Sailing under the Vulcano

We got into a different marina so the riggers could do work on the broken forestay, and they arrived on time and fixed it in a day. Great work from the team at PY Rigging services. All the work we needed to get done in Fiji was finished, we had all the provisions on board and full tanks of diesel and water; we were ready to go and excited to get moving again. When we cast the lines off, the staff from the marina sang us their beautiful Fijian farewell song (it’s the video) and we were out of there. So we thought. 

A couple miles out of the marina, we looked below and saw smoke coming out of the engine compartment- turns out it was a pretty serious fuel leak. We decided to turn right back around and go back into the marina to figure out what was going on. When a mechanic told us we needed a certain part we immediately thought of the worst case scenario- we’re going to be stuck here for another two weeks. But it worked out and the mechanic pulled this sensor off of another Yanmar engine he had back in his shop. It all worked out in the end and we were only delayed by four days, much better than two weeks. So after clearing out of Fiji again, we got going for real this time. 

The 530 nautical mile passage from Fiji to Vanuatu was great. The only complaint was that it was too short—we spent a lot of time in Fiji and we were all craving just a little more time offshore. Overall, we had great wind and it was just very refreshing to get into the routine of sailing offshore again, even if it was just for four nights. As we came in to Tanna, the smoke was absolutely pouring out of Mount Yasur and made us forget all about the short length of the passage. We got up there a day after clearing into the country and it was incredible. You can see in the video how active it is— probably 10-15 little eruptions happened just in the one hour we were at the rim. 

We left Tanna after a couple of days, sailed 100 or so nautical miles north to the capital city, Port Vila, for their Independence Day. To celebrate this, we figured we would eat the National dish of Vanuatu. We went to a very clean and respectable restaurant, sat down at a table with nice linen cloths and ordered a bottle of red wine, and bat. Yes, a fruit bat is the National dish of Vanuatu, and it didn’t disappoint. It tasted a bit like beef actually and it paired very well with the red wine. I’m not sure there are many sommeliers out there that could tell you which wine goes well with bat, but we can. 

After the independence day festivities wrapped up, we sailed another 150 Nautical miles to Luganville, on the island of Espiritu Santo. The history of this island is fascinating, it was home of the largest military base in the South Pacific during World War II, and there are some spectacular wrecks to dive on here. The highlight being the SS Calvin Coolidge. This was an American ocean liner that was converted to a troop transporter in 1941. The ship was carrying troops here to the military base in Luganville, and it struck allied mines in the channel that were omitted in the sailing orders of the ship. The wreck is 200 meters, just 40 meters shorter than the Titanic. The dive was incredible—one could easily dive on it 100 times and still not see everything. 

We’re wrapping our time up here in Vanuatu and we’re sailing towards the Solomon Islands in the next couple of days.