Storm Madness

Greetings All, we survived the storm! Actually, it never even hit us which is even better. We are planning on leaving tomorrow(Saturday) morning for the 10 day, 1000 mile sail to Australia. As of Tuesday we will have been here in Vanuatu for 3 weeks so we are extremley anxious to get out. It looks like we should have some nice winds for the first few days with moderate seas. The rain still continues hopefully drying up once we get away from all these pressure systems. We will keep in touch while underway.
Love to all
Amy and Tom

Tropical Cyclone Xavier

Greetings All,
Just wanted to let everyone know we are still in Vanuatu waiting out tropical cyclone Xavier. I'm not sure if this storm has made the news back home but it was named a cyclone yesterday afternoon. It is currently located north of us and expected to turn west southwest which is right where we are and it's moving in the direction we will be headed when we leave here. The Vanuatu Meteorological Service puts out weather updates and as a cruiser we can go to the office and get up to date information. At 9:00 am the broadcast read as follows: The sea is very rough in the affected areas with heavy swells. People, including sea going vessels are strongly advised not to go out to sea until the system moves out of the area.' This means 'Team Sandpiper' along with our new team member Ron will be stayin' put until further notice. We'll keep the blog updated and let you know when we get a break in the weather and decide to go for it. Talk to you soon
Amy

Port Vila, Vanuatu

Hey All!

Hope this finds all well. First, a Happy Belated Birthday to my sister Shannon! Second, to all my family in Buffalo, New York. I hope you have found your way out of all the snow and are warming up.

A little about our stay here in Port Vila. We have been here about 10 days thus far and it has rained every single day! We actually haven'’t done much as far as touring the island. We'’ve just been relaxing, catching up on sleep, and eating lots of good food.

The market here is really crazy. It is open 24 hours a day. I'’m almost positive that these folks just sleep on the floor Monday through Saturday. Then on Sunday they go to church, or get together with their families outside the market. The food at the market is so cheap. You can get 2 punds of tomatoes for $1, 10 heads of butter lettuce for $1, 5 coconuts for $1, and the longest bunch of green onions I have ever seen for $1. And the best part is that the produce is organic!

We found this great restaurant called "“Jill'’s, the American Cafe"”. So we have been piggin'’ out on milkshakes, burgers, and fries. Jill is from Redondo Beach, California. So she knows what she is doing.

Also, Edward on S/V ‘Blue Sky’ found an article in the paper, before he joined the crew, about eating in Vanuatu. He has been showing us some of the great French restaurants around town. Because we are so close to New Caledonia, there is a strong French influence here.

Last Thursday we went to a '‘Village'’ and participated in a village ceremony. We drank kava, ate food cooked in the ground, and watched the local dance and customs. It was a wonderful experience. We will post photos as soon as we can when we get to Australia.

Did we mention that our auto pilot finally broke? Well, it is probably 20 years old, so we knew it was living on borrowed time. My mom brought us a new motor for it while in Mexico. Tom then swapped it out on our crossing, minus some gears, and found that it actually worked better. Go figure.

Towards the end, we had a bungie cord holding it together. Then finally, it busted. I had to hand steer for last 6 hours of our voyage into Port Vila.

A few days ago Tom started putting our new autopilot in. Now just like that, we have a brand spanking new auto pilot. Tom did a fantastic job. We took the boat out yesterday and programmed the new pilot. Wow! It is so quiet and smooth. What a difference!

This morning Tom and I are getting the boat ship-shape for our 10 day voyage to Australia, and for our boat guest Ron, who arrives tomorrow. I have been to the grocery store several times and still have one more stop to make today to get us topped off.

When we arrive in Australia, the Quarantine Service will come aboard to look for and remove any canned meat products, fresh meat, vegetables, eggs, milk, milk products not from Australia or New Zealand, shells, and wood carvings that may be infested with pests. We still has a few cans of chicken mol'e and lots of canned tuna. We hope you like tuna Ron.

We will also officially check out Vanuatu today so we can take advantage of the duty-free booze and load up before taking off. From what we hear, spirits are quite pricey in Australia. So it is a good idea to stock up here.

Sunday afternoon is our official first day of the rally, starting with a free Bar-B-Q at the Yacht Club here in Port Vila. There we will receive our packet of information about the daily events that will take place on the rally. I'’ve heard they have games planned that will coincide with our radio nets. There are all sorts of things happening when we get to Bundaberg. On 01-November there will be an awards breakfast. There are bar-b-ques every night. One day is a swap meet . Another day is a tour of the local rum factory. I think we will be quite busy upon arrival.

When we first signed up, there were only 14 boats entered in the rally. I think it i’s up to 30 now, so should be a good party. We also found out there are 3 "Sandpiper’s"’ in the rally. So we call them "Sandpiper US" (us), "Sandpiper UK", and "Sandpiper Catameran".

I think everyone knows that Ron posts our blog entries for us. He assures us that he has found someone to take over for him while he joins “Team Sandpiper” on our final South Pacific voyage. So keep checking the blog, as we will keep up with the postings.

Love to All

Amy and Tom

Note From Ron: I won't be able to update the Google Earth map, or augment the posts with interesting links. So I will catch up on all of that when I get back. In the meantime you will have to plot the voyage the old fashioned way... by hand on a map.

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.