figure it is a good day to top up the water.  It is a bit of an arduous process as we have to drag the 20lt water containers from the tap to the dinghy, then to the boat and then into the tanks.   We ended up putting in around 240lts and have an extra 50 in reserve to fill them up over the next few days. 

On Tuesday we put  in an order in with David to get some fresh fruit for us and true to his word he arrived just after lunch on his dug out with a big hand of Bananas (which are now hanging off the back of Sal), a couple of huge Paw Paw’s and some spring onions – so all is much better abord

 

As arranged we ventured ashore at 18:00H for our dinner reservation.  The meal started with a few cold Tusker’s (local beer) and soon after a huge spread of food appeared for the 3 of us including the advertised Coconut Crab and some local Poulet fish.  The crab was beautifully prepared and the shell appropriately cracked so it made accessing the flesh pretty easy.  The food was fantastic and we all rolled out of there with very full bellies.

 

Unfortunately we woke this morning to light westerly winds along with a slight westerly swell which is not good news for our anchorage at Lamen Bay as it faces directly west which mean we now on a lee shore and after doing a weather check looks like it is going to stay like this till at least Saturday.

After much debate, and with very heavy hearts we decide to leave Lamen Bay ahead of schedule which also means that we had to ask Miss Leapy to leave the ship which is a pretty %&(^&* thing to have to do!  Luckily Lamen Bay is a pretty nice place to get stranded and she has been able to arrange a room for the next couple of nights with Tasso at the Paradise Sunshine Bungalows until she flies back to Vila on Saturday.  Hopefully she will also get the chance to take a trip over to Lamen Island to meet with the friendly dugong. 

 

We are now on our way to Awai anchorage in the Maskelyne Islands on Malakula.

Will report in from the Maskelynes in a day or two