Yearly Archives: 2007

Vanuatu to Cairns Dolphin Show

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Today is day five of nine on the passage from Vanuatu to Australia. To celebrate making it to the halfway mark, we had a pod of dolphins come and do a show for us. Eric and Jaime spotted the dolphins at about 14:30 (2:30 pm). We went outside to get a better look. There was a big pod of them surfing the waves around us. Many of them stuck their noses out of the water and dived down, arching their backs out of the water, as they surfed along. A couple of them even turned mid stream so we could see their belly arch out of the water instead of their backs, which was exciting because we haven’t seen them do that before. Out of nowhere, one of the dolphins fully jumped straight up out of the water, fully vertical to the sea, and several feet up. We were all stunned. After that initial breach, the dolphins put on quite the show for us. There were several more fully body breaches like the first one. There were several partial body breaches where they seemed to stick their heads up out of the water to say hi. They would sometimes dive forward off the top of a cresting wave, which would send them flying up about a foot above the descending water level before they plunged back into the ocean. They seemed to be having a lot of fun playing in the waves and showing off for us.

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All the other dolphins we have seen seem to Continue reading →

Passage from Luagnville, Vanuatu to Cairns, Australia

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We left for a nine day passage to Cairns, Australia. Being that it is such a long passage, we had some serious getting ready to do. We spent all day Thursday and most of the day Friday doing chores.

Jaime volunteered to scrub the waterline, which delighted Christi. Christi thinks that the waterline is by far her hardest job duty. She was pretty happy about passing it off onto Adrienne, and even happier to have gotten out of it a second time in a row. He hopped in and hopped right back out, realizing that there was no way he could fight the aggressive two knot current. At slack tide he hopped in and got to work, but wasn’t able to finish the job before the tide picked back up. When the tide was slack again, he got in to finish the job. Jaime is planning on buying a Nordhavn and is trying to decide between a 43 and a 47. After finally completing the waterline, he came inside and announced that he had decided on the 43 he couldn’t possibly take doing the waterline of the 47, which is actually 50 and a half feet

Christi did the bottom when Jaime finished the water line. As she prepared to get in, she managed to break Continue reading →

Seeing the Coolidge’s Lady and Million Dollar Point

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This morning we were surprised to see two more people in the boat when they picked us up. One was diving with us, the other would be snorkeling. Christi and Jaime were going to go deeper into the Coolidge to see “the lady” with the same dive master we went in with yesterday. Eric and Darren were going out with another dive guider to do the promenade deck dive.

Eric and Darren descended from a nearby sand patch and followed a line that runs from shore to the bow, instead of going down the mooring line. Eric is more comfortable starting from shallow water and going deeper than he is starting in deep water. The descent was scary for him since he couldn’t see the bottom, just a nothingness of blue below. He was relieved when the ship came into sight. Eric made it abundantly clear that he did not want to go inside the ship at all he only wanted to swim around the exterior areas. They did the same the same route Jaime and Christi did the day before, except that they didn’t go into any of the cargo holds.

Christi and Jaime and the dive master again descended down the line to the bow. This time they continued over the starboard side of the boat, which is now the top since it is leaning on it’s side. They passed over a long series of portholes with the glass long gone. There was a cluster of colorful, pretty corals of assorted varieties at the edge of all the portholes. There were quite a few small clusters of coral over the top. Christi spotted a lionfish, which are neat to watch.

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They came to a blast hole in the metal hull, where they descended straight down into the relatively dark interior. Once again, only Continue reading →

Luganville and the Traditional Dinner and Dance Show

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Continuation from yesterday”¦.

There were quite a few shops, most selling a strange assortment of random goods, kind of like mini Targets with just a few food items, a few clothes, a few home improvement items, etc. It looks like they stock whatever they can get their hands on to sell. Eric did manage to find a used propeller for Kosmos that he thinks will help with speed.

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We walked the length of town and Continue reading →