Noon Position 09-Oct-2006

Tanna to Port Vila
Vanuatu, Melanesia

• 09-Oct-2006
• 19°23.4000"S/169°29.3000"E
• 6nm from Tanna Is.
• 119nm to Port Vila
• 10-15 knots

Departed Port Resolution at 10:30am this morning enroute Port Vila.

We made landfall at Port Resolution, Tanna Island, on Sunday morning, right at sunrise. I was able to watch the volcano, right above the anchorage, spew up blasts of hot magma under the full moon. Pretty cool! We dropped anchor and immediately went to sleep for 4 hours to catch up on some rest.

After we woke up, a local in a dugout canoe paddled up to us and grabbed the side of the boat. We said "Hello" and found out that he was from the village along the beach. He wanted to know if we had any glue. We asked him what he needed glue for, and he showed us his son's shoes sitting in the bottom of the canoe. He must be a little guy because the shoes were tiny. Anyway, the heels were coming off the shoes, and he wanted to know if we could glue them back together for him. We gave him our favorite bottle of glue on the boat (Gorilla Glue) and told him he could keep it. In return he gave us a hand woven basket full of bananas.

We were able to go ashore later in the day and met a 12 year old Henry on the beach. He said we could visit his village. He lives in a small village that was very clean, with lots of landscaped tropical plants. Everyone in his village lives in small grass huts with pigs and chickens running all over. They have a small wood school house for the kids.

Later, we walked up to the Port Resolution Yacht Club, which is a very small hut sitting on top of the cliff, looking over the harbor. Being a Sunday, they were closed. But we did meet Stanley who works there. He helps out the visiting boats in the anchorage.

We had planned on going on a volcano tour with Stanley and his driver. But we needed money, and we had planned on going in to town the following day (a 2 hour ride each way in the back of a pick-u,p on a dirt road). But we found out that Monday was some sort of holiday on the island and the banks were going to be closed. So we held a Team Sandpiper meeting and decided that we needed to get going to Port Vila. We could not spend all week at Tanna Island.

So we left late this morning on an overnight sail to Port Vila. We plan on spending a couple of weeks there before we depart for Australia.

Before we left Tanna Island, we had hoped that a local would paddle by. We need to get rid of some things on the boat that we cannot take to Australia. And we have other items we had gotten in Fiji. Luckily Tom, who is the village chief's son, paddled by. We waved him over and loaded him up with a new machete, some canned food (hope they can figure out what chicken mole is!), and kava root for his dad, the chief. Kava is a pretty big deal out here. When you meet a chief, you are supposed to have a kava ceremony before you can come into his village.

We will be in Port Vila tomorrow. So it might be a few days before another Team Sandpiper update.

Tom and Amy

Notes From Ron:

• Here is a good web page about the TV show Survivor that was shot on Tanna Island.
• Here is a blog entry with photos from cruiserer that stopped in Resolution Bay in 2003. It has some pictures of the lava flow at night.
• Here is a good tourist site about Tanna Island.
• An interesting article from Australia about how and why their little yacht club was started, considering the locals did not even know what a yacht was.
  
• Zoom in close to Resolution Harbor in Google Earth and you can see the grey lava fields of Mt. Yasur just to the west of the where the anchored.Unfortunately, there are some clouds hiding thecalderara.
• The village on Resolution Bay where 12 year old Henry lives is called "Ireupuow", population 150. That area of the island belongs to the Yanbian tribe. Their chief is Ronnie Thomas. Tom & Amy met his son, Tom.